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Kurobuta - Restaurant review: Great Scott! | The Independent
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To Kurobuta, then, a Japanese restaurant that has burgers, pork belly and interesting salads on the menu.
BBQ pork belly in steamed buns with spicy peanut soy (two palm-sized buns, £13) is all the bad stuff made good – fatty, chewy, pillowy and salty.
The sauce is a tad too treacly but the soft buns folded over the meat, with scorchio red onion and green chillis pinned into place, are ace.
The menu's daft headings – junk food Japan, something crunchy, significant others – give no guide as to what's big or small.
I could live without a grains and greens salad with honey soy ginger dressing that tastes like a pot from M&S (so, perfectly nice); while crispy-skin duck confit with watermelon, daikon pickle and – again – spicy peanut soy (£14) is actively nasty: the meat is grey, neither perky nor melty enough to warrant attention.
Kurobuta, restaurant review: Scott Hallsworth serves up taste-boggling
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Mr H learnt his craft the classic way: he joined Nobu London, the Michelin-winning Park Lane shrine to sashimi and tempura, as chef de partie in 2001.
The menu is divided into Snacks, Cold-Raw-Salad, Robata BBQ, Japanese Junk Food, Maki, Sushi, Something Crunchy (ie, tempura) and Significant Others.
While your eye takes in the usual procession of Japanese terms – miso, daikon, wasabi, ponzu, shiso, yuzu – you're intrigued by the Western ingredients.
Truth to tell, there was more tempura than crab here, but the batter was fabulously delicate, burnt with a soy and honey sauce.
Last to come was a favourite of the chef's: barbecue pork belly served in those steamed buns, that are like eating small clouds, served with spicy peanut soy sauce.
Fay Maschler reviews Kurobuta | London Evening Standard
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Ross Shonhan, who comes from Queensland, worked at Nobu in Dallas and later became head chef at London’s Zuma before opening Bone Daddies and then Flesh Buns.
The two chaps style Flesh Buns and Kurobuta as izakaya, a Japanese term sometimes equated (very loosely) with pub, but anyway defining a relatively casual establishment where eating facilitates drinking.
More Japanese pubs in London At the start, flamed edamame with sake, lemon, butter and Maldon salt lift these do-gooders into a new realm.
Tea-smoked lamb with smoky nasu (miso) and spicy Korean miso could never be accused of subtlety and tuna sashimi with truffle ponzu red onions and green chillies layered onto a disc of pizza dough seems to be done just because you can; there’s no gastronomic rationale.
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Restaurant review: Kurobuta, London W2 - Telegraph
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This was due in part to these being young and charming Australian women, rather than dandruffy, middle-aged men.
A vast space dominated by the theatrical open-plan kitchen at centre stage was airy and suffused with natural light, and the decor, in what is loosely styled after a Japanese pub (many tables are designed for sharing, with a smattering of stools), is minimalist with flourishes.
Partly thanks to the fervour of the staff’s recommendations, and partly also because the warm sake had done its work, we ordered massively from a menu split into sections with jolly headers such as “Something Crunchy” and “Junk Food Japan”.
The shrimps, gorgeously fried in a light batter, came with wiggly, spermy little rice cakes in a heavenly consummation of taste and textural contrast.
“That was fantastic,” said my friend as we polished off the last of the warm sake and headed to the pub opposite to gush about the meal over double Baileys on the rocks (all man, me), and she spoke the plain truth.
Kurobuta, London W2, restaurant review - Telegraph
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Broad beans in tempura, crispy duck, pork buns, beef fillet tataki… none of it was as expected, none of it tasted the same, a lot was delicious in an outrageous way, as if it had broken some rule or been wilfully vulgar.
The combination in its conception was a bit out of whack, since there was no way you could get the watermelon and the duck into your mouth at the same time with chopsticks.
The signature dish, the one that all the pleasant young things recommend, is barbecued pork belly in steamed buns (£13), sweet, squidgy things, almost like a thick scotch pancake, with meat inside.
Larger dishes are imaginative and inventive: think grilled duck breast with raspberry teriyaki sauce (£14.95) This modern, light-filled restaurant treats its lunchtime customers to generous bento boxes, featuring prawn katsu and vegetable gyoza (£7.95), while in the evening small sharing dishes are the way to go.
Especially good are the satsuma-age, fried fishcakes (£4.75), and kakuni pork belly (£5.85) After a spread of traditional tea-house specialities such as pork dumplings (£3.25) and chicken-stuffed steamed buns (£3.95), one could head home from this buzzy Japanese perfectly sated.
Restaurant review: Kurobuta | Life and style | The Guardian
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It is huge flavours and grilling and stickiness and miso; lots of miso, the umami-flavoured paste made from fermented soya beans, salt, fungi and a few other things besides which comes in forms many and various from light and soft to dark and heavy and fruity (and which makes you want to drink more).
It belongs to Australian Scott Hallsworth, who started at Nobu in London, where he rose to be head chef before heading back to his native Australia to work up his repertoire of big, sticky miso and chilli flavours.
I want to rave about the food, because that combination of sugar and salt and umami and smoke – punched through with Korean high notes of kimchi (chilli-fermented cabbage) and their famous garlicky chilli sauce the colour of fresh arterial blood – is insanely delicious.
■ For more familiar Japanese food try The Shiori, not far away from Kurobuta on Moscow Road.
Go for rice with simmered eel and sansho, red bean miso soup with ao-nori, and some of the most lovingly prepared raw fish you’ll find anywhere in London (theshiori.com).