There are plenty of ways to eat sushi in London. If you want a couple of takeaway rolls to eat at your office, you can do that. If you want a casual catch-up over temaki that won’t break the bank, there are places for that too. Hell, if you want to buy a prawn tempura roll in a plastic container at Waitrose, you can do that too. And of course, you can also spend hundreds eating an omakase meal at one of the city’s best sushi spots. These are the seven best omakase experiences in London worth your time and money.
THE SPOTS
Ring a bell, be invited in by a polite server, and have one of the best sushi experiences in London. Roji, a 10-seater omakase spot in Mayfair, is the kind of special place that comes to mind when we get the inevitable “what is your favourite restaurant in London?” question. The intimate setup, with wooden wrap-around counter seating, gives you a front-row seat to the open kitchen. Description of each course, from the oyster limushi to the eight rounds of nigiri, only adds to the anticipation, especially when you see the wide-eyed astonishment of people served before you. The cost is also pretty serious at £170, but it feels like a fair price to pay for a meal so memorable.
Endo at the Rotunda isn’t so much a once in a while restaurant as it is a once in a lifetime one. It’s a 16-seater omakase bar, eight floors up opposite Westfield shopping centre in White City, serving sushi that will make you regret spending money on anything else for the rest of your life. Less of a restaurant and more of an interactive eating experience, everything here is led by Endo—the headline act and head chef—while his backing band expertly prep and chat, before handing you an eye-twitch-inducing piece of six-day-aged fatty tuna. Like many once in a lifetime experiences, this one costs—£225 a head to be precise—but sometimes worth shouldn’t come into it. You just need to know that it's absolutely worthwhile.
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There are plenty of omakase experiences in London and they’re almost always a special experience, but there’s something about Kurisu Omakase that feels a little different. The unique 18-course sushi experience mixes Japanese cooking with Thai-Colombian heritage, genuine brilliance, and inimitable made-in-Brixton charm. There are only eight seats in the intimate restaurant, and you’ll find yourself gawping at flame-torched pieces of fish, losing words over truffle and caviar-topped otoro, and genuinely belly laughing at the stories you’re told. £145 is a lot to pay, but this feels like value for money.
Sushi Tetsu is not an easy restaurant to get into. Reservations at this discrete seven-seater counter restaurant in Clerkenwell can only be made by emailing to receive menu details and booking instructions. There is one sitting a day, Wednesday to Friday, and two on Saturdays, and the full ‘Sushi Tetsu Experience’ will set you back over £150. However it is, unquestionably, worth it. There’s a very good chance that after tossing back a perfectly marbled, luscious piece of tuna nigiri that you won’t ever want to eat tuna again unless it’s this good. The experience itself is a traditional, respectful affair and makes for a meal you won’t forget.
It’s important to pick the right person for dinner at this warm and perfectly peaceful restaurant in Waterloo. It needs to be someone you want to spend two and a half hours with and just as importantly, someone whose sense of wonder will also be triggered by stellar sashimi arriving on a theatrical glass platter and watching the head chef in the open kitchen. Hannah Japanese is a restaurant where every steamed urchin, charcoal-grilled wagyu beef, and caviar-adorned turnip is delivered with a quiet, old-school confidence. Expect creative presentation and Japanese pottery you’ll fleetingly consider stealing, but at its core the omakase experience is about exceptional fresh produce. Prices start at £105, with an additional £75 for the specialist sake pairing, so it most definitely falls into the special occasion bracket. But it’s perfect for big-ticket date nights or a memorable evening with someone who also gets a little teary-eyed over wagyu.
The omakase experience at Yashin Sushi will haunt you, in the best way possible. Every time a sushi craving strikes, we get flashbacks of the genius, slightly sweet ponzu jelly on top of meltingly soft toro, the life-affirming zest factor of the orange soy that comes with the yellowtail, and the profound urge to weaponise our chopsticks to secure the last piece of best-in-class sashimi. It’s a glamorous counter seating experience that also operates as an ingredient trust fall. Don’t question the dash of nutty parmesan on the umami tuna or the lip-smacking green chilli sauce on your Scottish salmon, just go with it. The omakase options start at £35 but really you want to come here in the evening, sit at the sleek wooden counter, and spend some quality time with a date or best friend, and some of the most delightfully creative sushi in London.
Our favourite kind of omakase experience is one where you’re not told off for subtly scrolling through TikTok between courses. And Cubé, a laid-back spot on Blenheim Street, is the kind of easygoing place where you can do just that. Quietly chat away with your date while the team of chefs casually skin a 13kg whole trout behind the counter, or read a book as you wait for the squid nigiri to be placed in front of you. The point is this place is serving excellent sushi, in an understated way. Plus, they have an incredible £68 lunch omakase with 10 pieces of top-tier nigiri, a handroll, and a dessert, which is hard to come by in London.
