The Best Japanese Food in London

A 13-seat counter in Soho where the chef, Angelo Sato, runs a tasting menu shaped by Japanese technique and a European upbringing. The shokupan bread course arrives like a small ceremony, with accompaniments that change what you thought bread service could be. Sake pairings are the move. Two Michelin stars followed a pivot from yakitori skewers to this format, and the room is intimate enough that the kitchen's precision is hard to miss.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
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The counter is a single slab of hinoki cypress wood, which sets the tone nicely. This is an intimate omakase sushi room, tucked on the first floor of 45 Park Lane and reached by escort from the lobby, as if you're being let in on something. Around 18 pieces move through the meal, nigiri built on Yamagata rice alongside dishes like steamed abalone. It holds a Michelin star, and the room's kumiko panels and bamboo make the occasion feel entirely deliberate.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

A discreet Mayfair entrance opens into a fine dining room shaped by the cuisine of Kyoto, though other regions of Japan get their say too. Scottish langoustine cured in ginjo sake is the kind of move that explains the Michelin star: British produce treated with Japanese precision, never forced into a concept but quietly made better by it. The room reads special occasion, the kind where people actually put their phones away.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Counter seats facing the open kitchen are the ones to angle for at this Soho izakaya, where the vibe tips firmly toward cold beer and loosened collars after dark. The team behind Roji opened it recently, and the robata grill and deep-fryer do most of the talking: fried chicken, duck udon, red shrimp off the coals. Small, lively, and not the place for a quiet conversation.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
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The counter is 200-year-old cypress wood, which sets the tone immediately. This nine-seat Mayfair omakase room runs two sittings a night, one menu, no substitutions, and a level of precision that borders on the ceremonial. Mitsuhiro Araki's long-time deputy now runs the kitchen, carrying forward standards that leave no margin for improvisation. A special-occasion place by design, with prices to match. The 50 Discovery named it among their picks.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A former Grade II-listed bank in Marylebone, ceilings and all, converted into a sleek contemporary Japanese restaurant with a cocktail bar and an open kitchen where the robata grill gets a workout. The menu runs from sashimi and nigiri through to caramelised black cod, with Wagyu cuts available for anyone who feels like making an occasion of it. The room does a lot of the heavy lifting.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The robata charcoal grill is the anchor of this Japanese restaurant sitting above the Japan House cultural centre on Kensington High Street. Counter seats face an open kitchen where skewers of chicken thigh and miso pork belly take their turn over the coals alongside an extensive sushi selection. At lunch, the hakozen box covers most bases neatly. The room is stylish and reliably buzzing, which for Kensington is saying something.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tajima Wagyu over binchotan charcoal, seasoned with nothing but salt and pepper, is essentially the whole menu at this Japanese steakhouse tucked into Mayfair. The cuts are serious enough that the restraint feels earned rather than fussy. The room has the feel of a very composed private living room, which either puts you at ease or makes you wonder if you've wandered into the wrong flat.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The Swiss pine paneling makes this compact Notting Hill sushi bar feel uncannily like a ski chalet, which is either disorienting or charming depending on your mood. Two six-person counters run the room, one facing the kitchen, one facing the street. Order nigiri by the piece or let the chef decide. The seafood is the point, including tuna brought in from Spain, and the wine list skews toward bottles priced for people who don't ask about bottles.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A cocktail bar greets you at street level before you descend into the restaurant proper, where teppanyaki and sushi counters ring the room. This is a full-service Japanese dining room in the heart of St. James's, the kind of neighborhood that expects white tablecloths and gets them. The sake list runs deep, the à la carte covers serious ground, and nasu dengaku is the sleeper dish worth ordering.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The sixth floor of the old War Office building, with London's rooftops spread out below and a terrace that fills up fast once the sun appears. This is a contemporary Japanese restaurant from chef Endo Kazutoshi, the menu roving from delicate nigiri to prime cuts off the robata grill. The room is elegant in the way that only a converted Edwardian government building can be, which is to say: extremely.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A vast Japanese restaurant on Wardour Street built around live-fire cooking, with reclaimed wood, an open kitchen, a vinyl-lined counter, and a curved staircase leading down to a sushi counter and listening room below. The menu leans on prime British ingredients with Japanese inflection, and the skewers are the main event. Share everything, and resist the urge to over-order, which is advice this room will have to give you twice.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The concept is katei ryōri, Japanese home-style family cooking, which is a quietly subversive thing to hang a slick Mayfair dining room on. Celebrity chef Endo Kazutoshi designed the menus, which move between sharing plates, a sushi counter, and Japanese beef over charcoal. One room runs moody and clubby, the other brighter. The Nipperkin cocktail bar is the right place to start or finish, which in Mayfair is half the battle.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The coral reef ceiling by Damien Hirst sets the tone before you've ordered anything: this is Mayfair doing Asian-inspired food and cocktails with a straight face and a very large budget. The room is all bronzed mermaids and mirrored walls, and the crowd dresses accordingly. The bar program is serious despite the spectacle, and the kitchen sends out sushi and robata to tables full of people who booked weeks out.

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3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Nigiri arrives one piece at a time, and the room stays quiet enough that you notice. This is an intimate omakase counter in Merton run by a husband-and-wife team, moving through small otsumami bites before the sushi becomes the whole point. Chutoro, otoro, hamachi, scallop, each one handled with a precision that makes the format feel less like a trend and more like an argument. Sake pairings are on offer if you need convincing.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Japanese restaurant tucked inside a townhouse hotel on Sloane Street, where lacquered furniture and framed prints do a quiet job of setting the scene. The menu runs wider than you might expect, from nigiri à la carte to a full omakase at the counter, and the sake list is taken seriously. It is a calmer room than most of Belgravia's dining options, which is either a selling point or a warning, depending on your mood.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Eero Saarinen's old US Embassy building is now a Rosewood hotel, and the bones of that mid-century modernist space give this sushi restaurant an unlikely grandeur. Masayoshi Takayama, the name behind New York's Masa, runs the show. Sit at the seven-seat counter for omakase or order from the broader Japanese menu at a table. The ingredients lean toward the luxurious end of the spectrum, which the room quietly prepares you for.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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