Chisou - What a let down.

Chisou apparently means in Japanese either -


a) 'a treat'
b) 'a dinner'
c) 'delicious food' 


In our case it was one of these - dinner and not a very good one at that.



I find good sushi, at a last minutes notice, hard to find in London. My favourite places Dinings/Roka and god forbid Zuma all require a reservation at least 2 weeks in advance (actually about 2 years for Zuma - since my first trip in 2007, I've never actually managed to get a table) and on a Monday night who can really be bothered with all the hassle? Over booked restaurants are the thing I happen to hate most about London, screw the constant drizzle, how come every restaurant requires a booking a month in advance? 


So Chisou had space AND allowed you to book a table, (another pet peeve - no, I dont want to travel 30 minutes to your restaurant to find out I will have to wait another 2 hours for a table and can't even wait in the bar, thanks) so from the start things were looking up. Proximity to Holborn was another added bonus. This is were the good points ended.


So The Boyfriend, Boyfriend's friend and I all headed out. 

The service was average. Given my views on the quality of service in London at the minute that doesn't say a lot. My current criteria for judgement - do you have to refill your own glass of water (not difficult!) - they failed and given the very short wine list it seemed impressive that it took around 15 minutes to deliver the bottle of wine.

The restaurant itself was fine. Nothing particularly pretty - nothing special. At least the standard of decoration was higher than the food.

We started with edamame. Edamame is the easiest thing to get right, if Yo Sushi can handle it any place can. Fresh edamame, rock salt and not over cooked. Apparently not so easy for Chisou. Who would have thought? Edamame so old the ends were going brown with no salt/flavouring of any kind - Great!The edamame set the standard for what was to come.

Our soft shell crab was greasy and under seasoned much like the terrible one I had at Hakkasan earlier this year.

The sushi arrived at the same time. We had
- Salmon skin roll with spring onion
- Crab and avocado roll with unagi
- Prawn tempura and asparagus

Of the three, only the prawn tempura proved moderately satisfying. The crab and unagi roll lacked the necessary bite and the rice was far too sweet. In the salmon skin roll the ratio of salmon skin to rice was out. The spring onion was a lovely addition to the flavour but just not enough salmon skin to balance it. The prawn tempura was better but best of a bad lot doesn't really say that much.

The aubergine was fine but for a similar price I would prefer the one at Roka

The next round of dishes was worse and the order strange. They decided to bring all our fried dishes at the same time.

The tempura was good but at the end of the meal not what was needed. The deep fried octopus tasted like over fried chicken ordered at KFC and the spicy prawns tasted cheap just smothered in red, spiced form of mayonnaise.

In the words of Boyfriend's Friend "it would have been good if we were paying £10 a head". Unfortunately, we weren't. With the addition of a 45 bottle of lovely Pouilly Fuisse the total bill came to just under for £150.

Herein lies the trade off and the sad truth about dining in London. If you want good food you have to book because london diners are savvy and if you can get a table last minute even on a monday night its a sign that its not going to be good. From now on I'm going to book my Monday dinners in advance.


Chisou
4 Princes St
London W1B 2LE
020 7629 3931banspoon.com/r/52/562411/restaurant/Mayfair/Chisou-London