I've lost count of the number of places I've walked into recently - shops being by far the worst offenders, but a fair number of restaurants and offices too - where no-one's said "Hello!" or otherwise acknowledged my presence. So the cheery, traditional, "Irasshaimase!" from the staff and beating of a drum on entering Shoryu, London's latest ramen joint on Lower Regent Street, endeared me to the place before even a mouthful of food passed my lips.
But oh, the food...it's wonderful. Just brilliant. So much so, in fact, that after an impressive first visit I returned twice in the space of a week. The room's nothing special - tightly-packed, functional (trans: hard) seating; bright lights, an apparently Spirographed mural - and the Lower Regent Street location, horrible, but these are minor considerations next to the combined allure of the warmth of welcome and the sheer quality of the ramen.
Shoryu's menu, presented on a clipboard, is much longer than at any of the other ramen-ya that have sprung up around town. The basic Shoryu Ganso tonkotsu is a huge bowlful of rich opaque pork-bone broth to which hosomen noodles, tender barbecue pork, crunchy, woody kikurage fungus, seasoned boiled egg (nitamago), beansprouts, spring onions, pickled ginger (gari) and crisp dried seaweed (nori) are added. Then ingredients are added or subtracted to make different dishes, there are miso and soy broth variants, and all can be tweaked and customised to personal taste. There's a good twenty-odd starters and sides to choose from too.
The dish that blew me (and the cobwebs) away on my first visit was Wasabi Tonkotsu, which saw a sinus-purging whack of potent fresh and pickled wasabi added to a gari-free Shoryu Ganso. It was in many ways the perfect meal; lovely to look at, nourishing, complex - each mouthful slightly different in taste and texture from the last - and filling without leaving one bloated. I loved it; food is often fun, sometimes intriguing, but rarely is it genuinely exciting. This was.
A side-order of chicken kara age, chunks of thigh meat lightly-battered and fried, was initially a little bland but came alive with a squeeze of lemon juice and dipping in the accompanying spiced mayonnaise. Although great value for the portion size at £5, there was rather too much of it for one person; solo diners shouldn't have to miss out on trying extras for fear of over-ordering (not, I'll admit, something that often afflicts me, as my waist size will attest).
I enjoyed the kara age again on my second visit, this time in tori kara age men, one of the shiitake and konbu soy broth choices. Although in its non-broth components not dissimilar to the tonkotsu, this was a much lighter, more cleansing affair, slices of gari folded into the noodles adding little depth-charges of flavour. In this setting the fried chicken - as much of it as in the side-order serving - felt rather decadent. I wasn't sure if I liked the roundels of garish pink fishcake, which didn't feel like they quite belonged in this assembly, but I polished the whole lot off just the same.
On a third occasion I took along my BFF Anders and, as confident as I could be that I wouldn't be chatting anyone up later, ordered the Dracula Tonkotsu. Really it should be called anti-Dracula Tonkotsu as it includes mayu - black garlic oil - and garlic chips, caramelised and roasted to take away some of the pungency but none of the warmth of the vampire repellent. Although enjoyable, of the three ramen I'd now tried it was my least favourite, being rather one-note; that much garlic can't not dominate a dish. Still, I'd order it again, if Buffy was having a night off and there was no snogging to be done.
Anders's Yuzu Tonkotsu was interesting, the fragrant citrus fruit made into a chutney with chilli and piled high in the centre of the bowl. Its citric acidity, which should in theory have cut through the fattiness of the sliced pork and collagen-rich broth, somehow seemed to sit apart from it, but this sort of experimentation is what makes the food at Shoryu so enticing. A side of pork gyoza were, if not the best of their kind, perfectly fine, but as with the kara age on my previous visit not strictly necessary.
Staff, many of them Japanese, provide service that is briskly efficient while also friendly and very courteous; diners are not hurried or harassed but tables are turned at such a rate as to ensure that the queues which inevitably build up at busy times keep moving along. As well as the lively greeting there are other customer-friendly touches; a complimentary palate-awakener of cabbage dressed in rice wine vinegar is brought with the menu, and the discretionary service charge is a modest 10%.
When somewhere like Shoryu opens that nails its concept so assuredly from the get-go, it's always tempting to believe that the first branch might be the prototype for a chain. If that is the case here, then good; I'd welcome a Shoryu on every corner as warmly as they welcome every customer.
Shoryu Ramen, 9 Lower Regent Street, London SW1Y 4LR www.shoryuramen.com
Posted by +Hugh Wright
Coming on for two-and-half-years ago, in one of my very first blog posts, I stated with the sniffy hubris of a know-it-all newcomer that the subject, Automat, occupied 'the site of Oliver Peyton's late, unlamented Coast'. I thought it sounded terribly clever to be so in-the-know, and it's an affectation that's stayed with me down the years - most of my posts make some reference to where a restaurant is (over and above its London district) and what if anything it used to be.
Thank goodness then that the three or so readers I had back in 2009 either didn't notice or knew even less than I thought I did about restaurant premises, because blow me down if I didn't realise, upon arriving for a dinner date at Sumosan, that it in fact occupies 'the site of Oliver Peyton's late, unlamented Coast' and that Automat was, and always had been, on the next street along. Whoops.
Sumosan opened on said vacated site in 2002, a London outpost of a small chain with established branches in Moscow and Kiev. Despite never attracting nearby Nobu's level of fame (or notoriety - to the best of my knowledge no love-children have been conceived on the stairs) Sumosan has obviously been doing something right, as on the evidence of my visit business would appear to be booming. It will come as no surprise, given the Russian backing and super-prime Mayfair location, that Sumosan is aimed squarely at the kind of customer for whom recession only affects the hairline, and on a freezing winter night the huge main dining room and smaller downstairs bar were packed.
To anyone acquainted with London's (or indeed Moscow's) higher-end Japanese restaurants, the menu at Sumosan will be familiar fare; superior sushi and sashimi are offered alongside a lengthy selection of mostly fish dishes, all using only the finest produce at prices to match. I was fortunate to be dining as a guest of the restaurant so was able to order just about everything that appealed; had I not been, prices starting at a fiver for a simple bowl of miso soup would have had me fluttering my eyelashes at the nearest thick-necked, expensively-suited Russkie in the hope of his picking up the bill.
Our tastebuds awakened by a glass of bubbly, aforementioned miso and some salty, warm edamame, we started with some perfect rock shrimp tempura, served with a creamy, spicy dipping sauce, and heady, delicate yellowtail sashimi with truffle.
Lobster salad was as beautiful to eat as to look at; chunks of claw meat in a sweet citrusy dressing came encased in frilly green leaves, the whole assemblage forming a pretty green sphere like a 1950s swimming cap.
Kaiso (seaweed) salad with peanut was fabulous, a rich, nutty palate cleanser to prepare us for silken scallop and sublime toro sashimi. Tuna and truffle California rolls were a decadent take on perhaps the most ubiquitous of sushi dishes. The night's revelation came in the form of red sea urchin roe served in the shell, the top sliced off like an aquatic boiled egg. Quite unlike anything I can remember tasting - smooth, creamy, slightly nutty but with a definite whack of the sea, for once I could see why this particular delicacy is so highly prized.
We finished with a trio of hot dishes which delivered two hits and the night's only miss. Black cod in miso - street food in Japan but the pricy signature of any western restaurant with an eye to the Rising Sun - was amazingly good: sticky and rich, texturally firm enough to pick up with chopsticks but then collapsing almost to syrup in the mouth. Sweet shrimp, served in cute little nuggets just begging to be picked up by fingers and popped in the mouth, was like delicious savoury popcorn. The one slightly duff dish was vegetable tempura; it was fine, with good crunch to both batter and veg, but bland in comparison to everything else and not even enlivened by the accompanying dipping sauce.
I'd love to be able to tell you what we drank, but all I remember is that there were two bottles of it (which possibly explains my amnesia), it was a buttery white - a Meursault? - chosen for us by the chatty, approachable sommelier and very nice indeed.
I'd also love to be able to tell you what this all cost, but in a move perhaps intended to not put people off coming, or simply in recognition of the fact that Sumosan's core customer isn't all that worried about money, there are no prices on the rather clunky corporate website. My guess would be about £100-a-head; four dishes less than we greedily had and just the one bottle of wine would halve that, and you'd still be in for a treat.
The decor's rather dated - I'm not sure it's had more than an occasional lick of paint since 2002 - but everything else about Sumosan is excellent and I highly recommend a visit. When it opened - on, let's not forget, the site of Oliver Peyton's late, unlamented Coast - one critic wondered if Sumosan would last 'a couple of years'. Well pass the chopsticks someone, because nearly ten years later, she needs to eat her words.
Sumosan, 26B Albemarle Street, London W1S 4HY Tel: 020 7495 5999 http://www.sumosan.com
Anders's Yuzu Tonkotsu was interesting, the fragrant citrus fruit made into a chutney with chilli and piled high in the centre of the bowl. Its citric acidity, which should in theory have cut through the fattiness of the sliced pork and collagen-rich broth, somehow seemed to sit apart from it, but this sort of experimentation is what makes the food at Shoryu so enticing. A side of pork gyoza were, if not the best of their kind, perfectly fine, but as with the kara age on my previous visit not strictly necessary.
