Engawa

Engawa | London Eater

Engawa’s closest comparison is probably 511 in Tokyo – offering a kaiseki themed entirely around Kobe Beef.

The name 511 is derived from the grade of beef they offer over there, as in A511, a measure of the quality and density of marbling.

They also provided a tall cup of kobe beef stock, to enable a chazuke, or simply rice in hot water.

Their dinner menus are three tasters of increasing prices (£60/£80/£100) and number of courses (3/5/8) and more focused around their prized kobe beef, than the lunch options.

The ‘soup’ is made from Kobe beef stock & dashi and appears to be thickened.

UMU Restaurant Review: Perfect Japanese Lunch - Food ...

Shokado bento: this option included sashimi, a cooked protein, cured seafood and a wagyu dish.

This box is priced at £35 if you chose the grilled fish or poultry option, and £45 with wagyu beef.

Dessert: option of several ice cream flavours (green tea, caramel, chocolate yuzu) or sorbets, including rhubarb.

I am usually a chocolate girl and I liked the combo a lot, but the financier blew me away despite being made with a mystery green plant that we could not really identify by its name.

I would be happy to eat mugwork financiers any season In sum: very good value and an amazing lunch option in Mayfair.

Engawa | Soho, Fitzrovia, Covent Garden | Restaurant Reviews | Hot ...

Engawa: Undoubtedly delicious | London Evening Standard

The more familiar Wagyu beef, on the other hand, means simply Japanese cattle — and it’s not the same thing at all, as a notorious 2012 article in Forbes (“Food’s Biggest Scam: the Great Kobe Beef Lie”) revealed.

A beautifully presented nine-section box of sashimi was an absolute treat in every way, including visually, each little dish served in a tiny, pretty ceramic bowl of its own, an extravagant labour of careful preparation, the fish including squid, scallop, sea bass, tuna and salmon, the beef prepared in several different ways — raw, seared and cooked — with surprisingly strong herby and citrussy tastes added throughout, as well as a good deal of sweetness.

Kobe beef is a truly decadent taste like caviar or foie gras: it’s not just very tender, as other beef can be, it actually, quite perceptibly, melts away in the mouth as you eat, like no other meat I’ve tasted.

More courses followed: tuna and sea-bass sushi, plus a Kobe beef maki roll, then beef chazuke (slow cooked beef on rice with a little jar of beef dashi stock to pour over) and ramen noodles with the stock, with sesame seeds and green chopped herbs.

Going even simpler, Kobe beef gyu don (£20) is a cheaper cut, sliced fine and cooked on the teppan griddle, served on rice, with a beaker of beef stock to turn the dish into chazuke as you go on — a comparatively plain and wholly satisfying meal in itself, still with that unique Kobe beef melt in the mouth.

Engawa | Restaurants in Soho, London

Soho’s Ham Yard is an airy bolthole, and tucked in it is Engawa, a tiny, meticulously designed restaurant that specialises in wagyu beef from Kobe – specifically the Tajima-gyu breed – and attractive sushi and sashimi platters.

A cup of cold soba noodles, dotted with edamame and swimming in a decent miso broth was a fine appetizer, while a little mound of toro (fatty bluefin tuna), seared wagyu and miso jelly, elaborately served on a gargantuan block of ice was a proper flavour bomb.

Prettier still was the giant bento box of sashimi, tempura scallions and other veggie bits, the fish (candystriped fatty tuna, pink-blushed yellowtail, more lurid toro and a couple of chunks of soy-sticky eel among it all) almost hummingly fresh and exceptionally clean tasting.

Finally, the defacto main of wagyu, cooked nearly rare but sizzling slowly into medium territory on a hot rock: a buttery, heavily marbled little platter of beefy goodness.

Still, for serene ’n’ clean Japanese fare in a lovely corner of Soho, Engawa ticks all the (bento) boxes.