Nama, Liverpool

If you visited a restaurant in a hideous soulless shopping mall, were told half the menu was unavailable and was forced to order the other half using a criminally un- user-friendly app seemingly designed specifically to be as upsetting as possible, well, you'd be forgiven for not having a very good time.

All these things are true about Nama, a new venture in the GPO food hall in Liverpool, which at first glance appears to have almost nothing going for it at all. If I was in the mood for elevated Japanese cuisine then I'd quite like a seat at a sushi bar in a quiet wood-panelled room, not an echoey corner of a space shared with people snaffling chicken burgers and milkshakes. I'd want to order my food from a friendly and capable member of staff, not a disastrously buggy app which managed to lose my entire order three times as soon as it got to the payment stage. And I'd expect a restaurant giving itself the description "tuna and wagyu" to have at least some wagyu on offer - I mean, come on.

And yet! And yet. Despite everything, despite all of this, Nama turned out to be one of the most exciting and memorable meals I've been privileged enough to enjoy in the last twelve months. It succeeds not because of its location, or the atmosphere, and certainly not that bloody app, but because the food they're making is astonishingly, blindingly good and at prices that make you wonder how on earth they're turning a profit.

These are Sicilian red prawns, plump and deliriously sweet little things, dressed in a lime & ginger ponzu and assisted by a kick of jalapeno. Finished with a few drops of lime oil and topped with wasabi - real wasabi, shaved fresh off the root - this was a sophisticated and classy dish combining the finest European ingredients with top Japanese cheffy skill. They cost £9, and were worth at least three times that. After finishing them off, we ordered another plate.

Stone bass, from Cornwall, rested in a lemongrass and yuzu ponzu, topped with more of that fresh wasabi and sprinkled with nori seaweed. The fish was beautifully sliced and arranged, the dressing expertly judged and the overall effect a masterclass in sushi work.

Salmon, Scottish, was very simply presented to allow the supremely impressive raw ingredient to shine. It was dressed only with a few sprinkles of sesame seed and chives, but with a bit of magic added from a brushing with 20-year-old tare sauce. This was £8.50, in case you thought £9 for the prawns was pushing it a bit.

Next, tuna tartare, from Japanese yellowfin this time, prettily arranged on a bed of koshihikari rice which was fluffy and body-temperature, as is correct, and as is wonderful. At certain moments the reality of eating this incredible food in such odd surroundings, with my fellow diners seemingly completely oblivious to the existence of a world-class Japanese restaurant in their midst, threatened to derail the mood. But the food was always good enough to compensate.

There was another dish of I think tuna I have a photo of here, but can't place it on the rather incomplete online menu. Whatever - rest assured it was as impressive and as great value as everything else, worth making the journey to this odd corner of a shopping mall in Liverpool many times over.

Of course, I need to go back to Nama, not least to try the Wagyu from Gunma prefecture which I was reliably informed would be appearing in a week or two (and by all accounts did, and was also wonderful according to a well-placed source) but also to double-check this amazing place ever existed in such an unlikely circumstance in the first place and wasn't just part of some wasabi-induced fever-dream. The GPO food hall I'm sure has its fans, and I'm sure Jailbird chicken and Patty B's burgers are perfectly decent, but to stumble across Nama felt a bit like the (possibly apocryphal) story of a couple of holidaymakers who obliviously thought they'd check out this restaurant they happened to drive past on the Costa Brava called El Bulli, just 5 minutes after a vanishingly rare cancellation at the most sought-after reservation in the world. Nama shouldn't be here, and yet it is.

And while it is, I suggest very strongly you go and eat there. Rarely has Japanese Izakaya food shined so brightly as in this unlikely spot in the North of England, and who knows what kind of prospect it has having to fight for attention next to the coffee shops and ice cream parlours of the GPO food hall. Even with that half-missing menu, and shonky apps, it is a reason in itself to visit Liverpool, and I can only assume by the time the word spreads, it will be even better. What a strange, unlikely place. But still, what a place.

9/10