Reams and reams have been written about the rise and rise of Scott Hallsworth, founder of the Kurobuta empire. Right now it’s just the three outposts, all resolutely West London: King’s Road, Marble Arch and a newly-opened space on the 5th floor of Harvey Nichols. It’s only two and a half years ago though, since there were zero Kurobutas and that mix of Japanese precision and Australian swagger was still just a gleam in Hallsworth’s Nobu-trained eye.
At this rate of expansion there’ll be Hallsworth’s signature Japanese junk-food in every corner of London soon. But till that great day arrives, West London’s holding all the wagyu sliders hostage and I’ve come all the way to an SW1 department store to track them down.
Inside Kurobuta it doesn’t feel like being in a department store, though on the way up to their 5th floor corner there’s a strong feeling of high-end food court – Polpo and Burger & Lobster are running parallel kitchens in other sections of the floor, separated from Kurobuta by the Harvey Nichols café, the wine shop and the foodmarket. But once you’re seated a lot of black drapery and carved wooden screens keep out the noise and shopfloor strip-lighting. A good thing, because the menu’s going to take your full concentration.
The sections include but aren’t limited to: Snacks, Cold/Raw/Salad, Robata BBQ, Junk Food Japan, Something Crunchy, Significant Others, Maki. That takes you about two thirds of the way down.
So there’s serious deliberation involved, and an element of codebreaking – although the waiters seem to know everything about every dish, ever, and be incredibly excited about all of it, so you’re not short of people to ask for advice. Five or six plates between the two of us is the general consensus, so we cover as many of the subsections as we can with those.
In the tradition of Japanese Izakaya pubs – although not restricted to the one-dish focus of a proper Izakaya – Kurobuta’s just as strong on beers and sake as cocktails, and features mostly food rich and heavy enough to soak up an evening’s worth of rigorous sake-comparing.
With hindsight, and the rest of the dinner behind us, you can tell the rice senbei crisps with avocado and jalapeno dip – Snacks menu – aren’t that memorable. Not compared to the dishes from the Robata BBQ or Junk Food Japan sections. But if shrimp tempura with kimchi and umami mayo, and a sake caipirinha hadn’t turned up hot on their heels I’d still be looking back on the senbei crisps as a golden age of barsnacks.
The shrimp tempura, and everything that turns up after, explains why our waiter can talk about things having a ‘recognisably Kurobutan twist’ and keep a straight face. This is a menu you’d recognise blindfolded, in a sticky, hot heartbeat. The tea smoked lamb, with spicy Korean miso is a perfect example of that, or the Wagyu sliders with crisped onion and yakiniku sauce. Everything’s had the umami or the sweetness or the smokiness dialled up to a level that makes the menu’s flowery descriptions look like enormous understatement next to the real thing.
Nowhere more so than the Nasu Dengaku – miso-grilled aubergine with candied walnuts. I already love aubergine to a degree that means there shouldn’t be room for this to take me by surprise, Kurobuta’s preaching to the converted. But this is aubergine of a different order – smokier than the smoked lamb and meatier than the Wagyu, stickier and sweeter than our dessert.
We wrap up with a glass of Autumn Leaves sake and a Yuzu pot – yuzu pears, meringue and sake kasu ice cream to share. There are more adventurous things on the dessert menu, we’re told, but neither of us want anything to overwrite the memory of that nasu dengaku. And with Kurobuta’s rapid expansion surely there’ll be a hundred East London outposts any day now, where I can hit up the rest of the menu’s million sections and all the desserts that we missed.
Or just eight orders of aubergine each.
Kurobuta at Harvey Nichols, 125, Knightsbridge, SW1X 7RJ. Tel: 0207 9206443. Website.
