One of my best discoveries recently is 8 places sushi-ya in Wimbledon Takahashi, run by a husband and a wife team. Before moving to London, Nobuhisa Takahashi worked at a kaiseki restaurant in Japan as well as Nobu Tokyo, where he acquired great skills for both, sushi and Japanese fine dining.…

A PhD in microbiology may not seem an obvious background for the creator of a trendy ramen shop in Oslo, but the connections run deeper than you might think. David Quist talks to Luxeat about the huge untapped potential of making meat from fungi, and why ramen is the perfect…

Sake – a fermented alcohol, brewed from rice, kōji rice, water and yeast – is one of the world’s most misunderstood beverages. It’s not a distilled spirit, and to ensure it maintains its true quality, low temperature storage is essential at all times. We sit down with Rebekah Wilson-Lye, a…

Rice, as we’ve discovered in researching its value across various corners of the world in this special issue, is a staple in many billions of peoples’ diets around the world. In West Africa, the Indian subcontinent, large parts of East and Southeast Asia and even parts of Europe, it’s integral…

In Japan, the masters responsible for carving statues depicting buddhas and bodhisattvas are called Busshi. Through his documentary Carving the Divine, Yujiro Seki, a Japanese-born filmmaker, provides a deep dive into the lives of Busshi in contemporary Japan. Offering a rare and intimate look into the life and artistic process of…

Here’s a list of my favourite books about Japan. They have influenced me and taught me a lot about Japanese culture: cooking, travel, design and art. Check them out. A great way to spend those cool Autumn evenings. Flavor and Seasonings: Dashi, Umami and Fermented Foods by The Japanese Culinary…

by Pablo Alomar Salvioni Sake, locally known as Nihonshu, is drenched in myth and mystery. The Japanese seem to have a complex code in their DNA that defines the exclusive rules surrounding sake tasting…and their exceptions, in a deep and difficult balance. What for Europeans is black or white, for…

Matt Goulding doesn’t do things by halves, and his recent James Beard award for Dining and Travel writing—specifically for his piece dubbed “Slice of Tokyo: How Japan Became a Pizza Hotspot”, for Airbnb Magazine—attests to this. Before writing about pizza, he learned how to make it, by becoming a certified…

Learning the joys of living local during the lockdown. The first days of lockdown in London already feel like another age. Maybe it’s because they were marked by never-ending queuing for food. For someone born in Lithuania duringthe last years of the Soviet Union, long queues for grocery shopping felt…

While these days dining out is not an option, here are some of my favourite restaurants in London which offer delivery or takeaway.Updated on 18th November 2020 Jump to:bakery & breakfast, burgers, sandwiches and bagels, italian, pizza, contemporary european, european regional, seafood, meat & bbq, japanese, chinese, thai / korean,…