Restaurant review: Soseki

2011-06-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

20 Bury Street, London EC3 (020 7621 9211). Meal for two, including wine and service, £100-£150
Given their taste for, among other things, whale, the notion of quality ethical Japanese food can be a little difficult to swallow. Anybody who has visited the extraordinary Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo and seen the magnificent and terribly endangered Bluefin tuna laid out on the floor awaiting sale will know just how deeply held is their love of foods we here regard as forbidden. The Bluefin shed looks like a luxury car park, with its serried rows of chromium-gilded Cadillacs of the sea. They might as well hang a bloody great sign across the entrance to Tsukiji bearing the legend: "It's not our fault they taste nice." Apparently the Japanese fleet is not raping the sea, because the fish were asking for it. Ethical sushi; environmentally sound oil drilling; a good-value, quality sandwich from Welcome Break motorway services – all are ideas which should encourage you to punish anybody making such claims with a poke in the eye with an (ethically farmed) bamboo chopstick.

Soseki, however, does a very good job of making the words "ethical" and "sushi" sit comfortably side by side. The location, under the bulging armpit of Norman Foster's Gherkin in the City, makes it feel very much like a place you might find in the Japanese capital, where restaurants are piled one atop another. Pull back the sliding door in an anonymous office block and ascend the steep stairs to a perch floating above the urban landscape. It is wood and tatami mats and booths with high, varnished walls. A sushi bar runs the length of the room and at the back are two cabins reached by step ladders – possibly the most discreet private dining space in London. It is a place apart.

Caroline Bennett, the restaurant's owner, has won a number of accolades for her work on sustainable seafood and was a consultant on Charles Clover's important film The End of the Line, about the impact of the global fishing industry. For all that, Soseki wears its principles lightly. This is a Japanese restaurant which happens to look beyond what happens on the plate but doesn't bash you over the head with homilies. Indeed, f you didn't know about its philosophy you might be hard pushed to spot it. During our meal, there were only two points where it made itself felt, once successfully, once less so. Witness a brace of "unagi", those sauce-glazed and grilled tassels of eel, across lozenges of rice. Here, rather than being fashioned from eel, whose numbers are depleted, they are made from dogfish, whose numbers aren't. Though it lacks the mouth-filling oiliness of eel, it still does a brilliant job. My companion, who had declared herself hardcore when it comes to Japanese food, didn't spot the difference until it was pointed out to her. A nori roll made with canned (un-endangered) tuna was far less successful, a claggy mouthful which did the ingredient few favours.
That was a rare low point. Although choices are listed, they steer you towards multi-course kaiseki menus. It is worth taking the hint. We loved cubes of bland tofu under a punchy sauce of sweet miso scattered with sesame seeds, and curls of beef dressed with the citrus burst of ponzu. A stew of long-braised pork belly with a smear of hot wasabi in an umami sauce was an old English dinner – braised pork and mustard – refracted through an Asian lens. There was a tranche of cod with a crisp skin in bright broth and a cooling bowl of slippery green tea noodles with wasabi and shredded seaweed. The sashimi and nigiri sushi – sweet scallop and sea bass, sea bream and salmon, both its flesh and bright orange roe – did exactly what was required of them. It is not the greatest sushi available in London; the rice is a little stodgy, the knife work occasionally a little ragged. But it is pretty damn good. Dessert, a green-tea ice cream with a chocolate torte and berries, is something you eat because it's there.
Staff are eager, helpful and particularly accommodating on the booze, quick with killer sake recommendations. They also offered to swap in a more expensive wine by the glass because they were out of the cheaper one I had chosen, but at the same price. The cost of all this? Oh you know. Lots. But then if we're going to eat the best the sea has to offer and do it sustainably it shouldn't be cheap. It is quite literally the price we have to pay for eating ethically.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place

• This article was amended on 13 June 2011. In the article above we misspelled roe. This has been corrected.

SOURCE : http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/12/jay-rayner-soseki-restaurant-review

Restaurant

2011-06-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

Restaurant

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For other uses, see Restaurant (disambiguation).

A restaurant in Manhattan, New York City

A restaurant ( /ˈrɛstərənt/ or /ˈrɛstərɒnt/; French: [ʁɛs.to.ʁɑ̃]) prepares and serves food, drink and dessert to customers in return for money. Meals are generally served and eaten on premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearance and offerings, including a wide variety of the main chef's cuisines and service models.
While inns and taverns were known from antiquity, these were establishments aimed at travelers, and in general locals would rarely eat there. Modern restaurants are dedicated to the serving of food, where specific dishes are ordered by guests and are prepared to their request. The modern restaurant originated in 18th century France, although precursors can be traced back to Roman times.^[1]
A restaurant owner is called a restaurateur ( /ˌrɛstərəˈtɜr/); both words derive from the French verb restaurer, meaning "to restore". Professional artisans of cooking are called chefs, while preparation staff and line cooks prepare food items in a more systematic and less artistic fashion.

[hide]

[edit] History

Roman Thermopolium in Pompeii

In Ancient Rome, thermopolia (singular thermopolium) were small restaurant-bars which offered food and drinks to the customer. A typical thermopolium had L-shaped counters into which large storage vessels were sunk, which would contain either hot or cold food. They are linked to the absence of kitchens in many dwellings and the ease with which people could purchase prepared foods. Besides, eating out was also considered an important aspect of socialising.
In Pompeii, 158 thermopolia with a service counter have been identified across the whole town area. They were concentrated along the main axes of the town and the public spaces where they were frequented by the locals.^[2]
Food catering establishments which may be described as restaurants were known since the 11th century in Kaifeng, China's northern capital during the first half of the Song Dynasty (960–1279). With a population of over 1,000,000 people, a culture of hospitality and a paper currency, Kaifeng was ripe for the development of restaurants. Probably growing out of the tea houses and taverns that catered to travellers, Kaifeng's restaurants blossomed into an industry catering to locals as well as people from other regions of China.^[3] Stephen H. West argues that there is a direct correlation between the growth of the restaurant businesses and institutions of theatrical stage drama, gambling and prostitution which served the burgeoning merchant middle class during the Song Dynasty.^[4]
Restaurants catered to different styles of cuisine, price brackets, and religious requirements. Even within a single restaurant much choice was available, and people ordered the entree they wanted from written menus.^[3] An account from 1275 writes of Hangzhou, the capital city for the last half of the dynasty:

"The people of Hangzhou are very difficult to please. Hundreds of orders are given on all sides: this person wants something hot, another something cold, a third something tepid, a fourth something chilled; one wants cooked food, another raw, another chooses roast, another grill".^[5]

The restaurants in Hangzhou also catered to many northern Chinese who had fled south from Kaifeng during the Jurchen invasion of the 1120s, while it is also known that many restaurants were run by families formerly from Kaifeng.^[6]

[edit] Types of restaurants

Main article: Types of restaurants

Restaurants in Greek islands are often situated right on the beach. This is an example from Astipalea.

Restaurants range from unpretentious lunching or dining places catering to people working nearby, with simple food served in simple settings at low prices, to expensive establishments serving refined food and wines in a formal setting. In the former case, customers usually wear casual clothing. In the latter case, depending on culture and local traditions, customers might wear semi-casual, semi-formal, or even in rare cases formal wear.
Typically, customers sit at tables, their orders are taken by a waiter, who brings the food when it is ready, and the customers pay the bill before leaving. In finer restaurants there will be a host or hostess or even a maître d'hôtel to welcome customers and to seat them. Other staff waiting on customers include busboys and sommeliers.
Restaurants often specialize in certain types of food or present a certain unifying, and often entertaining, theme. For example, there are seafood restaurants, vegetarian restaurants or ethnic restaurants. Generally speaking, restaurants selling food characteristic of the local culture are simply called restaurants, while restaurants selling food of foreign cultural origin are called accordingly,

[edit] Restaurant regulations

[edit] Restaurant guides

Restaurants offering ethnic food have increased in North America, the UK and Australia in the past few decades. One of many Italian restaurants in the Heights commercial district of North Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Main article: Restaurant rating

Restaurant guides review restaurants, often ranking them or providing information for consumer decisions (type of food, handicap accessibility, facilities, etc.). In 12th century Hangzhou (mentioned above as the location of the first restaurant), signs could often be found posted in the city square listing the restaurants in the area and local customer's opinions of the quality of their food. This was an occasion for bribery and even violence.^{[citation needed]} One of the most famous contemporary guides, in Western Europe, is the Michelin series of guides which accord from 1 to 3 stars to restaurants they perceive to be of high culinary merit. Restaurants with stars in the Michelin guide are formal, expensive establishments; in general the more stars awarded, the higher the prices. The main competitor to the Michelin guide in Europe is the guidebook series published by Gault Millau. Unlike the Michelin guide which takes the restaurant décor and service into consideration with its rating, Gault Millau only judges the quality of the food. Its ratings are on a scale of 1 to 20, with 20 being the highest.
In the United States, the Forbes Travel Guide (previously the Mobil travel guides) and the AAA rate restaurants on a similar 1 to 5 star (Forbes) or diamond (AAA) scale. Three, four, and five star/diamond ratings are roughly equivalent to the Michelin one, two, and three star ratings while one and two star ratings typically indicate more casual places to eat. In 2005, Michelin released a New York City guide, its first for the United States. The popular Zagat Survey compiles individuals' comments about restaurants but does not pass an "official" critical assessment. In the United States Gault Millau is published as the Gayot guide, after founder Andre Gayot. Its restaurant ratings use the same 20 point system, and are all published online.
The Good Food Guide, published by the Fairfax Newspaper Group in Australia, is the Australian guide listing the best places to eat. Chefs Hats are awarded for outstanding restaurants and range from one hat through three hats. The Good Food Guide also incorporates guides to bars, cafes and providers. The Good Restaurant Guide is another Australian restaurant guide that has reviews on the restaurants as experienced by the public and provides information on locations and contact details. Any member of the public can submit a review.
Nearly all major American newspapers employ food critics and publish online dining guides for the cities they serve. A few papers maintain a reputation for thorough and thoughtful review of restaurants to the standard of the good published guides, but others provide more of a listings service.
More recently Internet sites have started up that publish both food critic reviews and popular reviews by the general public. Their major competition comes from bloggers, particularly publishers of food blogs, also called foodies. These writers and publishers represent the common dining aficionado rather than the gourmet, and thus do not provide "official" reviews, but nonetheless are capable of garnering large, loyal followings.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Economics

The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (November 2008)

Lunch at a restaurant on Queen Street in Toronto, Canada

[edit] United States

As of 2006, there are approximately 215,000 full-service restaurants in the United States, accounting for $298 billion, and approximately 250,000 limited-service (fast food) restaurants, accounting for $260 billion.^{[clarification needed]}^[7]
One study of new restaurants in Cleveland, Ohio found that 1 in 4 changed ownership or went out of business after one year, and 6 out of 10 did so after three years. (Not all changes in ownership are indicative of financial failure.)^[8] The three-year failure rate for franchises was nearly the same.^[9]

[edit] Canada

There are 86,915 commercial foodservice units in Canada, or 26.4 units per 10,000 Canadians. By segment, there are:^[10]

38,797 full-service restaurants
34,629 limited-service restaurants
741 contract and social caterers
6,749 drinking places

Fully 63% of restaurants in Canada are independent brands. Chain restaurants account for the remaining 37%, and many of these are locally owned and operated franchises.^[11]

SOURCE : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restaurant

restaurants

Restaurant review: Soseki

Restaurant

Restaurant

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Types of restaurants

[edit] Restaurant regulations

[edit] Restaurant guides

[edit] Economics

[edit] United States

[edit] Canada