No boo, we’re not going Nobu

A review of Nobu and the decline of London’s dining scene

The warning signs were there from the start. ‘You eating here tonight boss?’, asked a gorilla-like man in a bomber jacket with a slightly fruity Lebanese accent. This was, in fact, the doorman, and I was, in fact, going to dine at this establishment: Nobu, Portman Square, W1H 7BG.

For those of you who are terminally online: it is actually a restaurant, and not just a socially-housed demographic with a bit of cash and a high time preference, as previously discussed in J’accuse. Nobu is supposedly the world’s premier chain of haute Japanese restaurants. It used to be the ‘finance bro’ establishment of choice — until WfH meant the HR birds were all out of the office, and Thirsty Thursdays became a piss up between mates. The clientele at Nobu and similarly gauche establishments has gone from ‘cool it with the antisemitic remarks’ to ‘you got S-whip, know my ting broski’.

I had not taken three steps inside before my nose was assaulted by the unmistakable smell of oud. The odds of a slightly dissatisfied tourist from Kuwait throwing rolls of cash at their waiter had just increased tenfold. I was greeted with a dining hall that resembled more a living room from a third-world edition of Big Brother than an authentic Japanese dining space. The chairs were white leather, while the benches were yellow. Everything else was black, and the décor was rustic and industrial. You would be forgiven for thinking you’d entered a gastropub in Camden, or an interrogation room at the Lubyanka — and the latter seemed apt, given that a third of the clientele were the children of Russian oligarchs with a death sentence hanging over their heads. The hallmark of any pretentious pseudo-Japanese restaurant is a lengthy menu, which almost guarantees that you are getting served measly amounts of supermarket-tier nonsense. Dozens upon dozens of sashimi, nigiri, and other small plates, priced between £15 and £30. The mains were ridiculously overpriced, with black cod miso at £53. This is all by design, as I shall discuss.

I opted for the tuna tataki because the menu stipulated that it was an environmentally endangered species, and that I should ask the server for an alternative. At first I thought it was Nobu being Woke, only to be informed that this addendum had been on the menu for decades and that they still had not taken tuna off the menu. I should not have to recompense for relentless Japanese overfishing, and as a fellow contributor has previously noted, the death knell for the Japanese economy was its systematic overproduction.

Regrettably, good tuna was ruined by the usual soya sauce that they can’t help but lather your food with. I ordered some seafood ceviche to remedy this and cleanse the palate. As mentioned, the mains were not only overpriced, but somehow lacking in variety. Unless you’re content with tempura dishes covered in sweet sauces (i.e., pub food), you will be hoodwinked into to forking out top dollar for the Chilean seabass, as I did. One could go for the ribeye, but a word of advice for the less gastronomically experienced Pimlico readers: never order steak anywhere other than a steakhouse unless you enjoy donkey meat from Ireland. All in all, I ended up paying £160, with a couple glasses of Pinot Gris included. With the dark, nightclub lighting; the loud, clattering music; the poor service; and the deeply oppressive ‘influencer’ clientele, nothing else could redeem the very average food.

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You may be thinking what this has to do with dissident right-wing thought in London, or if Jay Rayner has started contributing to the Pimlico Journal. But this Nobu experience is emblematic of the decline of London’s food scene, and it is genuinely a serious cause for concern. There are dozens upon dozens of similarly priced restaurants that only cater for ‘influencers’ (real or aspiring), the tasteless sons and daughters of foreign oligarchs, and London’s drug dealer class — and their numbers seem set to grow further still.

Putting Nobu to one side for the moment, take the examples of Novikov, Zuma, Sexy Fish, Hakkasan, and Roka: Vegas-tier Asian mega restaurants with obscenely long menus consisting mostly of exorbitantly expensive starters and small plates. As noted, this is by design. These restaurants cater to the haves and the have-nots. They are ‘influencer’ hotspots because half-a-dozen or so small plates and sides are still cheaper than the mains. Now imagine four or five women to a table — you have twenty plates on the table at any given time, perfect for Instagram photo ops. And perfect for Nobu’s eponymous ‘Nobu’ demographic: London’s socially-housed youngsters who somehow have the means to dine here — and you, the reader, are subsidising this. This same demographic, entitled to £12,000 maintenance loans from Student Finance England (none of it will be repaid) can eat here, paid for once more by Nicolas (30 ans), who cannot afford to dine at somewhere as overpriced as Nobu. They don’t even pay service charge. I could easily infer this because not even a quarter of those dining there were white men, as they simply know better than to go there. The plurality of the clientele were women dressed for nightclubs, which should be no surprise to anyone who knows that most Japanese food in London is a marketing scam aimed at women. As such, you can think of these establishments as the restaurant equivalent of Greene King: overpriced tourist traps for foreigners and provincials on their ‘big day out’.

But it is not only that you are funding the lavish lifestyles of the unproductive: these restaurants, increasingly catering to the demands of Arab and Russian habits and tastes, have transformed the West End. Imagine late-mediaeval Istanbul, but with tasteful Jacobean Revival architecture instead of minarets. Restaurants in Mayfair now operate as nightclubs: get enough scantily-clad influencers sipping sugary cocktails and, sure enough, the sons of Aramco board members will come hurtling in, shouting at waiters, throwing cash on the floor, and flirting with botoxed bimbos from the former USSR. It’s even funnier when you realise the maître d’ is usually either an angular-faced post-Soviet woman or a fruity Phoenician in skinny jeans; the Madame and the Court Eunuch. Until recently, these restaurants would overbook, and then presume to filter out larger women and those of African and Afro-Caribbean descent by telling them that there were no tables available, though this changed with social media exposés, as well as a new class of clientele emerging for such establishments: the drug dealer. What you have here, then, are Ottoman-style harems operating in Europe’s most expensive neighbourhood. The West End and the City of London have been stolen from us by the nouveau riche class of the Orient.

It is a shame that establishments such as these occupy some of the most lucrative real estate in London when there is no shortage of good restaurants in London, and when there is no shortage of budding Japanese chefs competing for a spot to open a niche and authentic high-end restaurant in the centre. I name Tokimeite and The Araki as two such establishments, comparable to the finest places in Tokyo and Kyoto, where you could enjoy excellent Japanese food in the quiet and intimate setting of a dōjō. The former closed down last year, and the latter inexplicably lost all their Michelin stars. Sadly, changing demographics doomed these restaurants from the start. Such places require a clientele of hobbyists: eccentrics curious about other cultures, and those with refined palates. You could ascribe these adjectives to the British, but this is London after all: they are all but gone for good.

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The British do have to bear some responsibility for this predicament. The decline of British cuisine can be partly attributed to the fact that women in Britain do not cook, and many can’t even if they wanted to, simply because they did not learn from their mothers. In fact, there is good reason to believe that Britain is the only country in the world where, at the domestic level, the men are better cooks than the women. The Britpopper dad can cook: he garnishes his halloumi with pomegranate (‘Brilliant’). He slow roasts a lamb shoulder under the dirt for seven hours. He buys a good bottle of Malbec just to make a red wine jus. The United Kingdom boasts fifteen female chefs with Michelin stars; this, however, pales in comparison to France, at thirty-two. In France, Spain, and Italy, it’s common to find women working as cooks in restaurants, or front-of-house at the very least. The same cannot be said of Britain, and you cannot blame female emancipation and careerism: women in France have careers as well.

Britain’s reputation for dismal food does partly stem from post-war rationing, that much is true, but this propaganda against British food has been reinforced by bad faith actors — journalists, commentators, and, of course, external forces — that is to say, the the usual cohort of resentful ethnic minorities, especially hyphen-Americans, perhaps demonstrating that, for the most part, qualms with British food are mere salad dressing for deep-seated racial resentment.

British cuisine is excellent. We have let these people use the discourse on food as a bludgeon against Britain and as a justification for mass migration from Biomassia and Minionesia. Boomers will decry the state of London’s restaurant scene before the ’90s, but what has actually changed? They will insist that there is much more culinary diversity — which may be true — but is the food truly better? I will now dispel for you any notion that Britain is any better off for its ‘diverse cuisine’. After all, where exactly has benefitted? Certainly not Greater London.

Ilford? It was once a prominent town in East London, full of bars, restaurants, and clubs frequented by footballers and Channel 4 showbiz luvvies. Now it is a tip, peppered with tea houses, miserable kiosks, stores selling sarees, and three pubs that cater solely to the dwindling number of aging cockneys who refused to move out. Robin Cook is no longer around to enjoy the ‘explosive’ flavours of South Asian food, but I doubt that he would elect to have a chicken tikka masala — which he was responsible for claiming as ‘Britain’s National Dish’ — in Ilford; certainly no other Brit does. In any case, the British love affair with Indian food is no more than a consequence of lingering colonial paternalism. I needn’t delve into the obvious hygiene problems, but Brits who dine in Indian restaurants carry almost a sense of pity — an imperial hangover that compels them to fawn over the culture of their (former) colonial subjects. The French — quite rightly — find this sort of sentiment intolerable, and such food inedible. There is no such obsession with the food of its former colonies. It is slop through and through, and Indian food holds no clout in Paris, or indeed anywhere else that isn’t Britain.

It is also worth noting here that many areas with Asian majorities do not have actual Indian restaurants. In somewhere like Ilford they have small joints that far more resemble takeaways than actual restaurants with front-of-house and bar staff. This seems counterintuitive until you realise that restaurants need a client base that drinks alcohol, because this is the only way that restaurants outside of tourist hotspots can turn a profit. People in Ilford, for obvious reasons, do not drink. Upon closer inspection, you’ll find more Indian restaurants in Havering than Redbridge, as British clients are actually needed to keep these places solvent.

So what is left? The Italian scene is in decline: it simply cannot cater to changing demographics and childlike tastebuds. Everyone is over the charcuterie board fad, and Italian restaurants simply do not offer any beef or chicken dish of note. (Try to name one off of the top of your head.) Italian restaurants have also been ruthlessly eliminated from the market by ‘fast casual’ chains such as Prezzo, Bella Italia, and Zizzi; and given that Italians are now all but fully assimilated into the native population, there is no longer even an ethnic cohort that can be relied upon to provide a regular customer base for authentic Italian restaurants. In any case, nobody will go out for pizza and pasta when these are dishes that you can just order in or make at home. Italian restaurant staff have also done themselves no favours by being the only demographic that goes out of its way to argue with customers.

Dining in a Turkish restaurant is a waste of money. It’s kebab shop food, but half the portion size and quadruple the price, and with your plate littered with rice and inedible shredded salad — the usual Byzantine parlour tricks that try to get you to pay £50 for beef ribs and two lamb chops, seasoned in such a way that you don’t notice the poor quality of the meat. Add to that the nauseating nightclub lighting, black dinnerware and furniture, and live Turkish music, and you have your Turkish dining experience. Greek food is the same, but a bit cheaper and better — and also there’s pork. In stark contrast to Turkish restaurants, everything is white, and the music is quieter (though they compensate for this by smashing hundreds of plates every night). Middle Eastern food is exactly the same as Turkish, even if they believe otherwise and start jockeying over who makes the better rice (‘it’s pilau not pilaf mate, Iranians invented rice’).

That leaves Chinese food. It is in the same predicament as Italian and Indian food: Chinese restaurants very much need the British because they form a large part of their clientele and, perhaps more important still, drink lots of the alcohol. This means that they are vulnerable to demographic shifts, which will inevitably lead to more dark kitchens and takeout joints, condemning chefs to 18-hour shifts and sleeping in the kitchen. And, much like Italian restaurants, Chinese restaurants also face brutal competition from ‘fast casual’ chains.

Every other cuisine is too niche, and only really serve regular customers from their ethnic enclaves. Nobody is going to an Eritrean restaurant except the Eritrean uncles who convene daily to discuss geopolitics and the intricacies of the conflict in Ethiopia. Caribbean cuisine is already at the mercy of Turtle Bay, but they have no excuse: there are, in fact, large Caribbean enclaves, but no restaurants of note except takeaways with reputations for ‘poor customer service’. African food still has little cultural capital, no matter how many times Nigerians bicker with Ghanaians on X over who makes the better jollof rice. Chishuru may have a Michelin star, but it doesn’t have any traction with Africans generally, let alone with the ‘Nobu’ demographic.

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The British — including a lot of ‘at pub’ posters and supposed right-wing ‘dissidents’ — do themselves no favours championing mediocrity when it comes to food. I see questionable Sunday Roasts every weekend, and even more questionable Christmas dinners in the holidays. There is nothing endearing about eating like a Spartan. ‘Come to [INSERT EAST END CAFÉ] for top pie and eel, BORSHHH’ does not cut it, as likeable as the Guvnah is.

There is no good reason to settle for eating mush when Britain has some of the best produce and supermarkets in Europe. The average Frenchman eats as Louis XIV did — a man who thought himself as Apollo incarnate. Does the average Brit eat as Henry VIII did? Clearly not. The ‘mi dad worked in t’pit, now I work in t’pit’ mentality needs to die. Fawning over Yorkshire puddings and ‘ancestor food’ on account of it being British (rather than good) is deeply moronic — the equivalent of fans of League Two teams who chant ‘we’re shit and we like it’. You need to be shooting geese out the sky. This isn’t me telling you to leave your accounting job and start releasing cookbooks, by the way.

There are restaurants that serve authentic British food. Rules, in the heart of London, serves classic top-quality British game. It passes the Wokeness test with flying colours, serving up grouse with trace amounts of lead from the shot used to kill it. Nouvelle Cuisine helped propel British food into the fine dining scene; but, as with French food in this country, it remains expensive and mostly inaccessible.

Demographic change has undoubtedly compromised dining in London, and, ironically, it will mean the end of serious dining in London in favour of chains, dingy takeouts with poor hygiene practices, and obnoxious food vans and kiosks. Food in London will all converge into a kind of amoeba-like slop if nothing is done, with everything drenched in gutter oil, cheese, and sweet BBQ sauce. I am not qualified to offer policy on how best to rectify this beyond closing the borders and shutting down dark kitchens and the miscellaneous fried chicken and kebab shops that have poisoned a generation of youngsters. It cannot be that people who eat rice, sweet potato, and cassava six days a week can use cuisine as a justification for open borders and their other nefarious policy ideas.

But worry not young patriots: climate change is here to rescue us. Our grandkids will enjoy olives and figs, drinking Pinot Grigio (2077) from the vineyards of Surrey. Wine and foie gras will be served to schoolchildren. St. Tropez will be underwater, and we will rebuild it in Brighton. Santorini will dry out, and we will carve it out of the White Cliffs of Dover. Rome will fall to a malaria epidemic, and the wine will flow red when we seize the Trevi Fountain. Jamie Oliver and Richard Caring will be tried by the state. Nobu will be shut and repurposed to sell grouse. We will blast a hole through the ozone layer again — above France and Ireland ideally — and disrupt the migratory patterns of partridges. Hunting season will be all year long, and all will be well.