Tracking down great-quality Japanese cooking at a price that won’t make you weep is very hard – until now, that is
Sushi Atelier, 114 Great Portland Street, London W1W 6PH (020 7636 4455). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £70-£110
Good restaurants make us think better of ourselves. They create a mood and then, by granting us a seat, co-opt us into it. Sushi Atelier, on London’s Great Portland Street, makes me feel like a better person. It makes me feel refined and precise, organised and knowing. In reality, perched on one of their stools at their blond-wood counter, I am still the shambolic bundle of appetites and desires I have always been. I am still all sag and so much muffin top I’m practically the whole cake counter of a branch of Costa. But here, I feel taut and focussed. It’s an achievement for a restaurant flogging raw fish and rice.
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