Cheese and Biscuits Restaurant of the Year 2014 - The Dairy

Whether I found a home in this city because I'm naturally a reckless idiot, or whether my adopted home made me one, London is a city of risk takers, and this is why it's always been such a fantastically exciting place to eat out. Street food, burgers, hot dogs, ramen, foraged Modern British, whatever trend you may have leapt upon, enthusiatically devoured for as long as it was a novelty then haughtily dismissed as soon as soon as it reached the pages of the Observer Food Magazine, the fact is, this pace of change would hardly be tolerated anywhere else. And whilst innovation still very often comes at the cost of some truly bizarre and completely unworkable "concepts" that have popped-up and fizzled out recently (it's the Shoreditch Cereal Café that's become the latest object of mainstream eye-rolling but I swear I've seen worse in the past), it has, after all, also given us MeatLiquor, Burger & Lobster, Bob Bob Ricard and a few other past winners of the Cheese & Biscuits Restaurant of the Year. This is a city of innovators.

Clearly, too, there is still an awful lot of rubbish around. It's still possible to buy a really bloody awful burger, lobster roll or bowl of ramen in London in 2014, either because the owners have checked out the competition and still honestly believe their product is better, which means they don't have an ounce of talent in this area and really shouldn't be running a restaurant at all, or perhaps they haven't bothered checking out the competition and just think that by scanning a few trade articles on the latest trends they can dupe enough people that their lazy slice of commodity garbage is worth the logo-emblazoned greaseproof paper it's presented on, in which case they also really shouldn't be running a restaurant at all. Lots of people who shouldn't be running restaurants are somehow still running restaurants, but then I guess that's true of every industry. At least hospitality does better than rail transport.

So I won't dwell on the bad. It may be easy and amusing to have a "worst burger" award or "most incompetent PR campaign" or "most viciously incompetent service in a restaurant" but to draw attention to these things would cloud the fact that most of the time, London food people get it right. And my goodness, how right. I know I say this every year but it really is nearly impossible to narrow my favourites down to a short handful, never mind choose an overall best. But I hope at least you appreciate my reasons for this shortlist, and can at least forgive me for the winner.


The Culinary Trailblazer award - Peckham Bazaar

Also known as the "where the hell did this one come from" award. It's not just that the dishes at Peckham Bazaar make liberal use of obscure and exciting ingredients sourced from parts of the eastern Mediterranean you never knew existed. It's not just that the wine list is worth an award all by itself (and in fact very nearly won one), being a list of incredibly fairly marked-up and entirely unpronouncable Balkan oddities with literary footnotes from people who not only know what they're talking about but can communicate it well to us mortals. It's also that for all this, in a room hung with the smoke from a vast real charcoal grill and at a budget that only a converted pub in SE15 could manage, you can eat dishes of flair and flavour for not very much money at all (£7 starters, £16 mains).

Peckham Bazaar is a one-off, but even that label doesn't do it justice - it is one of London's true innovators, the kind of place requiring not just oodles of talent but nerves of iron and real determination to pull off. A labour of love, and you will love the fruits of its labour.


The Moment Where We Finally "Got" Ramen award - Kanada-Ya

I may never be able to persuade everyone to queue up in the freezing cold outside a tiny, sweaty little noodle shop in St Giles. But for those who are willing to suffer most kinds of hardship for a bowl of frothy, creamy pork bone noodle soup, neat slices of salty pork belly as soft as jelly, and perhaps an extra of cured egg with a yolk the colour of Christmas clementines, this is absolutely the very best you can get. It's definitely not the most comfortable dining experience, but what it lacks in elbow room it makes up for in attentiveness and a pleasant environmental authenticity - the steamed-up windows and largely Japanese clientele mean that you can imagine just outside are the streets of Nagasaki rather than central London. Now just hurry up and open a few more branches, please - food like this deserves to be enjoyed by as many people as possible.


The Future of Fine Dining award - Fera

I have to acknowledge that there are people in the world, nice, intelligent people, who don't enjoy Simon Rogan's food. A very good friend of mine walked away nonplussed from Roganic (a popup that existed briefly in Marylebone a couple of years back), yet another wished he'd never booked L'Enclume (still the pinnacle of the art, in my opinion), and none other than Fay Maschler of the Evening Standard couldn't find many nice words to say about Fera. But sometimes you have to shrug your shoulders and tell yourself, well, you can't please 'em all. Rogan's food may be experimental, it may occasionally overwhelm with texture and colour and bizarre confrontations of seafood and raw beef and bright green goo. But I have never found any of it less than entirely thrilling, and he has, against all odds, shifted effortlessly from the understated charm of a medieval Lake District blacksmiths to the grandest of grand London hotel dining rooms without (in my opinion - others are available) sacrificing anything of what made his product so special.

And if you want just one example, the grilled salad with truffled custard; leaves from a dozen weird and wonderful plants some of which don't even have non-Latin names, made brittle and smoky from some fiendishly clever technique possibly involving charcoal, all forming a canopy over a mind-blowingly heady truffle mousse, the kind of thing which will haunt your dreams for years. There is still hardly a mouthful of food from my meal at l'Enclume two years ago that I still can't taste if I close my eyes. Fera is a deeply worthy successor.


The How On Earth Do They Make Any Money award - Silk Road

In most restaurants, the phrase "that can't be right" uttered on presentation of the bill at the end of the meal means beans on toast for a week and an apology to everyone else on the table for that extra bottle of Chablis. But at Silk Road, no matter how many rounds of beer, no matter how many delectable portions of cumin-spiced lamb skewers or pork dumplings or bowls of steaming belt noodle chicken, no matter how every inch of your table groans with dishes of fire and invention and sheer pork-laced generosity, the bill per head will never come to much more than the price of a trip to the cinema.

Nobody is entirely sure why this should be the case. Sure, many of the ingredients are hardly premium, but they are fresh and treated well, and in many cases require either careful slow-cooking in vast stockpots overnight, and someone's got to pay the gas bill, or are fiendishly labour-intensive and highly-skilled, like those hand-wrapped dumplings. Everything is made on-site, by the family owners, and is - and believe me we've tried everything on the huge menu at least once - invariably wonderful, packed with beguiling spicing and uncompromising levels of Northern Chinese chilli. Silk Road is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a handmade pastry casing, but nobody is complaining. A wonder.


The Fusion Fever award - A Wong

The second Chinese restaurant in the runner-up list, but A Wong deserves a spot firstly (and mainly) because it's brilliant, but secondly because it very handily highlights one of the dangers that food blogs like this one can run in to by making a decision about a place based on one visit. I can't apologise as such for writing up most if not all of these pages after a single lunch or dinner; I don't have the time or budget to do it any other way, and in fact 90% of the time even if given the chance I wouldn't need to - barring an errant point here or there, once is enough.

But in 2013 I got it wrong, so completely and utterly wrong that A Wong has leapt from a barely creditable 4/10 straight to one of my favourite restaurants in town. The food is nominally Chinese, but really Andrew Wong's cooking deserves a whole new category of its own - Chinese techniques are married with the very best of London's ingredients (steamed Scottish langoustine with Chinese herbs, for example, or chilli-roast pineapple with Sichuan pepper) to produce a inticing (and huge) menu that impresses at almost every turn. There's nowhere else like it, and for about £40 a head there's certainly hardly anywhere better value.


The Overall Winner - The Dairy

With my earlier whinge about bandwagon-jumping and creative bankruptcy neatly out of the way, I am free to point out - for the umpteenth time - just how good we have it in 2014. In almost every conceivable style and budget, there is a team of people somewhere working their socks off to make sure you enjoy your dinner - surely only New York can challenge our availability of such variety, passion and talent. You want it, you got it.

In the end though, a winner cannot reward either strict authenticity OR no-holds-barred experimentalism that alienates too much of its potential target audience to ever be a hit. The most successful proponents of any art produce groundbreaking invention whilst simultaneously taking along a huge amount of people along the journey with you. Be unappreciated in your own time if you like, but I'm pretty sure most people would rather be the Beatles than Frank Zappa.

There are a number of reasons why I think the Dairy is the best restaurant in London right now. There is of course the the food - they relentlessly push forward what it's generally accepted you can offer customers in a £40/head restaurant on the edge of Clapham Common, and they are working hard to increase the amount of ingredients they produce themselves on in their rooftop allotments not because (or at least not just because) it looks good on their CV but because the taste of the resulting dishes is demonstrably better for doing so. They are also accessible, unpretentious and charming, just as comfortably serving snacks and cocktails on a Saturday afternoon as pulling out all the stops for a ten-stop tasting menu with matching wines; there are no waistcoat-clad waiters flocking to your table every 30 seconds, but neither are you ever ignored. It's service reimagined for modern London, neither haute-cuisine-obsequious or lackadaisical.

I'm not about to suggest that the Dairy is a revolution. Its influences range from Simon Rogan to the Eagle, Farringdon and prehaps its only a few steps ahead of your own favourite local gastropub. It's also half an hour's walk from my house, and that is a factor, I mean I'm only human. But you'll have to take my word that it's my favourite restaurant of 2014 mainly because of what it represents about London. It's barely been there for a year and a half but it already feels as solidly part of what modern British food IS as what Parisian bistros or tapas bars in Madrid do for their respective host cities. Though I love ramen and belt chicken noodles and - yes - burgers, I am after all a Londoner, and we need something we can call our own. If all goes well and this kind of thing becomes our gift to the world, well, what a marvellous thing to be proud of. And if it doesn't? At least we can say we were there for the ride.

Anyway congratulations the Dairy, the other runners-up and pretty much anywhere on these pages that won 7/10 upwards over the last 12 months, and deep apologies to anywhere I've not mentioned by name; there are spots in Dorset, my beloved Cornwall and Somerset that are more than worth a few paragraphs of gushing prose but perhaps I'd better leave you all to your mince pies. I'm off for a brandy, a slice of Cornish Blue and a lie down, and then I'll be up bright and early in 2015 to start the whole thing all over again for - it hardly seems possible - the ninth year running. Thanks so much - as ever - for still reading, have a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year.

All photos my own except the one of the Silk Road Belt Chicken noodles which is by Lizzie.

EDIT: For more London restaurant ideas, why not spend a couple of quid on my Top 100 Restaurants map? Ideal Christmas present etc. etc. App coming early 2015.

Ippudo, St Giles

There's always a risk in expanding a restaurant abroad that there will be some aspects of your style or facility, happily accepted as normal in your home country, that will not sit well with your new audience. TGI Friday's, for example, has become notorious for the kind of gurning over-familiarity of service that British people dismiss as "typically American" but which presumably great swathes of the US consider perfectly satisfactory. And at the other end of the scale, the typical level of "service" encountered in a huge number of high-end Parisian cafés would be considered nothing short of abusive anywhere else. In fact, I'm pretty sure even in Paris they're not very happy about it most of the time.

The trick, then, is to translate your restaurant abroad rather than just create a carbon copy of it and print the menu with a different currency. Shake Shack, for example, have had success in their new Covent Garden home by keeping the same what works back in NYC (the burgers, fries etc) whilst cleverly tailoring the fringes of the menu with local producers (Kernel beer, Paul A Young chocolates). And let's not forget arguably London's best steakhouse Goodman is a Russian's idea of a New York restaurant, which works in its Mayfair location thanks to a European wine list, a fantastic range of UK & Ireland beef, and friendly - though crucually not TGI Friday's-matey - staff.

So what to make of Ippudo. Maybe everything they're doing in Singapore, Sydney, New York and the dozens of other branches around the globe is perfectly in tune with the needs and sensibilities of the local population. Perhaps Indonesians like nothing better than to be paraded through the restaurant on arrival like contestants on a game show while twenty members of staff scream unintelligable Japanese in their faces. Perhaps in Seoul, being pestered with questions ten times a minute is the very finest way to enjoy your faintly mediocre and overpriced dinner. And there's even a chance that in Taipei it's normal to be asked how various dishes are before you've even had a chance to taste them.

But not here, guys, not here. Not now, and not ever. Ippudo is completely and utterly insufferable on many levels but even if the food had been any good (it wasn't) it would have been hard to objectively rate it apart from the experience of eating there, which has to rank alongside a root canal in terms of comfort and relaxation. It's not just the stupid welcome parade, which is ear-burningly embarrassing for all concerned. It's not just the constant, intrusive badgering about this and that, from all sides, like trying to enjoy your dinner whilst undergoing a driving theory test. No, more than all that, it's just that like so many theme restaurants that have opened in London over the years, it all feels so tragically hollow and stage-managed, obsessed with stupid theatrics and entirely devoid of heart.

What's more upsetting is that I really was expecting to enjoy it. Let's face it, London has been on a bit of a roll recently with ramen joints, to the extent that I was beginning to suspect that ramen was pretty easy to get right all along and a lot of people were making a fuss over nothing. And in fact, the ramen itself was one of the few things at Ippudo worth the money they were asking for it. It wasn't great, by any means - cold, crumbly pork topped a creamy, rather one-note broth, and the noodles had none of the taste or bounce of Kanada-Ya - but it was comforting in a straightforward kind of way.

But the rest of the food ranged from odd to bizarre, stopping at weird along the way. House pickles came in a little glass bowl containing some strange sweet liquid, some raw (ie not pickled) and bland cherry tomatoes, and a great big sprig of flat leaf parsley. Oh and a bit of lemon. For some reason.

Chicken kara-age were greasy and soft, with none of that light bubbly coating I'd come to expect from versions at Tonkotsu and Sasuke, and were only really eaten (accompanied at all times, remember, by the constant background natter "is everything OK?"... "do you like your chicken?"... "can I take that plate away?") because they were there.

Sesame prawn toast were a disaster, soft and so drenched in grease they immediately brought on a gag reflex. As to why they were accompanied by lime ("do you like your sesame toast?") and another massive sprig of parsley ("can I take that plate away now?"), well... who knows.

Zuke-maguro was a plate of dull Itsu-level sashimi salad ("would you like another beer?") with some admittedly quite nice soft boiled quails eggs ("would you like another napkin?") alongside some, er, radicchio and asparagus. Obviously very weird, but not as weird as a kale, asparagus, blueberries (?), cherries (!?), nuts, balsamic and olive oil concoction we spotted on the menu.

OK, there were some things that weren't terrible. Sesame cucumber was very enjoyable, and presented very nicely. Gyoza were ("can I take that plate away?") properly fried on one side and contained a good, moist, porky filling. And ("is everything OK with your gyoza?") the hirata buns were good, but still not as good as the ones from Yum Bun or Bao London, and considering Ippudo invented the damn things that's not a particularly strong endorsement.

And all the time the interruptions, the chanting, the noise. I'm all for enthusiastic service but I don't want twenty people screaming their approval every time I go for a piss, and I don't get the impression this was first-fortnight nerves (Ippudo has been open since 2nd October). I can only assume this is how they mean to go on, and that the humiliating parade-shouting in and out, the bizarre food and the overattentive-to-the-point-of-mania service are all "features" that have made Ippudo so inexplicably popular with those short of attention and hard of hearing the world over. Well, at least I can say I've tried it. And with better ramen available so easily elsewhere, I can definitely say I won't be back.

4/10

Kanada-Ya, Covent Garden

"I don't care how warm it is outside," said my friend as the mercury topped 20 degrees Celsius at the start of October, and the sun cracked the pavements on the streets of Battersea, "I'm wearing my winter coat. I've waited long enough."

I know how she feels, although not about clothes, which as anyone who's ever met me will not be surprised ranks just between reality TV and cross-country skiing on my list of interests. My problem with the Indian summer is that I have been waiting far too long to snuggle up to a bowl of ramen or a portion of spicy tom yam soup and it's got to the stage when I'm prepared to sit sweating in wildly unsuitable conditions to do so. So as my friend headed off for the Central Line in four layers and fake fur, I headed to Kanada-ya, ramen specialists from Yukuhashi (Japan), Hong Kong, and now St Giles.

As fate would have it, by the time I arrived at this busy spot on the corner of New Compton St, the weather was trying its best to be autumnal. Though not particularly cold, it was thrashing down, and those taking shelter inside were softened by a fug of steam from wet umbrellas, wet clothes and hot ramen. Seating arrangements are, to put it politely, convivial - I was placed somewhat awkwardly on a tiny table in the corner close enough to knock elbows on more than one occasion with a young couple next to me, but this is I'm sure all part of the experience - in the nicest possible way you aren't encouraged to linger with your laptop at Kanada-Ya; you enter ("irasshaimase!"), you order, you eat and you leave.

You can't really linger over the menu, anyway, as it's so tiny. Just three different styles of ramen, a few optional toppings and a small selection of onigiri which I saw precisely nobody eating. You order by putting the number of each item you need in the box next to it on the menu. At least I think this is the idea; it's what I did and it worked. From that point on if you need anything else you just ask a waitress (in a room the size of a telephone kiosk they're never far way) which does rather beg the question why you need the ordering card in the first place. I sometimes get the impression that more often than not the odd tweak or two to the original concept as a nod to local tastes, and without "selling out", would make things run a bit smoother. But I'm sure I'm not the expert.

The good news and for most people all that really matters, was that the ramen was excellent. Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure which one I had. I definitely put a little '1' next to the box for Chashu Men (£12.50), which has an upgraded "deluxe" pork instead of the usual pork belly, and the £1.80 option of Hanjuku egg. But my bill at the end said Chashu Regular with Hanjuku Egg, for a combined total of £10, so who knows what I actually ate. Even the Japanese lemonade in a weird old fashioned bottle with a glass ball rattling around inside it came in at half price. Maybe the prices depend on how guilty they feel about where they've asked you to sit.

But thanks to a thick, creamy broth, a massively generous helping of tender pork fanned out around the edges of the bowl, and hugely complimentary mounds of wood ear mushrooms and spring onions, all problems were soon forgotten. This was impressive stuff, clean, crisp flavours that are better described as familiar and comforting than anything so insulting as "straightforward". Another complication during the ordering was being asked how I liked my noodles, and being blindsided somewhat with this question (it's a first for me in a ramen joint) just stammered "er, normal?" and hoped that would suffice - fortunately she seemed happy enough with that. They were lovely things, firm and springy and with a savoury, earthy taste of their own. And you'll be able to tell from the photo how good the cured egg was, salty and silky with a perfect runny yolk.

It probably isn't helpful to pitch the ramen joints in London against each other like it's some kind of knockout competition, so I won't. The fact is, each of the premier league contenders (Tonkotsu, Bone Daddies, Sasuke, Shoryu) have something to recommend them, and you can't really go far wrong. All that you need to remember is that Kanada-Ya deserve a place amongst the top flight, and very much deserve your custom thanks to serving excellent pork broth ramen at a very reasonable price indeed. Enjoy - no matter what the weather's doing.

8/10

Ramen Sasuke, Soho

I didn't want to leave that whinge about chicken restaurants as my front page story for long, so today I'm happy to spread much more positive vibes about London dining. The truth is, for all there is to moan about in the lack of originality in some sectors of the London restaurant scene (and there's plenty), innovation isn't hard to find either, and for that reason we can boast some of the very best restaurants in the world.

But it's odd, isn't it, that in some styles of cuisine (largely, but by no means exclusively British and/or modern European) relentless innovation and idiosyncrasies are the sign of Things Being Done Right, in others adherance to form and tradition is seen as a massive benefit rather than a sign you're out of ideas. With most Asian cuisines, here at least, boasting strict authenticity to the way it's done in Beijing, or Seoul, or Tokyo, is a selling point. You wouldn't see anywhere shouting about how their food is "British-style Chinese" or "Westerner-friendly Thai" and yet anywhere daring to serve traditional French food is all too often seen as stuffy and old-fashioned.

Well, I don't make the rules. And given that what I know about the infinite complexities of Japanese cuisine could be written on the back of a Wasabi loyalty card, all I can do is tell you that whether Sasuke offer London's most, or least authentic ramen, or most or least innovative, it is absolutely lovely, not to mention very good value.

The lunch deal involves choosing a ramen of your choice, and getting for £1.50 extra a choice of three sides, and as much rice as you can fill up on after that. Sounds generous, as indeed it is, but if you're anything like me the bottomless bowl of rice is rather surplus to requirements - we could barely finish our noodles.

Extras were good; certainly considering the price. Karaage was bubbly and moist, piping hot and served with a blob of thin mayonnaise. Gyoza also had a good texture, although they didn't seem particularly generously stuffed and I would have liked to have seen 4 instead of 3 on that plate. Still, as I say, you can't really complain for £1.50.

But the ramen is why, before too long, they'll be queueing down the street for Sasuke; by golly it's good. My shoyu style broth (£9.50) came with two huge slabs of chashu pork, which split apart into jellied fat and soft salty flesh at the merest prodding with a pair of chopsticks. The noodles themselves, bouncy and gently coloured, were amongst the best I've tried in my hardly exhaustive sampling of ramen here and in Japan - only Tonkotsu's can compare, and they make their own. Perhaps Sasuke do as well? Also in the bowl was half of one of those salty/creamy eggs (ni-tamago?) so good it made me want to do a Cool Hand Luke job, and a pretty square of nori seaweed which I always tend to think is there more to add colour and geometry than flavour but which I polished off nonetheless.

A friend's spicy miso chashu (£12.40) was a price point above but was so loaded with goodies (pork, noodles, miso, corn, various other vegetables raw and stewed, and a cute little pestle & mortar on the side containing roasted sesame seeds to add as required) that even our combined efforts couldn't make visible the bottom of the bowl. It displayed a deeply complex and addictive creamy broth, hot certainly but not eye-wateringly so, that has taken a true expert's palate to perfect. Very impressive.

And for all this, including a drink each (my orange juice was out of a carton, but that's a minor complaint), the bill was £16 a head including service. So not only is Sasuke serving what is surely some of the best ramen in London, they're doing it cheaper than pretty much everyone else, in a lovely bright clean room and with a smile on their faces. As for authenticity, well, you're asking the wrong person. But I have a sneaking suspicion that if there is, indeed, a correct way of doing ramen, Sasuke have it down pat.

9/10

Thanks go to Lizzie for the hot tip on this restaurant, and many others like it. Without her I'd still be thinking Wagamama was the bee's knees.

Shoryu, Piccadilly

There are two possible reasons I can think of for the disastrous bowl of food I was served on my first visit to Shoryu. The first, and this is me in "benefit-of-the-doubt" mode, is that someone in the kitchen misread the reading on an unfamiliar pair of scales, and erroneously dumped twenty times the correct amount of wasabi into the recipe for Wasabi Tonkotsu. The second, more worrying possibility is that there really are people out there who would voluntarily eat what I can only describe as Pepper Spray Noodles and it was actually supposed to be like that.

I have literally never been in so much agony in a restaurant in my life. With the first mouthful of wasabi-soaked nori my throat closed up, my eyes started streaming and the most excruciating pain shot around my sinuses. This wasn't anywhere near a normal level of heat, this was a chemical weapon, deadly distilled mustard gas designed to incapacitate and maim. I can eat spoonfuls of English mustard without breaking a sweat, can happily polish off a plate of the infamous Silk Road hand-torn cabbage and have been known to only wince briefly during a portion of the Heron's laab ped, but this was something else. This wasn't lunch, this was being maced.

I know, I know, I should have said something - I suppose I was just too shellshocked to speak. I wouldn't even have ordered it in the first place if it hadn't have been a daily lunch special but in fact, out of sheer curiosity I might go back and order it again just to see if the first time was a mistake. Because if it wasn't, and the Wasabi Tonkotsu from Shoryu is served like that to everyone, then I have a duty to inform the Department of Health. Not to mention the Ministry of Defense - I'm sure they could make use of it somehow.

Having only just survived the Death By Wasabi Tonkotsu, then, I was in no hurry to return to Shoryu, but enough people rated it and enough positive writups online convinced me that perhaps not everything on the menu there was designed to cause permanent damage. So on a second visit I tried the standard house Tonkotsu ("Ganso") which was, thank God, not just edible but rather nice, with a soothing milky broth and generous helping of bouncy egg noodles. Perhaps the slices of rolled pork weren't quite as powerfully flavoursome as those at Tonkotsu on Dean St., and perhaps Bone Daddies has a slightly more exciting variety of styles, but this was still a good ramen.

Hirata buns, ordered out of sheer curiosity rather than hunger as the Tonkotsu would have been a plenty big enough lunch on its own, were decent enough. I guess it's not their fault that I prefer the Korean style more, but cheap mayo and pork fat is not a combination I'd fight to try again and the bun casings were rather dense and wilted. Generous amount of them for £6 though.

Of the sides, edamame would have been nicer warm and a parcel of onigiri rice stuffed with pickles was a strange side to pair with noodles on the lunch menu, but neither were offensive. These both came alongside the Wasabi Tonkotsu though, and I think a lump of nori-wrapped wire wool would have slipped down like ambrosia next to that.

But as I say, I can't know for sure whether the Wasabi Tonkotsu was deliberate or not, and in the interests of fairness I will try and focus on the elements that didn't nearly cause hospitalisation; Shoryu is objectively is doing plenty of things right. I only wish I had the time and money to try more of the menu, such as the fried chicken and soft-shelled crab that Bone Daddies do so well, but even just a very competent house Tonkotsu and a glass of water for £10 is a reason enough to visit, and based on the crowds flocking to 9 Lower Regent's Street, plenty are. It's perfectly fine, it's just not my favourite of the new mini-wave of ramen joints in London. And that's not just because they may have tried to kill me. Honest.

6/10