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So, Shumi


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Steamroller Restaurants, owners of "hush" in Mayfair, will open Shumi at 23 St James Street (formerly Che) in October. Although first and foremost an Italian restaurant, Shuni will borrow heavily from the Japanese style of eating and presentation.

Chef Lee Purcell, previously of Daphne's and Sartoria, has developed a menu with dishes designed for sharing, including saffron scampi with red pepper sauce, tuna and monkfish carpaccio with samphire salad, zucchini flower tempura stuffed with lobster and rice flower spaghetti with a white tomato sauce.

A feature of Shumi will be its "paccio bar" (or Italian sushi counter), inspired by Michelin starred chef Moreno Cedroni who developed the idea of "Susci". Seabass, tuna, salmon, and yellowtail will be served sahimi style seasoned not with wasabi and soy but infused olive oils and fresh herbs.

United Designers have fitted out the Grade II listed 1960's building with white marble flooring and top lit curtains wrapping the room.

Bar capacity - 150

Restaurant - 90

Chefs table - 8

Shumi

23 St James Street

London

SW1

020 7747 9380

website

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  • 2 weeks later...

The headline is the best part...

Seriously though, Shumi smacks of desperation - fusion for the sake of fusion - something born in California that would last a couple of weeks in New York.

Why, why, why, when it's hard enough to have a good Japanese restaurant - or Italian, for that matter - London lacks critical mass of either. Then again...London has I-thai... So what do I know?

Edited by magnolia (log)
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Why, why, why, when it's hard enough to have a good Japanese restaurant - or Italian, for that matter - London lacks critical mass of either.

I disagree. I think in terms of Italian restaurants, London has a good representation. Locanda Locatelli, Assaggi, Harry's Bar - what more could you want?

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Why, why, why, when it's hard enough to have a good Japanese restaurant - or Italian, for that matter - London lacks critical mass of either.

I disagree. I think in terms of Italian restaurants, London has a good representation. Locanda Locatelli, Assaggi, Harry's Bar - what more could you want?

Umm...at the risk of being disingenuous (and I'm American so I reserve the right not to recognise irony)...I don't believe that THREE Italian restaurants is a good representation for a city as cosmopolitan and large as London (over 7 million I think?) - with such a critical mass of Italians (and Brits who spend a lot of time in Italy)!

I haven't been to LL so I can't comment; Assaggi I agree is very good. And as the food at Harry's Bar, where I also haven't been - if it's related in any way to the ones in Venice or New York..it's bound to be a joke. I know there are more good ones - perhaps even 10 ! :biggrin: I would just expect there to be a lot more, and I am frustrated that enterprising individuals are constantly trying to sex up the restaurant scene by coming up with cockamamie pseudo-cuisines...rather than opening restaurants that showcase food that can be so incredibly exciting and varied in its own right.

(Steps off soapbox)

Edited by magnolia (log)
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Well said Magnolia, what is wrong with producing Italian or Japanese (or any other singular cuisine) to the highest standard is beyond me. The attempt at fusion near where I live resulted in bankruptcy within 6 months, and has anyone missed the pretentious crap ... in a word NO.

IMHO there is far too much emphasis put on the decor/design of restaurants, all to the detriment of the food. Or is it all done to provide a distraction as to how bad it really is, or how far your leg is getting lifted.

Edited by Escoffier (log)
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And as the food at Harry's Bar, where I also haven't been - if it's related in any way to the ones in Venice or New York..it's bound to be a joke.

I have it on pretty good authority that the food at Harry's is very good indeed. It is also very expensive indeed and a private members club, so maybe should be excluded when identifying good italian restaurants in London.

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Harry's Bar in London also has nothing to do with the Cipriani operations in NYC and Paris. The UK set up is owned by Mark Birley - who also owns Annabels etc. The Cipriani Group are opening in London early next year, but will not be under the the title of Harry's Bar either.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I chose Shumi for a business dinner yesterday because, of the group of four diners, I knew one would arrive late and one would leave early. One visitor was staying at a nearby hotel. One was German, "doesn't eat sushis" and generally dislikes any food that isn't European. So my hope was that Shumi would give us some flexibility in ordering and dining, without having to resort to Japanese or Chinese food.

Given Shumi's widely varying reviews in the media I had no idea what to expect. The reservationist left me on hold for a long time, trying to figure out whether they could find a table for three; when I called later to increase it to four, he left me waiting even longer. Would we be shoehorned into a tiny space, the last seat allocated in a completely full restaurant, like the last unfortunate passenger squeezing onto a Northern Line carriage?

The building on St James's Street was once a branch of Barclays Bank. If I recall correctly, the tellers were downstairs and you ascended a narrow, steep escalator to meet the branch manager. It then became a rather forgettable restaurant called "Che".

In its incarnation at Shumi, you are checked in on the ground floor where there is a noisy bar, and go up the same escalator to the restaurant. The receptionist went into a bit of panic when we arrived, since the phone upstairs had been left off hook. We couldn't go up there on our own. He couldn't abandon his station. He couldn't reach anyone upstairs. Eventually someone was found to take us up to the restaurant.

The restaurant decor is nondescript modern, but not unpleasant for that. The tables are large and well spaced. In the time we were there, the place was perhaps 70% full. I never enquired as to why it was so complex to find a table for us.

When we sat down, we were discussing the "philosophy" of a particular (non-restaurant) business -- the underlying concept, the beliefs about the world underlying the way this company worked. As if on cue, our waiter arrived "to explain the philosophy of Shumi". The food is Italian, he said, but served Japanese style. You are encouraged to share dishes -- except for pastas, which you are instructed not to share. A dish of well seasoned borlotti beans arrived as a starter.

We worked the service team fairly hard. Our late diner didn't show up for half an hour, and our early leaver wanted to get his dishes quickly. A snootier restaurant could have insisted we all be present before seating us, or given us only one chance to order. As it was, the team at Shumi took our orders as we made them throughout the meal, leaving the menus with us and giving us a lot of flexibility on timing.

Despite the rather silly concept -- chopsticks on the table, food "served for sharing" (which is not common with restaurant food in Japan) -- the food at this place isn't half bad. We had a superb pinzimonio (crudités with vinaigrette): the well trimmed vegetables were fresh, crisp and beautifully seasoned with finely ground salt and herbs. Roman-style artichoke salad was also good. A "trio of prosciutto" was supposed to be served with a special bread, but wasn't -- in fact, we were offered no bread throughout the meal. Perhaps they knew that one of us was on the Atkins diet, or perhaps the oven wasn't working. The prosciuttos themselves were interesting: they ranged from the very finely flavoured to one that was incredibly gamy and earthy.

We couldn't bring ourselves to plot main courses for sharing, so these were individual. I had a dish of scampi, tasty but for £18 not a generous portion; others had seabass (though I believe he ordered duck) and pork tenderloin. Dessert was a hard cheese called piave, served with a chutney and a flavourful sliced pear.

The biggest service gaffes involved the wine. We had a Vernaccia di San Gimigniano, 2002. Though the tables are large, the bottles aren't left anywhere near them, so you have to rely on the service team to refill glasses. And that didn't work -- some glasses were filled, others left empty for a long time. Water service was similarly erratic. After our mains, we asked for a dessert wine that was offered by the glass. After a long wait, empty glasses arrived on the table. "Your wine is coming", said a waiter. After an even longer wait, he apologised and indicated that they were "bringing the wine up from the cellar." Too late, I said, cancel the wine order -- and they did this cheerfully enough. I wonder how deep under St James's Street the cellar was, and whether they needed to dig a tunnel through to find our wine.

Prices are aggressive but not out of range for this part of London, a road that contains L'Oranger, Fleur (the old Petrus) and a caviar restaurant. The dishes I tasted were all interesting and well executed.

My sense is that the service at Shumi is still being debugged. The severs' attitude was friendly and upbeat throughout, especially given that we had a late arrival, an early departure, orders placed throughout the meal, and, when the drinks service broke down, some rather directive behaviour on my part ("Now serve another glass of wine, please. And refill the water glasses.")

Worth another visit, I think.

Jonathan Day

"La cuisine, c'est quand les choses ont le go�t de ce qu'elles sont."

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I walked past Shumi with a mate last night, staggered actually but that's another story.

Anyway I muttered that it was supposed to be some sort of japanese meets italian place.

In a garbled response, my friend retorted "what the f*** is that all about?"

I didn't know.

Wonder how many people will have thought the same...

A meal without wine is... well, erm, what is that like?

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I had wondered what had happened to Lee Purcell. About 2 years ago he took over as head chef at my local Italian restaurant, Artigano (same people who have brought us Il Convivio). About 2 years, with much sadness we also stopped going to our local Italian restaurant because of the disasterous things Lee Purcell did to the menu there. Gone were the experimental Italian signature dishes which used a range of regional Italian ingredients (things like pumpkin, sage, wild boar, etc.) and instead we got....chicken Milanese. I kid you not. Then, gratefully, about six months ago, Lee Purcell left and all has been restored. I don't know who the new chef is but he/she knows what they are doing.

If Lee Purcell's idea of Italian food is Chicken Milanese, served with a wedge of lemon on the side, I can't wait to see what he does to Japanese food.

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  • 5 weeks later...

So Matthew Fort, in today's Guardian, gave Shumi a remarkable 5/20:

http://travel.guardian.co.uk/restaurants/s...1099993,00.html

My only conclusion is that he had considerably better service than we did last night.

I have been to fine restaurants which have off-nights, and I have been to casual restaurants with informal service. Unlike these, in my opinion, Shumi is a disgrace. In retrospect my main regret was that we did not abort the evening half way through.

What we had here was systemic failure and unprofessional service, suggesting fundamentally poor management. I could recount many little episodes, but life is too short and I want to move on. But let me give an example or two: two of our party were served one course, while the rest of us waited for over half an hour for that course to arrive, tepid. Meanwhile we were staring at our sullied plates, lingering from a course in the distant past.

How do they take orders, I wonder? Do they just enter food orders into a computer, with no attempt to correlate the item with the person who ordered it? Every dish arrived with a query 'who ordered the ...', even when that order was for a single glass of red wine ordered two minutes previously.

But the best was the arrival of the beetroot salad, which none of us claimed. So the waitress concluded 'maybe it's not for this table' left the plate, and walked off. One waiter did kindly work out the beets were a component of the chef's special selection menu, and so we knew who the lucky recipients were. To his credit that waiter listened with remarkable patience and sympathy as we explained how unhappy we were, and he deserves respect. I hope to see him again. Elsewhere.

Pied a Terre has mixed reviews elsewhere in this forum, but if you want to spend 55 pounds per head on food (plus water and wine) then go to Pied a Terre; it has integrity, and it deserves support. Or relax over a pizza and beer at Pizza Express, and find a good cause for the fifty quid you save.

We made a hasty departure, turning down the offer of drinks in the bar and the fur coat the coat-check attendendant offered us by mistake.

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shumi's responsible for one of my worst meals of the year and, unequivocally, my worst dish: the lobster lasagne abberration.

shudder ...

This I don't understand. There's been 10 or fifteen years of fantastic lobster or langoustine pasta dishes on the London scene - raviolo, tortellini - so how did they get it so wrong? Did they forget to kill it? Just wrap a sheet of pasta around a live lobster, attach it to a dog collar, and escort it to your table, where they smashed it with a sledge hammer?

And after all that, I bet they forgot the sauce, right?

Edited by MobyP (log)

"Gimme a pig's foot, and a bottle of beer..." Bessie Smith

Flickr Food

"111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321" Bruce Frigard 'Winesonoma' - RIP

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Did I mention the food? I had the John Dory as a main course, by which I mean I ate a fleck of cold fish basking atop the mound of salt and courgette, and pushed the plate aside. I did not dwell on the food earlier, because the service made my evening so thoroughly unenjoyable I didn't feel I could be objective. However I have seen reviews elsewhere noting the high salt content, so in retrospect I assume my perception was correct.

It was unquestionably the worst restaurant experience I have ever had in London. I have fonder memories of meals which ended with food poisoning.

It might be a good place to shoot some reality TV, however, with real-time blood pressure readings of the contestants.

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I have fonder memories of meals which ended with food poisoning.

:laugh:

I think that should be your signature line.

"Gimme a pig's foot, and a bottle of beer..." Bessie Smith

Flickr Food

"111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321" Bruce Frigard 'Winesonoma' - RIP

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  • 2 weeks later...

A selection of 4 Lunches Boxes are now available from Shumi "guaranteeing busy

people a tasty and quick lunch - in and out within 45 minutes!" according to the press release. Here's the options:

Cio-Cio Lunch Box (single tray) - £18

Shumi Salad, Cio-Cio Beef Tenderloin, Rice Flour Spaghetti with Rosemary

Sea Bass Lunch Box (single tray) - £18

Shumi Salad, Chargrilled Sea Bass with spiky Artichoke and Pancetta, Rice

Flour Spaghetti with Rosemary and Lemon Oil

Tomato Lunch Box (single tray) - £15

Shumi Salad, Tomato and Red Pepper Tartare, Pumpkin and Chestnut Risotto

Deluxe Lunch Box (double tray) - £28

Salmon Tartare with Caviar, Carpaccio of Aberdeen Angus, Shumi Salad,

Saffron Calamari, Chargrilled Sea Bass, Rice Flour Spaghetti with Rosemary

and Lemon Oil

Whilst at the Shumi Bar and Calma Lounge Tony Conigliaro and his team have a range of alcohol free cocktails including the Apple Mojito (apple

juice, lime & lemon juices, poured into a glass with crushed mint leaves), and

the English Rose (lychee juices, cranberry juice and rose syrup).

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  • 1 year later...

I've just read in William Sitwell's Food Spy column in the Evening Standard magazine that Shumi has closed: "To sum up: posh men in suits will never gather in a whitewashed space to eat overpriced pasta with chopsticks."

I've asked the restaurant's (former?) PR company if they have an offical statement which I'll post if and when I get it.

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It closed a couple of weeks ago. It's a shame, I had a couple of fabulous meals there. I feared it to be a pretentious place before my first visit but the staff were welcoming and relaxed and the portions were actually quite generous.

They dropped the Japanese bit a long while ago but everyone knew it as the Japanesey Italian place and even after its demise it seems nothing has changed.

They will keep the Calma Lounge (bar) open on the ground floor and the upstairs restaurant will be a new concept.

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