The Times
Giles Coren ventured into one of the half dozen new handroll sushi, aka temaki, bars that have sprung up around London – a concept “rooted in Japanese tradition”, according to its website, but non-existent in Tokyo when Giles last visited, and invented in Los Angeles in 2014.
The venue itself was messy and grim – “like you’d wandered into a rundown hospital canteen” – with guests seated at a counter on “sharp little half-backs… I have never been more uncomfortable at lunch in my life, and I have had lunch on a camel.” Giles’s biggest beef, though, was that temaki are properly “a moment in a meal”, something to served after sashimi and nigiri, but not a meal in themselves. “It’s like going out for mashed potatoes and broccoli.”
If some of the rolls were decent (spicy scallop and baked crab), others were “truly miserable”: the toro taku roll, using the treasured belly meat of the tuna, was “slushy. Almost phlegmy. My mouth just didn’t want it”, while the miso aubergine roll “sogged through the seaweed and was sweeter than cheap chocolate”.
The verdict: “Handroll bars: crap idea. Send them back to LA and let’s get on with building proper restaurants for grown-ups.”
Giles Coren - 2026-06-01
