To the provincial eye, London seems excessively stocked with Japanese restaurants; what is it about Londoners and Japanese food? At least in the centre, there seems to be a Japanese restaurant on every street. No doubt there are some gems (I can vouch for Café Japan in Golders Green) as well as some establishments better left untried, but Roka is clearly one of the capital’s most special. It comes in two flavours, Charlotte St and Canary Wharf; I can only vouch for Charlotte St, having been there twice now. Apart from sheer high quality, what makes Roka different from the average Japanese restaurant is the Robata grill. In Charlotte St, the grill dominates the room, and if you get a (non-reservable) seat at the bar, and prevent your drinks from falling over on the not quite flat, very deliberately rustic wood finish, you will get a great view of the chefs at work – at the price of the occasional odd smell or puff of smoke coming your way.
A study of the menu suggested that a lot of the things we most wanted to try were not on the tasting menu, so we set about assembling our own bit-by-bit, for slightly less money. Salad first: Sake No Miso Zake Salada is a miso cured salmon with a konbu daikon (kelp prepared with Japanese radish) and nama nori (a variety of the edible seaweed used to wrap sushi). The salmon is beautifully cured; apparently the dish has sweet vinegar in it, but there is no acid edge. The dish feels like Japanese gravadlax. Kaiso Salada is also from the salad menu; a mix of seaweed, cucumber, gem lettuce off the Robata, umeboshi (pickled plum) served with a shiso (or perilla, a minty, slightly soapy tasting herb) dressing. The saline quality of the seaweed cheated my palate into thinking small pieces of marinated melon were seafood.
The first of our Robata grill dishes was Ko Nasa, eggplant in mirin (sweet rice wine), ginger and soy. As well as the nutty flavour of slightly burnt eggplant, the dish has some chilli supplying heat. Then we had the lovely Kobuta No Ribs Yawaraka Nikowi, baby back ribs with a honey glaze, all sprinkled with cashew nuts and spring onions. Gin Tara No Saikyo-Yaki - black cod marinated in yuzu miso - had a citric edge that cuts against the cod and the flavour of burnt, black sesame. Atsuage No Mugi Miso-Yaki is flame-grilled tofu. I’m used to tofu as a soft, quickly disintegrating substance, but this is a solid log, crisp on the outside, with the rubbery texture of preserved scallops. However, it is no less bland than normal tofu, the strong flavour of the dish coming from ginger and pepper.
For dessert, we shared a dish of iced coffee and black sesame crumble, a rather lovely meeting of east and west, made up of a coffee parfait, a savoury sesame crumble – looking like instant coffee granules – yamazaki whisky balls, and mandarin. The meeting of mandarin and sesame is a particularly lovely combination, with a shiso leaf on the side offering bitter, soapy contrast.
Sake is a particular attraction for us, and Roka has one of the most interesting sake lists we’ve found in London (Nobu is also very good). These sakes - a mix of guest and regulars – are among the most interesting I’ve ever had.
Daishinsyu “Teppai” Junmai Daiginjo Muroka
Very much like fruit salad on the nose, but with herby notes I associated with coriander; it varied through the evening from being especially pear to melon-like. By the end of the evening, the herby notes had moved on to be replaced by a slightly spicy, yeasty quality. This sake went particularly well with the salmon.
All Koji 2009
A very dark amber colour, clearly a different beast from the Teppai, both savoury and sweet on the palate. It has an interesting mouthfeel, going heavy – light – heavy again as it moves across the palate. There are fruit notes, but they are subservient to the toasty yeastiness. By the end of the evening, it is like marmalade with black beans.
Nanbubjin “Oke No Tami”
Pale and comparatively light, but nonetheless complex, the bouquet offers milk, cod liver oil and a clarifying minty note that becomes more eucalyptus-like as the evening progresses, before disappearing altogether, ending the evening tasting of sesame.
