Whether you’re splashing £420 or spending £34 on bottomless rolls, London’s sushi scene has never looked this good.
London does not have a sushi problem. What it has is a sushi abundance problem, which sounds like something we shouldn’t be complaining about and yet here we are, staring at seventeen open tabs on a Tuesday evening trying to decide between a Michelin-starred omakase in Mayfair and a smoky robata counter in Notting Hill. The city has spent the last decade quietly becoming one of the best places in the world to eat Japanese food, and the sushi specifically has reached a standard that would have seemed implausible even a few years ago.
The range is as wide as it gets. On one end: a seven-seat counter in a Clerkenwell alley run by a husband and wife duo, where bookings open at noon every Monday and close within minutes. On the other: a thirteen-seat omakase behind a discreet Mayfair doorway where the set menu costs £420 and arrives on edo kiriko glassware. In between, a very pleasing number of options that will neither bankrupt you nor require the reflexes of a professional athlete to book.
London’s Best Sushi at a Glance
Best omakase in the city: Sushi Tetsu, Clerkenwell
Best for Michelin-starred drama: Sushi Kanesaka, Mayfair
Best neighbourhood sushi: Sumi, Notting Hill
Best open kitchen theatre: Yashin Sushi, Kensington
Best for the full kaiseki experience: Umu, Mayfair
Best value omakase: Sushi Atelier, Fitzrovia
Best for groups and good times: Kibou, Battersea
Best for a big-occasion splurge: Sushi Kanesaka, Mayfair
Yashin Sushi, Kensington
Best for: creative sushi with a front-row seat at the counter
Walk off High Street Kensington and into Yashin and you’ll immediately understand why this place has a loyal following that borders on obsessive. The open kitchen is the whole point: diners seated around the central counter watch their sushi being prepared in real time, which turns the meal into something closer to a performance. The sleek monochrome room and carefully chosen lighting help, and the menu spans traditional and contemporary with the kind of confidence that comes from actually knowing what you’re doing. The nigiri is precise and the quality of ingredients is exceptional for the price point. Toppings venture into yuzu salt, edible flowers, parmesan, and sun-dried tomatoes, all of which sound alarming on paper and taste genuinely good in practice. This is sushi with opinions, and we are here for it.
Book/info: yashinsushi.com
Sticks’n’Sushi, Multiple Locations
Best for: consistently excellent sushi across town, no excuses needed
A Danish-Japanese restaurant group with a clean, minimalist aesthetic and a somehow consistent quality across every London outpost. This is not the place to flex your sushi encyclopaedia knowledge, but it is the place to have an excellent, unfussy meal that covers all the bases: classic nigiri and sashimi alongside inventive maki rolls and robata-grilled sticks that more than earn their place on the menu. The Scandinavian design sensibility keeps everything looking sharp without trying too hard, and the service is reliably warm. We have eaten here on a Monday when nothing else was working and it was, as always, exactly what we needed. Sometimes that is the highest possible recommendation.
Book/info: sticksnsushi.com/gb/en
Akira at Japan House London, Kensington
Best for: sushi as cultural event, with kushiyaki on the side
Akira is doing something slightly different from the standard premium sushi restaurant, and the difference is welcome. Set on the first floor of Japan House London, the philosophy here centres on what the restaurant calls the trinity of cooking: food, tableware, and presentation in equal measure. The tableware is sourced from artisans across Japan and it shows, in the best way. The menu spans imaginative sushi alongside chargrilled kushiyaki skewers of wagyu beef, pork, chicken, seafood, and vegetables roasted over roaring robata flames. The sushi itself is shaped with real precision, the cocktail bar serves sake and original cocktails made from rare Japanese ingredients, and the whole experience carries a genuine sense of occasion without being stiff about it. Go for dinner, stay for the sake.
Book/info: akira-restaurant.co.uk
Sushi Tetsu, Clerkenwell
Best for: the best seats in the city, if you can get them
Seven seats. One chef. One of the most in-demand bookings in London. Sushi Tetsu operates on a system that opens online at noon every Monday for the following week, and if you know, you know. Chef Toru Takahashi (ex-Nobu) and his wife Harumi run this tiny Clerkenwell counter as something closer to a Japanese dinner party than a conventional restaurant, and the warmth of the place is as memorable as the food, which is saying something, because the food is extraordinary. The omakase at £187 per head delivers around twenty courses of edomae-style sushi: each nigiri carefully pressed and finished with a touch of soy, a pinch of sea salt, or a flicker of blowtorch flame before being placed individually in front of you. The fish changes daily depending on what’s best at the market. We still think about the tuna. We will continue to think about it.
Book/info: sushitetsu.co.uk | 12 Jerusalem Passage, EC1V 4JP
Sumi, Notting Hill
Best for: Michelin-starred DNA at neighbourhood prices
Named after sushi master Endo Kazutoshi’s mother, Sumi is the more accessible, more relaxed version of his legendary (and currently fire-damaged) Endo at the Rotunda. The Notting Hill location has a younger crowd and a warmer atmosphere than its White City sibling ever allowed, and the food, led by executive chef Christian Onia, carries Endo’s exacting instincts without the ceremony. The menu is largely sushi-based: lean red tuna, seabass, scallop, and salmon roe as nigiri, alongside a temaki menu developed using the Kazutoshi family technique of wrapping rice, raw fish, and vegetables in nori. The diced scallop with shiso flowers and soy is the one we still talk about. Order the miso soup. It is not optional. The cocktails are excellent. This is genuinely one of our favourite rooms in London.
Book/info: sushisumi.com | 157 Westbourne Grove, W11 2RS
Umu, Mayfair
Best for: the full Kyoto kaiseki experience, done impeccably
Umu is quietly brilliant, and has been for years, which is perhaps why it doesn’t generate the same noise as some of London’s newer arrivals. This Michelin-starred Mayfair restaurant serves Kyoto-style kaiseki with a focus on traditional techniques that includes ikejime fish handling and ingredients sourced from both Japan and the best British producers. The entrance is discreet to the point of feeling intentionally secretive, and once inside, everything settles into an atmosphere of composed elegance that makes the food taste even better than it already does. The sake list is one of the most serious in London and a recommendation from the sommelier is worth following. At £260 for the kaiseki menu, this is not a Tuesday impulse decision, but it is absolutely the right call for a significant occasion. One to save for.
Book/info: umurestaurant.com | 14-16 Bruton Place, Mayfair, W1J 6LX
Sushi Kanesaka, Mayfair
Best for: the most rarefied sushi experience in the country
Behind a discreet doorway above Park Lane, chef Shinji Kanesaka’s first European outpost from Tokyo’s exclusive Ginza district has earned its Michelin star and then some. The thirteen-seat hinoki wood counter seats a small, lucky group each service for seventeen courses of traditional Edomae sushi, where fish is cured to reveal its inherent flavour rather than obscured by it. Scottish lobster, Kobe beef, akami and negi toro maki, unagi kabayaki hand rolls: each piece is a study in restraint and precision. The okami-san, Nanami-san, trained in the tradition of the Japanese geisha, brings a hospitality that is unlike anything else currently operating in London. At £420 per person, this is not a casual proposition. It is, however, an experience that recalibrates your understanding of what sushi is capable of being.
Book/info: dorchestercollection.com | 45 Park Lane, Mayfair, W1K 1PN
Sushi Atelier, Fitzrovia
Best for: the holy grail of sushi: high quality, actually affordable
The younger, cooler sibling of Mayfair’s Chisou, Sushi Atelier has cracked the thing that most London sushi restaurants haven’t: delivering genuinely excellent fish at prices that don’t require you to pre-check your bank balance. The long wooden counter overlooking the chefs is the right seat, and the omakase is the right order: six, nine, or twelve pieces chosen daily based on what the kitchen is excited about, topped with things like ponzu jelly, truffle mayo, whiskey jelly, and parmesan that all sound eccentric and all somehow work. The aburi toro truffle roll and the tuna set are highlights that have been consistent enough to mention specifically. The basement with its intimate banquettes is good for groups. The whole operation is run with the kind of focused cheerfulness that makes you want to return the following week.
Book/info: sushiatelier.co.uk | 114 Great Portland Street, W1W 6PH
Ikeda, Mayfair
Best for: old-school Mayfair sushi with fish that genuinely melts
Ikeda is the sort of restaurant that Mayfair does quietly and well: no social media moment, no influencer queue, just excellent fish and rice in a room that has been doing this for long enough to know exactly what it’s about. The supreme assortments are the reason to come: a mix of fatty to very fatty tuna, yellowtail, and octopus that arrives in perfect condition and disappears faster than intended. The rice here is warm and vinegared exactly as it should be, which sounds like a baseline requirement and is somehow still unusual enough to mention. It is expensive, because Mayfair, but the quality justifies it without hesitation. Get the hand roll on your way out.
Book/info: ikedarestaurant.com | 30 Brook Street, Mayfair, W1K 5DJ
Dinings SW3, Chelsea
Best for: British seasonal ingredients, Japanese technique, and a very good time
Dinings has been a Chelsea institution long enough to have regulars who book the same table every month and know exactly what they’re ordering before they sit down. The SW3 outpost champions British seasonal and sustainable ingredients interpreted through Japanese technique, which in practice means tuna usuzukuri followed by salmon sashimi plated so beautifully it genuinely has its own social media following. The soft shell crab and the wagyu tartare with daikon and black garlic are the dishes to note. The room is cool without trying, the service prompt without feeling rushed, and the whole experience has the easy confidence of somewhere that has nothing left to prove. Low-key in the best way.
Book/info: dinings.co.uk | 18a Woodfall Street, Chelsea, SW3 4DJ
Kibou, Battersea
Best for: a big, fun, nobody’s-being-precious-about-it sushi night
Kibou is not for the sushi purist and it knows it. The salmon volcano roll (salmon, avocado, tobiko) and the surf-and-turf nigiri (seared salmon with wagyu and truffle mayo) make no pretence of being traditional, and the pop art interiors and velvet banquettes are similarly unbothered by convention. What Kibou does brilliantly is make sushi an occasion for a large group who all want different things and want to have a lot of fun having them. The fish quality is genuinely solid, the service is prompt and smiling, and the weekend bottomless sushi offering starting at £34 (with the option to add drinks for an extra £21) is the kind of thing that explains the full room every Saturday. Also available in Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, and Solihull, for the record, but the Battersea original is the one.
Book/info: kibou.co.uk | 175 Northcote Road, Battersea, SW11 6QF
