With Sushi Amamoto, Shogo Amamoto took over MICHELIN-starred TAKU in February 2026. It was his first landing outside Asia, after a members-only room in Taiwan that was harder to book than to find. What he opened in its place serves the best Edomae omakase in London.
The tempura handroll really does taste like fish and chips. Even though the thought feels like a kind of heresy. This is, after all, Amamoto, a restaurant offering the best Edomae-style omakase in town. But then the town is London. Cosmopolitan. Eclectic. And, admittedly, 1-hour to Brighton where fish and chips are a staple.
The Focus On The Fish
Half an hour ago we stepped off Mayfair’s storied Albemarle Street – where Faraday split light and Darwin found a publisher – into this space of textured stone and cream panels with its timber ceiling, where everything except the counter is stripped away to put the focus firmly on the fish and the chef’s darting hands – scooping rice, flattening it between his thumb and forefinger, prodding the fish into place. “You may notice familiar flavors?” General Manager Manson Au interjects. “Fish and chips?”
The menu reads like a petulant teenager barking one-word demands to mom for dinner: Mochi. Turbot. Rhubarb. But it tastes like ice cream sandwiches filled with foie gras. Noodles doused in rhubarb dashi. Cornish red mullet with sudachi.
A Dish In Itself
Chef Shogo Amamoto believes each piece of nigiri is a complete dish in itself. Like the tempura handroll that really does taste like fish and chips. Manson just confirmed it. The room was MICHELIN-starred TAKU until Amamoto took it over.
Lots of the team stuck around. Manson – the General Manager. Head Chef Jongho Park is humble and deeply focused, probably on the wasabi he’s grinding as you sit. Then Head Sommelier Bowie Tsang, who narrates as much as he pours.
We arrive early for the 6pm seating. They’re ready for us. Sixteen counter seats. Twenty courses. Service is prompt and you had best not be late. This is not a restaurant where you wait to be seated. Or wait to see if a table opens up. It doesn’t. It gives you a sense of exclusivity without stripping the warmth from the room.
And the room is spare. A long counter divides the kitchen from the diners. Wood meets stone. Not a frame or a flower in sight. And why would there be. We’re here for the fish. The only decoration, in fact, is the glassware and the plates – each one unusual. Each one a backdrop to the dish it carries.
Slowing Down
Rhubarb arrives first, in a hand-etched glass bowl. Hand-pulled noodles in a bath of rhubarb dashi, topped with a single shiso flower. About to dig in we’re told to stop. Slow down. Appreciate eating out.
Maybe we’ve spent too long in pubs running the same menu, or been underwhelmed by one more restaurant chasing one more hyped ingredient. This is simpler than that. Well-paired ingredients, thoughtfully set down. This is what you leave the house for.
Courses two and three take us out of Japan and onto the southern English coast. Cornish seabass sashimi with the smallest shiso flower. Cornish red mullet with sudachi. Then the tempura handroll.
“You may notice familiar flavors,” he says. “Fish and chips. That’s intentional.” They aren’t too precious to source from Japan when the local catch meets the standard. Nor too regimented to stay strictly traditional.
Somewhere Private
Then Foie Gras – the pick of the evening. Custard and foie gras ice cream pressed between two wafers, handed over with an invitation to pair it with port. Bowie hauls over a nine-liter salmanazar of 20-year-old Taylor’s Tawny in both hands. You immediately stop talking to your date to go somewhere private with the sandwich.
Then the sakes. Three, on Bowie’s recommendation, each its own detour. The Mimurosugi Bodaimoto Kioke opens clean and savory across the first courses. The Aramasa Colors Ash, funky and loose, rounds out the last stretch. But it’s the middle one that thrills. Dassai Future with Farmers, 8% polished, from Yamaguchi.
The bottle is plain – bone-white washi, kanji calligraphy. It’s like you’ve seen it at every sushi counter. Except you haven’t. That’s the deception. And Bowie helps unravel the story. Future with Farmers began as a way to protect local growers, rescuing rejected rice and milling 92% of each grain away to reach an 8% polishing rate. By comparison, standard premium sits near 60%, extreme prestige around 35%. And then you taste it. Soft, clean, barely sweet. Nothing about it says it’s 8%.
Never Stuffy, Never Fussy And Never In Your Way
By now the counter has filled. Sixteen strangers. The same twenty courses. And not one of us having the same night. Manson is somewhere down the line, beating another diner to their own thought. Bowie is uncorking something for someone else. And Jongho hasn’t looked up from the fish.
Amamoto chose well in London and the draw isn’t letting up. Nor should it. Never stuffy, never fussy and never in your way. The counter is shared but the evening is yours. The team moves in and back out, offering the origin of a dish when you want it and leaving you alone when you don’t. A small time capsule where your only worry is how to enjoy the next bite more than the last.
Fine dining that isn’t ashamed to taste like fish and chips.
