Kouzu

Exactly six months ago I came across Kouzu for the first time, Kouzu is a high end Japanese restaurant based in Belgravia with a little French twist. I remembered I had a great time and I found that the food was close to perfection.
Recently I went for dinner at Kouzu with some other bloggers to discover their new chef’s table (a private dining room for 7 people). We started the evening with an apéritif on the ground floor at the bar, then we went through the kitchen to the private dining room on the lower ground floor of the restaurant (there is also a private access from outside the restaurant to this room too).Randomly I managed to get what I think was the the best seat as I was facing the kitchen entrance. On this special occasion, Head Chef Kyoichi Kai had prepared for us a 10 course menu.
The meal started for me with a special dish — a salmon sashimi with julienne apple and cucumber which was not on the menu (as the one planned was a crab tartar and I am allergic to crab). The salmon sashimi have been made with perfect fresh pieces of salmon, that were marinated in chilli oil and yuzu soy. It was the most delicate and tasty sashimi I’ve had so far in London. The second dish was pan fried foie gras. Compared to my previous visit at Kouzu they’ve added a bed of sweet potato and some blue cheese on top. I really liked the combination of sweet potato, mango coulis, teriyaki sauce and foie gras. It was a delight but I don’t think the blue cheese was necessary on this dish as it hid the foie gras’ flavour.
Smoked chilli prawns was our third dish, I thought it was good but nothing exceptional. We all didn’t think the dish had a strong enough chilli flavour, the only taste we got was from the smokiness of the prawn. The fourth and fifth dishes were sashimis made from perfectly sliced premium meat and seafood. We had the oriental beef fillet tataki and the yellowtail truffle. The beef was lightly seared and flavoured with an oriental sauce and topped with shiso leaves, daikon cress and horseradish. Yellowtail with truffle dressing was really delicious, I enjoyed the marinated yellowtail in yuzu kosho topped with grapefruit. The avocado on top added a bit of creaminess to the dish. Both dishes were very well executed. The seaweed salad was a quite unusual but very interesting dish. I liked it, it was well seasoned.
After this dish the Head Chef Kyoichi Kai came in the room to introduce and explain the last dish on the meal made with Japanese Wagyu beef before they started to cook it.
After the explanation we had two course before this ultimate dish.
The chef gave us a selection of sashimi and nigiri sushi, we had seabass and tuna sashimi and three different nigiri: seared tuna, salmon and scallops. All delicious !
The black cod dish was as I remembered, a perfectly balanced dish with moreish soft and flakey cod, I could eat the whole fish like that, not only a fillet! And finally came the most luxurious dish of the night, a rib loin steak of Wagyu beef. It was perfectly cooked and so rich in taste I didn’t want to waste it by adding the sauce (even if I tried it on a small piece). Instead I ate my mushroom and asparagus with the ponzu sauce.
After 9 courses, we had the landscape dessert which was a mix of 6 different flavours: raspberry, mango, yuzu, orange, strawberry and the trend matcha green tea. It was ok, very refreshing after the massive dinner we just had but as usual I am not a sweet person.
Overall I had another amazing time, my first visit was a great experience but it was nothing compared to this dinner in the basement with a privileged view of the kitchen. I wasn’t overly wow’ed watching the chef cooking in front of us but that’s because I’ve worked in the hospitality industry before and have seen chefs at work all the time. However I felt a bit special sitting there, so I think this private dining room will be very busy. Kouzu already offers top quality seafood and meat and have attentive waiters, so with this room they have a successful combination.

Exclusive private dining modern Japanese style
Kouzu is a modern Japanese restaurant in Belgravia, near Victoria train station. London is full of Japanese restaurants that have been engineered to make Japanese cuisine more suitable and approachable to the western palate, such as Zuma and Nobu. And judging from the menu at Kouzu, it is following more or less the same style and format, with head chef Kyoichi Kai who has a wealth of experience at Zuma and Kyubi. The latest offering from Kouzu is its chef’s table which seats up to seven guests and has a window view of the kitchen, the privilege of dining at the chef’s table is you get to eat a special menu that is exclusive to the chef’s table dining room only, a 10 course tasting menu that is cooked in front of your very eyes and deliverd by Kyoichi with a dedicated waiter at your service.
Foie gras with blue cheese and teriyaki sauce is a very West meets East fusion dish, the foie gras itself was smooth and not too earthy and was finely seasoned by the salty blue cheese, but I think the sweetness of the teriyaki isn’t the best combination as I would prefer something lighter to offset the robust flavours. Yellowtail with truffle was a refreshing dish with a hint of sharpness from the grapefruit, the fish was oily and settled with an earthy undertone followed by some bitter and grassy notes from the micro herbs, a really well contrasted dish with bags of flavours.
I had already got a good idea of what Kouzu is capable of in delivering high level sushi, and this time was no different, some very impressive and luxurious fatty tuna sashimi followed by some delightful salmon nigiri sushi, the wasabi and soy sauces were not necessary at all as the sushi were already seasoned brilliantly by head sushi chef Yamaguchi Nobuyuki, just as how eating proper sushi should be. The last savoury course of the day was a very fine cut of wagyu beef, a very fatty piece of rib loin steak that visually looked so appealing with multi layers of fatty tissues spreading evenly through the meat. It was really a special plate of beef with an explosive melt in your mouth sensation, rich and tender, truly stunning.
There is no question about the cooking quality from the Kouzu’s team, some very high level dishes with good use of prime ingredients. For me the small issues are some of the heavily flavoured dishes with countless of garnishes, the cooking principle in fine Japanese cuisine is all about using fresh and prime ingredients and letting them shine, but some of the evening dishes, the main element on the plate are sometime overshadowed by the supporting ingredients, sometimes is all about less is more. I understand that the balance is hard to get it right especially for a modern fusion restaurant but Kouzu has a very talented and capable team and I am sure head chef Kyoichi can take Kouzu to a new high in the near future.
*I dined as a guest of Kouzu

Kouzu’s menu is impressive and rare in that there’s nothing on it I didn’t want to order. From the starters we had two new stream sashimi dishes — Yellowtail with Truffle Dressing — sliced yellow tail, shiso, myoga, ginger, spring onion, ponzu truffle dressing (£15.00) and the Beef Fillet Tataki — charcoal grilled fillet, oriental sauce with julienne salad (£17.50).
Both of these, like pretty much everything we ordered had a perfect balance of flavours and textures. Super fresh Yellowtail with a delicate salad and dressing, with just enough truffle to boost flavour without overpowering the dish. The beef was full of flavour and each slice had a lovely chargrilled crust around it’s rare centre and the salad was strong enough to compete with the meat and the rich sauce — I could happily eat it all day long.
The sushi menu is focused around Sashimi and Nigiri with a few classic and modern rolls thrown in for good measure. We ordered the beautiful Spicy Tuna Roll — tuna, red onion, fresh chilli ichimi pepper, rice cracker spicy mayonnaise and sesame seeds (£11.00) which had a generous amount of tuna in the middle with a crunch on the outside and just enough heat. Again, the balance was perfect.