First there was Wagamama, then Busaba Ethai, then Hakkasan, then Yauatcha, and then the end of 2007 brought us sake no hana. Will the Alan Yau juggernaut ever stop? (Well, I know it hasn’t as his latest, Cha Cha Moon, recently opened in London! Not to worry, this one’s next on my list. Ha ha)

We all know he has had great success with cheap Japanese and Thai and sophisticated Chinese but what about sophisticated Japanese?
Taking advantage of a toptable offer (50% off food) my brother and I decided to check out how Alan Yau could deliver. Sadly we were grossly disappointed.

They say that first impressions are everything and sorry to say but sake no hana’s first impression on me was not great. We arrived in a grand foyer and were directed to take an escalator up to the restaurant located on the first floor. Expecting to be seated straight away we were instead directed to the bar for an inordinately long time considering the fact that the restaurant was barely full. I know the tactic of a lot of restaurants these days to get you to sit at the bar first but for over 20 minutes. Ridiculous.

Finally we were seated and things went along okay for a while. Thankfully we were sat at the normal tables though a little bit of me was slightly disappointed that we weren’t sitting on the faux tatami mats (actually sunken tables to imitate sitting on tatami mats with less of the discomfort.) The menu of sake no hana is split into ten sections including sushi, soup, noodle, appetisers, sashimi, grilled, tempura and fried. This I read is an improvement on the original menu from when the restaurant first opened upon which everything was lumped together so that appetisers sat next to main meals and sushi so you couldn’t tell just exactly how much you were ordering.

The menu was mostly decipherable though contained some items written in romaji (Japanese language written in the latin alphabet) so for example, grilled onigiri and unagi you might be interested to know is rice and eel (to put it simply) so if you’re keen to know exactly all the offerings on the menu it may be a good idea to brush up on some common Japanese dishes. But in the main the menu is in English. We decided on a range of dishes covering a few of the cooking styles including mixed seasonal tempura, fig tempura with yuzu salt, sesame aubergine (appetiser), the aforementioned grilled onigiri and unagi, and braised pork ribs. At full price these five dishes cost £53 which to me was staggering. Admittedly we were quite full at the end of the meal but quality and taste-wise there was nothing special or spectacular for that price. Admittedly the fig tempura was quite tasty and I would definitely recommend the sesame aubergine but the rest of the dishes? I’ve had equal quality or better at other Japanese restaurants.

So, that’s the food. Back briefly to the service. I found the service a bit slow and laboured. They seemed to employ the multi-tasking approach to service with one person taking your order, another bring the food from the kitchen and then another taking it from that person and placing it on your table. Excessive much? If it had been efficient and unnoticeable fair enough but I could see that there was constant confusion about which dishes belonged at which table. Further, tap water was given very sparingly. Once at the beginning of the meal it was delivered to us in minute glasses and they weren’t refilled until we asked for more. Paying took at least another half an hour with half that time spent waiting for the bill and the rest of the time waiting for someone to come to take our payment. Ridiculous. Not the first time I’ve used this word in this entry! Did I also mention it was a 13% service charge – at least they only charged it on the reduced price and not the pre-discount price.

Worse than all of this I couldn’t even take photos! Though I did manage to sneak one in quickly during the time they sat us at the bar. Ha – take that!

If I had one word for our experience tonight I would say “disappointing”. There’s no doubt the restaurant looks good – but looks aren’t very filling I’m afraid! I was expecting so much more from this Alan Yau product. Mainly in the food and the service. I guess it was worth going at least once to tick it off my to do list!