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meal I have eaten in a restaurant in more than 20 years as a critic (though a couple in Tokyo and my first at El Bulli were also good).

I am fessing up loudly to this “not open yet” point because in general I do think a critic should wait for a restaurant to be fully open to the public, travel incognito and experience as far as possible the experience of an “ordinary punter”. But Endo does not do “ordinary” for anyone. And when it opens, it will be almost impossible to get in anyway. Even for me. So might as well be hanged for a fraud as a no-show.

This, Endo’s first permanent restaurant with his own name over the door, is on the eighth floor of the Rotunda at what used to be BBC Television Centre in White City and is a now a mixed residential and office block – which is a very Japanese place for a restaurant to be. On my first visit to Tokyo I spent a lot of time in lifts saying to people, “And you’re sure the restaurant is up there?”

It is a breathtaking space into which you emerge straight out of the lift: a huge, wide, smooth table of blond wood snakes across a well-lit room with white fabrics suspended from the ceiling to mute sound and perhaps also suggest waves, oceans, water, fish …

The walls are all of glass and throw out onto, again, a very Japanese-feeling view of new-built office and retail spaces, streetlights, video advertisements, trains, so that you feel you could easily be in … Oh, except

Eating outGiles Coren

his week’s restaurant isn’t technically open yet, which is a first for me. Indeed, when I paid my first visit, 15 days ago, Endo at the Rotundawasn’t even into its soft period of discounted food and local cognoscenti. It was just Esther and me, the chef and a couple of sous,

saké sommelier Natsuki Kikuya, manager Stephan Guicheteau (coming off 20 years fronting up Nobu Park Lane) and a barman. The following night, I know, they were expecting the King of Jordan. But first, me. This place knows its priorities.

The chef, Endo Kazutoshi, a third- generation sushi master from Yokohama (and executive chef of the international Zuma chain), is a friend of a friend and has cooked for me before at a couple of private parties. I say “cooked for me”. What I mean is that I have stood across a bar from him in the home of an old pal and watched as he wrapped otoro in seaweed, spooned caviar over it and placed it in my hand. Then eaten it. Then all but passed out from the indescribable perfectness of the mouthful.

And last night I passed out, right there in my seat, probably 18 times in all, over the course of what was probably the most perfect

T

‘It was probably the most perfect meal I have eaten in a restaurant in more than 20 years as a critic’

Endo at the Rotundathat it says “Westfield” in huge red lights over the shopping centre.

We had Endo all to ourselves, obviously, whereas you may have to share him with 17 others at the 18-seater bar (it was designed for 24 but they’ve brought the maximum down for the sake of intimacy). But his presence is a promise: if Endo can’t make it, the place won’t open. And the other junior chefs who work around him and share the not very heavy lifting are all, in their own way, geniuses too.

We had an omakase menu with 16 dishes listed on a sheet of fat, lush-textured A4, and three or four others thrown in at random, all made in front of us and served hand to hand. There was not a duff note. Not the briefest moment when quality fell away from perfection.

We began with a “clam chowder soup with Japanese olive oil” made with Breton clams, a dashi stock, a splash of milk, mild and warm, with one nuggety clam waiting for us in the depths. I think Endo called it a “truffle clam” – is that a thing? I could be wrong. He talksa lot and very fast and with great enthusiasmand it’s possible to miss stuff.

He grinningly calls certain mouthfuls his “signature” (they are too tiny to be called “dishes”) and one of these was a slice of toasted homemade bread (in the Japanese supermarket squishy style) with shredded spider crab and steamed sea urchin (which takes the tang off it a little), plus wonderful golden oscietra from China (high-rollers

can ramp up the caviar variety at their own expense if they want to). The mouthful was warm, fresh, melted slowly, yielded sweetness and fat, was beyond imagining. I closed my eyes, like a total knob. I couldn’t not. It took me places. I wanted to be alone with it. Naked.

Then he took a sheet of his own special “signature” seaweed, the kind his grandfather always used – it is good now because Jan-Feb is high season for it – and he cut slices of bluefin toro from a huge slab, aged for eight days at 2C to develop the flavour, and lowered them into the weed and then draped some caviar over it, a few grains of rice, half-folded it, handed it to me. I ate it. And I heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

As I ate this stuff, my eyes rested on beautiful knives, ancient crockery (not much matching because, “You find two or three of these maybe – you don’t find 24!”) and on the table of pale Japanese cypress, half a foot thick, a yard across, 25 yards of length, maybe, planed down after every service to present virgin wood to each new guest, with perfectly rolling refrigerated drawers of Endo’s own design. I asked him how much it cost, because I’m a twat. He laughed. We all laughed. He said maybe three years’ salary for him. So.

We had a narrow grilled fillet of “kimme-dai” (golden snapper) from Portugal (all the fish is day-boat caught from a named location) given little cuts to point up its shimmering skin and give it a whiff of “dragon”, in a dashi stock beefed up with the fish’s head.

Then a piece of toro nigiri, just seared slightly with a handheld brazier (“I won’t use a blow torch”) of burning Japanese coals. Everything comes from Japan. Even the water the rice is cooked in. Which is the water it grew in. The rice is warm, smooth, sticky, effulgent. The nigiri is beyond perfect.

Natsuki brings us a tray of a dozen different saké cups to choose from. She says our choice will reveal our personality. It’s like that scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (which cup would Jesus choose?). Except she is kind of joking.

There is a scallop on the half shell (from Salcombe) with Japanese butter and the mashed “liver”, sitting on slightly smouldering juniper twigs. A langoustine (Scotland) is pressed onto rice, blobbed with freshly grated wasabi and soy before us, then handed over, Endo insisting it is eaten within three seconds, as, like all nigiri, after that it will begin to spoil.

I so want you to grasp the humour and humanity, the vastness and smallness of Endo. I want to do his accent for you, but on the page it’s too reductive. It’s just, I don’t know. You’ll wish he was your dad. (His own teenage daughter, he says, takes the piss out of his English – but I guess she’s allowed to.)

He gives us a little Welsh salt to eat. Then nigiri of red mullet from the Lizard with chopped chive and ginger. Then “akami [lean tuna] ‘zuke’ nigiri with Japanese Dijon mustard” and some squid, so fresh, the like of which I have never eaten nor can describe. It was like chewing milk in which someone had, perhaps, dissolved a seahorse.

Mackerel nigiri, yellowtail shabu shabu with verdant leaves and fresh sansho peppercorns that bring water rushing to the mouth, leaves of salmon smoked briefly before our eyes and laid over rice, salmon roe stirred into a raw egg laid in Gloucestershire that morning, with some parmesan grated over it and truffle and then a leaf of grampa’s seaweed crumpled in, a wagyu course (just three grilled buttery nuggets of sirloin with a sansho pepper sauce) and finally, two slivers of sweet potato tempura (from Kagoshima) with a pot of honey for dipping.

Have you got a sense of it? Probably not. But if I were even ten times the writer I am, I still couldn’t get it across. The specialness, the quiet theatricality, the beauty of the man and of his cooking. Everyone will want to be here. But almost nobody will be. I am just so glad that I will be able to say I was here at least the once. n

Endo at the Rotunda

The Helios Building, Wood Lane, London W12 (020 3972 9000; endoatrotunda.com) Cooking 10Service 10Space 10Score 10 Price Full evening omakase from around £150 to around £250 depending on caviar/truffle type choices. And not including drinks. Lunchtime will eventually offer a shorter £60 menu and à la carte.

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