5-7 Voltaire Road, SW4 (020-7978 1610) Don’t tell anybody, but after Hoxton, Clapham North has become the coolest place in London to hang out. So it’s appropriate that Ni Lenette and Ken Sam picked Clapham for their ultra-cool, Japanese restaurant, Tsunami. In a multicultural area of many contrasts it too is full of unexpected juxtapositions. The decor is funky minimalist, yet the staff are warmly welcoming and totally relaxed. The service is crisply efficient, while the loos are a zen paradise, with bowls of floating chrysanthemums, bird-of-paradise flowers and incense. The clientele are unpretentious and patently enjoying themselves, but the food is high art.
Eating is a family experience and dishes are best enjoyed by sharing, according to the paragraph in Tsunami’s menu introducing unfamiliar diners to its Japanese cuisine. Dishes come in no particular order, and everyone takes a share of each as it arrives. My family group didn’t need to be told twice. As each breathtakingly beautiful dish touched the table, five sets of chopsticks shot out to taste. Which was a pity, in a way, because presentation is an essential part of the Japanese way of eating. It might have been nice to sit and look at each offering for a little longer - so my husband did the next best thing and snapped away with his digital camera so that he and I could retrieve the sense of pleasure to the eye later.
Although in Japan you order your dishes as you go along, at Tsunami they prefer you to order the whole meal at once and then leave the kitchen to resolve the order. It took us some time to assemble our list, fortified with Kirin and Asahi beers, and nibbling on a plate of edamame - delicious green soy beans sprinkled with salt. Our waitress - clad in black from head to toe, like all the waiting staff - was charming and patient, only counselling us that a table of 14 was expected later, and we’d get smoother service if we ordered now.
Our first dish to arrive was turbot sashimi with lime - transparent crescents of pale fish around a central arrangement of shredded radish, on a spacious flat bowl, the pale blue of the platter perfectly setting off the fish, slivers of cucumber completing the design. And it tasted wonderful - succulent, and with an unexpectedly intense tang.
Then came a flurry of plates of all sorts and sizes, bearing exquisitely arranged delicacies: crunchy kataifi prawns, wrapped in shredded-wheat style pastry and deep-fried, erect on segments of cucumber around an edible centrepiece, with a dab of creamy sauce; tender, steamed shumai dumplings filled with snow crab and prawn, in a miniature steamer; shimmering, mathematically precise slices of salmon sushi roll on an elongated plate, each with a dab of spicy miso on top. All demolished in a trice, to cries of
excitement at the distinctive deliciousness of each.
Pause, while a rectangular plate, realistically sculpted with duck-egg blue, white-crested waves is delivered with appropriate drama. On it, piles of salt into which are embedded four single oysters, each a minor masterpiece - oyster with citrus and soy, with tomato salsa, in kataifi pastry, in tempura. Each a taste sensation, and - oh! the good fortune - none of the twentysomethings at our table has yet succumbed to the oyster urge, so my husband and I can savour each in the leisurely fashion they deserve (sharing each one, naturally). And a moment of near-religious attention from the table as I am allowed the centrepiece of the oyster-platter entirely to myself. I have to confess to a serious passion for Tsunami’s oyster shooter: a single raw oyster and the yolk of a quail’s egg in a shot glass, immersed in saki and seasoned with soy, spring onion and bonito. I recommend tipping the whole thing into your mouth in one go, then chewing gently to savour the mingled taste before swallowing. Divine!
Refreshed by the brief intermission, everyone was now ready for a fresh procession of dishes, a little more substantial than those that had preceded, but nonetheless, light on the stomach. This is one of the delights of Japanese cuisine. There is no heavy starch, no bread to fill you up, just flavour sensations, one after the other. The soy sauce and searing green wasabi, which our waitress discreetly replenished throughout the meal, enhance the flavours without cloying the appetite.
Chirashi-sushi came next, a deep dish of mixed raw fish, diced and piled over a bed of sticky rice. Alongside it came our exotic salad, seaweeds with tozasu dressing, in sharp shades of deep brown, bright green, yellow and white, neatly divided, on an oblong black dish. And immediately afterwards, in another hand-crafted pottery bowl, the intriguingly named “Buddha’s lucky pouch” - lobster, scallop and tiger prawn wrapped in rice-paper, and poached in a lobster broth. While one bowl circulated to the left, the other went to the right, and by the time they got back to me there was not much left. Enough, however, for me to savour the individual precision of the flavours, the sushi fresh and flavourful, the dumpling sweetly satisfying in its light broth.
Another welcome pause. We have somehow failed to order our black cod in sweet miso. Brief consultation with solicitous waitress, then we decided to order it anyway and wait. It was the right decision. We could recapitulate the taste sensations up to this point in the meal and, yes, we could hanker after dishes we had not tried on this occasion, as these wafted by on their way to adjacent tables. Waiters who surely had enough on their hands already were endlessly charming and patient as we summoned them to identify for us the eye-catching dish they had just carried from the serving hatch.
Through the hatch we had a clear view of the kitchen. The chefs at Tsunami are a rainbow-alliance of apparently permanently chilled-out, unflappable women and men, of every ethnic extraction. They sport an array of chefs’ hats, oriental headbands and colourful bandanas. One of them reminded us uncannily of a distinguished professor we all knew. Presiding over them all on the night we were there was Ni Lenette. By the end of the evening the women at our table had decided she was our new role model. With the looks of a supermodel and Jamie Oliver’s restaurateur mix of charm and ruthlessness, she stole the show in the kitchen - every bit as imposing a presence as Master Sushi Chef Singi Nakamura, with his goatee beard and
peroxide-streaked quiff (who was not, as it happens, in evidence).
The cod arrived, with a bowl of rice. Resting on a green leaf, on a black platter, with a spear of red ginger across it, it was cooked to perfection, and entirely worth waiting for. The same went for our shared dessert. We were warned that Ni Lenette was making this particular dessert box for the first time - there might be some delay. We were well beyond worrying, and besides, our green tea was both calming and delicious. The dessert when it arrived exceeded expectation. Inside a rectangular, lidded black lacquer box were three divisions and three desserts. A hot chocolate soufflé, garnished with bright-pink wedges of dragonfly fruit; three sushi-style slices of something tasting of baked banana and satay, wrapped in chocolate fondant and topped with gold-leaf; green tea ice-cream with a biscuit twist.
The table of 14 arrived, stylishly late, just as we were finishing. It was the staff from Nobu, celebrating the birthday of one of their managers. I can’t really think what better recommendation you could have for Tsunami, than that the staff of the other acclaimed modern Japanese restaurant in London should choose it as the restaurant to go to for that extra special evening out.
Price: About £40 a head, including beers and service
Giles Coren is away
