The sushi master Endo Kazutoshi is looking pensive. “I am 51 now and I finally know who I am,” he says in the private dining room at Kioku, his casual, “Japanese but a little Mediterranean” restaurant on the roof of Raffles London at The OWO. It’s an octagonal room at the far end of the terrace; windows point across London and within it guests might eat ramen ravioli or turbot with a smoked sabayon. Some critics — Giles Coren, at least — didn’t think much of the food. Endo doesn’t seem to mind.
“It’s okay. More people came; there was more interest. It was very early, we’re new, and these places take time. I’m happy to listen and I’m confident it will do well. Japanese food with a Western twist is different. It’s a journey”. But we are not meeting to talk about Kioku. The topic in question is The Rotunda, his one Michelin-star flagship restaurant on the eighth floor of the old Television Centre in White City. It launched in 2019 and rounds of reservations are announced on Instagram. Tables aren’t easily acquired: the place is reserved, near enough, until Christmas.
It closed for refurbishment earlier this year and is to reopen later this month, on September 17. There will be just 10 seats and an 18-course omakase menu, the only option, at £275-per-head. It has been redesigned, reworked, while Endo has looked back 100 years or more to the sushi crafted by his father and grandfather as well as past tutors in Japan in an attempt to take his concept further. In short, he looked back to move forward. If you do bag a booking, don’t start taking pictures. Endo is strict.
“No phones, we will say,” Endo asserts. “Omakase is theatre; this is not just a restaurant. We make stories together. There’s no need for mobile phones. Before we begin, we will announce it: no photos. It’s better if people aren’t on their phones.” Anything else? “We will ask guests to take off any big jewellery. The wood is 200 years old. We don’t want watches to hit it, you see.”
No phones, no jewellery. These stipulations hark back to a story from last year when, new on the scene, Sushi Kanesaka at 45 Park Lane made headlines after asking customers to refrain from using perfume or cologne for fear of impacting the dining experience. Raw fish, stifled by Issey Miyake and the like? Endo agrees with the rule but won’t impose it: “I want to do that. I agree with it. But, for now, maybe it’s too far.”
“Too far” seems an unusual concept for a chef who is so exacting that he ships in water from Japan for his sushi. Why? “It is necessary for the rice,” he says, simply, as though it’s obvious.
Endo is impassioned but reserved as we talk. It’s not easy to get the measure of him. Here is a man at the top of his game — he might be the best sushi chef to ever cook in London — but who feels he has so much more to offer. He will do this by way of onkochishin, a Japanese concept that translates as garnering new knowledge by revisiting the old.
“I looked through my father and grandfather’s recipe notes,” Endo says, showing me old diary cuttings, recipes and drawings. They are all in Japanese, unreadable to me, but guarded by Endo nonetheless. I am granted only a fleeting look at the pages.
“I spent time marinating, looking at traditions; past ideas that are 120 years old. They used fewer ingredients then, and were more subtle with their flavours. It was more about layering and using only the very finest ingredients. It was about understanding each fish, each vegetable, the rice, and putting everything together.”
Omakase is theatre; this is not just a restaurant. We make stories together. There’s no need for photos
Endo saw success before but was moved to change. “It was my destiny to change and to learn. To have a different mentality, to find new skills. The restaurant was five years old and it was time to show how I have evolved and how I’m at a higher level. My sushi masters before me always said you are not ready until you’re at least 50.”
There is evolution and there are levels, but there are also coveted accolades. Endo makes no secret of his ambitions to win a second star: validation of a career spanning almost three decades. Not that it was a career he’d planned on, he tells me. As a teenager, the chef was far more interested in sport. “I studied physical education in Tokyo,” he says. “I started judo at seven and got to regional champion level. I thought that would be my path.”
His parents had other ideas. Endo’s father made sushi; his before him. Endo, the eldest son, “felt some pressure”, with talk of losing his family name if he didn’t comply. Even so, the young man “rebelled and trained to be a teacher”.
Endo goes on: “I love sport. But, of course, they wanted me to take over the family business. It’s customary.”
In his early twenties Endo relented and began his training at restaurants in Tokyo, 45 minutes from his family home in Yokohama. It would — officially, at least — last nine years; four of these were spent cleaning up, making tea, cleaning the fish and “massaging his master”.
“For the first four years, that’s all you do, and then you start making maki rolls, visiting the market. In the beginning, I lived above the restaurant. The master ran like a Swiss watch. All he thought about was sushi. Just work. It’s a little different now, more relaxed. But I do see why there was so much pressure: today I remember the advice from my mother and father and my sushi masters, and I see and understand.”
It sounds like a drudge. But things changed when, aged 26, he borrowed £1,000 from his mother to visit one of the most famous sushi restaurants in Tokyo — he won’t say which — and a place shrouded in mystery. The story goes that it was always fully booked and nobody could tell you how much it would cost.
“It was legendary,” Endo says. “Some people would say he [the sushi master] would charge £500; others, £10,000. There was no information available, you just had to call up and see. I was so nervous. Apparently celebrities would visit, even the prime minister.
“I went and I stayed for five hours. I remember the sea eel, the abalone and the fatty tuna. I wanted to cry. That’s when I really started to take sushi seriously.
“He didn’t ask about my job, but I think he knew, and he told me: ‘Don’t think too much. You have to work out which is the right way… and you have to believe in yourself’.”
I remember the sea eel, the abalone and the fatty tuna. I wanted to cry. That’s when I started to take sushi seriously
The right way for Endo, it would later transpire, would be to come to London and build his own business. He wanted to “go it alone”. His family restaurant in Yokohama, there since 1930, is now run by his younger brother; loved ones have watched him flourish from afar. “I was only going to be here for three years,” says Endo. “I told my family I would go back. But I visited and explained that I had to move to London. I wanted to see the world and I have been given so many opportunities here and met so many people.
“When I arrived in London, there was nowhere good to have sushi. London didn’t really have anything [like that]. So I started importing Japanese seaweed, proper vinegar and soy sauce; I don’t know how anyone survived before.”
It’s paid off. Today, Endo’s west London restaurant is one of the foremost pillars in modern dining in the city, a place people commit to spending hours getting in.
In its new incarnation, Endo’s omakase experience will revolve around a “seasonally-driven” menu lasting upwards of three hours. Seafood will come from Cornwall and Spain, with only the highest quality mackerel, langoustines, scallops and tuna served on rice; wasabi, soy sauce and ginger — sourced from Japan — in tow.
Mostly, diners will be given nigiri, though there will be dishes from the grill. To drink, paired wines, tea and sake, including one made just for Endo. “My target now is to reopen and to grow,” says Endo, visibly excited. “To connect. Sushi is not just food, but an experience, and you have to have personality.
“I don’t know about other restaurants in London. I came here and started out on my own and my omakase is always a story. I work in a triangle: producer, guest and me. We make it all happen together.”
