17-05-2025
‘It's a dreary, claggy mess': TOM PARKER BOWLES is disappointed by a new Japanese joint in London's Kensington
Konjiki promised so much – a small, new, family-run Japanese restaurant just off Kensington High Street, the sibling of two much loved Sakura restaurants in Portsmouth and Southampton. You pass through the pale-wood façade, beneath the paper lanterns and downstairs to a bright basement, where you're greeted and led to a comfortable booth. The menu – with the exception of the aburi cheese nigiri (about which, more later) – is filled with the usual gyoza, sushi, sashimi and tempura, followed by donburi, or rice bowls, in various guises. It's a place you want to love.
Service is utterly charming and before long Joe and I are deep into a bottle of cool, crisp Nanbu Bijiin sake, slipping deeper still into the delectable world of restaurant gossip. The joy of seeing an old friend after such a long time, and the softening effect of the sake, put me in a particularly merry frame of mind. Merry enough to overlook the soggy, overcooked edamame, and the chicken yakitori, which, while nicely fatty, missed that all-important char.
Tempura arrives, the prawns wearing wisps of gossamer-light crisp batter, the best I've eaten for months. We order another bottle of sake and continue our salacious stroll through the soft underbelly of the London hospitality world. Despite sounding like something dredged up from the seventh circle of TikTok inferno, the aburi cheese nigiri is rather good and – far from a gimmick – involves a well-known Japanese searing technique. It's richly redolent, a joyously smoky melange of fat, salt and fish.
Things then descend swiftly into mediocrity, with a dreary, claggy mess of tuna and salmon, piled into a cheap, hard taco shell. There's an excess of mayonnaise and not enough seasoning. Sukiyaki, which should be an elegant mix of sweetish, savoury, crisp and soft, is a dull, homogeneous bore, the broth insipid, the beef dreary. Not so much bad as forgettable.
Unagi-don is worse, the eel flabby and muddy-tasting, with little hint of teriyaki sauce. We leave most of it untouched. Which is a shame as, with a little work, Konjiki could be a really decent local Japanese. Let's hope it's just teething problems, and the best is yet to come.
