Sake no Hana is by no means the most “pointy end” Japanese restaurant in London, but it’s food is very good, pretty authentic, and the venue is beautifully styled in wood. When Mr. A and I returned from our two 2015 Japanese holidays we searched London for places to eat the types of Japanese food we had fallen in love with, served in the immensely polite Japanese fashion.
Our first stop was Nobu on Park Lane, because we had had some terrific meals in Nobu Tokyo. But that turned out to be a huge expensive error, as the restaurant’s clientele were brash arrogant ‘city types’ on expenses, the food was over priced and not that good, and the service was very poor. Eventually we found Sake no Hana, on Saint James’ Street and found it to be close enough to (but still well short of) Japanese standards, offering a competitively priced set 5 course meal called “Taste of sake no hana” at £31/person.

The restaurant has a counter, where we always choose to sit, watching sushi chefs prepare dishes and prep elements for the evening service. So it was on Thursday 16th February 2017, when we admired BJ butchering a blue fin tuna in front of us; carving out the tuna loin, then dissecting out two or three grades of toro (the delicious fatty belly of the fish). We chatted with BJ, who is Nepalese, and he even gave us a few ‘spare’ pieces of the toro sashimi he was working on, including o-toro, the most expensive element of the fish, which the restaurant sells at £18 for two small slices.  This interaction and kindness made our meal, because otherwise we found the experience less good than on previous visits.

The “taste of..” menu began with a miso soup, which was nice, but not as good as a mushroom miso soup I’d had there before. In Japan you wouldn’t get miso at the beginning of the meal, it would come at the end, with your rice, and pickles. 3/10
Then, when there is normally a nice sashimi selection, we got “tuna tartare with fried tofu”. The tartare was such a tiny portion, but some of the tofu was actually pretty good. 4/10

Then came the sushi course, in the form of six slices of maki rolls with various seafood and vegetable fillings. Again this was not as good as on previous visits, and appeared to be driven by ’style over substance’. I prefer, as is much more commonly eaten in Japan, simple nigiri sushi.  For reasons not given to us, we had to wait an inordinately long time for this course to be served. 3/10
I had chosen a bottle of Gewurtztraminer from Alsace (£49) from a list of wines selected to accompany raw and cooked seafood. It was very nice, being floral but not overpowering. But for some odd reason the sommelier left it in an ice bucket about 15m from where we were sitting, and he wasn’t very good at topping up our glasses when empty. It took four requests to get some!
When the main courses arrived they had made a mistake on the order and so we had another long wait to get whet we had asked for. But the restaurant manager Edvinas did take the one correct dish away, as well as the one wrong dish, so we could eat together when the correct dish was brought out, which was a good touch.

I had baked salmon and Mr. A had a chicken dish. The flavours were good and my fish was nicely cooked. The mains don’t come with rice, so you might wish to get a side order, as we’ve done in the past, but we didn’t bother today. 6/10
By now we were running out of time (1 hour 30 mins to this point) so I asked if our final dessert course could be taken away. It couldn’t, but it was brought out as quickly as they could manage. A small dish of matcha pana cotta with mangoes and cream. It was refreshing and light. 5/10
We paid and left as rapidly as we could, and we did (just) make our train at Victoria. Before we left Edvinas told us he recognised we had not had a great experience today, and gave us both his business card and said he would look after us well next time. I’ve no idea what this would entail, but it was nonetheless good customer service to speak to us.

Overall I score Sake no Hana just 4/10 for this lunch (total bill inc service £130.40), but because of BJ the sushi chef I upgrade it to 7/10, which is more in line with the scores of my previous visits.  I do have a fondness for this place. I describe it as “pretty authentic” in that they serve dishes which are indeed eaten in Japan, and they have a good selection of sushi and sashimi, which covers all the different types and cuts of tuna. I am somewhat disappointed though that the staff I’ve interacted with are not Japanese, which is the same across London in many Japanese restaurants. I guess it’s too expensive and difficult to bring staff over from Japan, and the Japanese diaspora living in London probably don’t fancy working in a restaurant.  But I leave Sake no hana content that I’ve had a pretty authentic meal at a price which doesn’t leave me feeling ripped off.