“This is just too hard to translate.” It’s not a phrase you would hope to hear too often from somebody you were paying a sizable fee to be your fixer and tour guide. But, these were words, intoned in a manner both docile and oddly patrician, that I heard numerous times while in Tokyo a few years back from my supposed man-on-the-ground, Kenji. 

Kenji stammered, looked at the floor, shook his head gravely and, after a while, thoroughly annoyed me with his repeated refusals to answer my questions about how I should greet restaurant managers in a formal manner, and how I could gain moral equipoise into what, to my Western eyes, was the worryingly infantilised world of Japanese video gaming culture. Most frustratingly, Kenji was unhelpfully taciturn when I asked him how I could improve my table manners in Japanese restaurants.  

After the first couple of days in his company, I realised there was a Trojan horse, stuffed with pejoratives, attempting to force its way through Kenji’s mouth. But, like the most revered of Yakuza henchman, he held firm, leaving me to deduce for myself why he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, respond to my requests. 

It was, of course, that he believed, as so many Japanese citizens do, that Westerners are simply not capable, from a bodily or spiritual perspective, of understanding, let alone complying with, Japanese notions of etiquette and good taste. And, who knows, Kenji may be partially right. 

I can’t stand Hello Kitty; I’ve found everything I’ve read by Haruki Murakami, except for Norwegian Wood, to be ponderous; and I have struggled to heed the advice imparted in Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit book, which contains, among other bromides, lines such as these: ‘Imagine your body spreading rapidly all over the world like thin tissue. Imagine cutting out one part of the tissue’.

After spending two-and-a-half hours inside Sushi Kanesaka, a nine-cover restaurant tucked away in a windowless room the size of a sumo wrestler’s bedspread on the second floor of the 45 Park Lane hotel, I suspect I still have table manners to make Japanese gourmets cringe. 

Yet, I also don’t really care. Because even chubby fingered, clumsy, uncouth Westerners like myself can fall in love with the pinnacles of Japanese cuisine. And you can too – if you can stomach the prices.

With the nine seats running in front of the kitchen prep area, the pale woods, intensely bright lighting, and proximity to the trio of chefs (there may have been more behind the scenes), combine to induce a feeling of having ascended from this earthly existence. 

Even the hot towels, presented at strategic points during the meal, added to the feeling that, for a few hours at least, we had left Park Lane completely and were in a capsule restaurant floating somewhere above Mount Fuji. 

While sparkling sake was poured, a leather placemat was placed discreetly underneath my phone and my chopsticks were swapped around due to my waitress noticing, seemingly before I’d even sat down, that I am left-handed. Acts that would seem forelock-tuggingly obsequious in most five-star restaurants, here, flying high above Japan, feel attentive and calming. 

The food served is whatever the chef – this evening it is Kanesake-san himself, who flits between his restaurants in Japan and this, his first, London outpost – feels like cooking. And what Kanesake-san feels like cooking tonight is miniature portions of exquisite poise and achievement.

I don’t have the word count to list all 18 of the dishes consumed, but, in no particular order, I’m compelled to tell you about the chawanmushi; a kind of umami-accented egg custard, served in a tiny cup, laced with a silky fish stock. Then there was the pied and speckled lobster, presented to us to the kind of coos usually reserved for kittens. This was (partially) equalled by a travel pillow-sized parcel of tempura-wrapped loveliness; banishing every battered nightmare you’ve ever previously experienced in your life. And, if you grew up in Britain in the 1980s, as I did, that’s something of an oneiric exorcism. 

Then there was the yariika (squid); its pearly, glossy sheen adorned with a rudely indulgent flat cap of beluga caviar. And the fillet of seared, pitch-perfect kobe beef served with just a teasing lick of wasabi on the side.

It was nigh on impossible to pick a favourite. But, if you were to threaten me with a botulinum-laced chopstick, then I’d plump for the eel hand roll, sliced and arranged onto a sheet of seaweed and wrapped like a spring roll. It takes a Japanese chef to definitively showcase eel, a native fish we export almost in its entirety, to its full potential; a soft, delicate meat, just dense enough but with a coquettishly sweet back note that reminded me of Dover sole when it hasn’t been overly buttered and trussed up. 

The Japanese don’t just enjoy fish in all its wonderful forms. They ritualise it, revere it, then eat it. For the Japanese piscine lover, to be confronted with a British fish finger is akin to being served a dead pigeon on a dustbin lid. 

And, yes, the tasting menu costs £420 per person before drinks. You may feel that’s too much. And I don’t blame you. But what you get for that money is, without exaggeration, an experience within this dining capsule that feels like flying first class to Osaka for the evening and returning without experiencing jetlag, or having to use an airplane toilet. 

As I was writing this review, an e-mail dropped into my inbox informing me that Sushi Kanesaka had just been awarded its first Michelin star. Somehow, I can’t imagine the worried, benign-but-furiously-energised face of Kanesaka-san spraying champagne, Jenson Button-style, all over his kitchen. 

I picture him simply nodding, smiling wanly then putting his head, shorn of all hair, back towards the honed and whetted blade of his knife to dissect some more tuna. Humility is key in Kanesaka-san’s culture. Whereas, in mine, I can lavish praise to the point of florid embarrassment. 

I don’t intend to fluster Kanesaka-san. Michelin has probably done that already. But if it wasn’t for him, London would still be lacking its first bona fide, toe-to-toe-with-Tokyo, retina-swelling, billet-doux-worthy, standing-ovation-level magnificent Japanese eating experience. 

Not only did the perfect rise-and-fall of every course, coalescing so gently into each other, make me remember every bite of this long, long meal. It also helped me to forget about the hundreds of bad ones I’ve had over the years in London hotels. Only the finest diners on the planet can do that. And this is one of those.

45 Park Lane, W1, dorchestercollection.com

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