Sosharu: restaurant review | Jay Rayner

Sosharu bills itself as a relaxed bar, but the cooking is so precise and poised that it deserves your full attention

Sosharu, 64 Turnmill Street, London EC1 (020 3805 2304). Meal for two including drinks and service: £100 - £140

With Jason Atherton’s new restaurant Sosharu I could easily have got hung up on definitions. For a start it describes itself as an izakaya. In Japan an izakaya is a kind of gastro pub; an after-work kick-back of a place for the loosening of ties and the drowning of sorrows. Sosharu is far too poised and self-conscious and expensive – let’s get the “E” word out of the way early – to be one of those. It is an izakaya in the way the Savoy is somewhere to sleep for the night, or Agent Provocateur is a place to buy your pants.

You really couldn’t make this food at home. Or if you could do so, you should immediately open your own restaurant