Japanese grill fans will love Hachi in Soho, especially those rich enough to indulge in the wagyu beef offering Hachi Japanese BBQ, 56 Brewer Street, London W1F 9TJ. Starters and sides £5.80-£11.20, grill platters £7.80-£139.70, desserts £3.20, beer from £5.60, sake from £11.80 a glass For a restaurant where it’s possible to spend significant amounts of money, Hachi, in London’s Soho, doesn’t look like much. It has a narrow exterior of black brick. There is something eager about the window display: multiple menus, some with pictures of food; a shelf with emptied bottles of Japanese liquor, as ..read more

A truly cosmopolitan mix of Mexican mezcal, dry sherry from Spain, Japanese umeshu, British elderflower and grapefruit soda This is a globetrotting take on a winter paloma, featuring Japanese umeshu, Mexican mezcal and British elderflower cordial. Combined, they produce a fruity, floral and irresistibly pink long drink ..read more

Two ways to get the most out of this autumn veg favourite: in a smooth coconut and lime pickle madras served with griddled spiced hispi cabbage, and a pumpkin katsu fish curry Pumpkins are undoubtedly one of the vegetable highlights of autumn. I started growing them at home last year, and often brought them into work for the kitchen team to experiment with. There’s usually a sigh whenever I interrupt morning prep in this way, but it often turns into one of joy, because the chance to work with an ingredient that’s truly seasonal invariably gets the creative juices going. There’s a wide array of ..read more

From stove to table in 15 minutes: baked miso and sesame salmon on broccoli, sesame and ginger noodles This flavour-packed dinner takes just minutes to put together. The salmon then looks after itself for 15 minutes in the oven with a miso-sesame glaze, and it’s just a quick stir-fry for the garlic, ginger, broccoli and noodles. We have variations of this on repeat at home for a quick dinner; thick straight-to-wok udon are my favourite here, but by all means use with watever you like, cooked according to the packet instructions ..read more

Japan House, London This mouthwatering show celebrates Japan’s fine art of creating delectable duplicates – the work of craftspeople since the 1920s, all intended to tempt customers into restaurants Twinkling pearls of salmon roe gleam on top of succulent slices of taro, while a platter of oysters glistens under the gallery spotlights. A bright red crab sparkles next to slices of seared tuna that glow with almost radioactive intensity, alongside a shimmering slab of intricately marbled wagyu beef. Around the room spreads a gob-smacking buffet of the plumpest grapes, freshest sashimi and silkie ..read more

For decades nori-wrapped rice dish was mainly a snack eaten at home or in a bento, but now it has come into its own It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the s ..read more

A simple yet sophisticated twist on the mojito This take on the mojito has been a staple on our menu since day one at Nipperkin. It’s delicate, light and refreshing, and simplicity itself to reproduce at home. Angelos Bafas, head of bars, Nipperkin at Nijū, London W1 ..read more

Sampuru are a restaurant staple – a 3D version of menus. And such is the precision craftsmanship in their creation, they cost far more than the real thing The silver-stripe round herring is a delicate fish with a metallic band along its flanks. It can only be eaten fresh in the area where it’s caught – the warm waters of southern Japan in Kagoshima prefecture. Served as kibinago sashimi, it has become a regional delicacy: tiny shiny fish served on a plate, coiled like chainmail. If your 2024 travel plans don’t include Kagoshima, you could instead head to Kensington, London, to see this dish. F ..read more

Robert De Niro was so taken by Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s cuisine that they went into business … the rest is notoriety Some meals are more memorable than others. In 1988, Robert De Niro met the English director Roland Joffé, with whom he had recently made The Mission, at a restaurant in Los Angeles called Matsuhisa. The restaurant had opened a year earlier and Joffé had become a regular, but it was De Niro’s first visit. The actor ordered black cod miso – a discreet slab of marinated fish topped with a single strand of pickled ginger root – and drank the Japanese sake Hokusetsu. At the time there we ..read more

In this exclusive extract from her new book, Dinner, our star food writer reveals what she really cooks at home, from family meals to feeding a crowd I’m flabbergasted to tell you that this month marks my seventh year of writing the New Vegan column. That’s a total of 348 recipes (or just 17 short of one for every day of the year). It’s taken a lot of vegetable peelings, sweat and tears to get here, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that plant-based cooking has been anything but a limit on my creativity, and that the fire in my belly for writing new recipes has often been sparked by ..read more