At Soseki, one London's few kaiseki-style restaurants, let the chef call the shots and take a winding trip through Japan's haute cuisine.

The Venue
Facing across from the Gherkin, diners can enjoy the dubious pleasure of watching be-suited City types scurry past below and observe the late evening toil in the neon-lighted offices nearby. In contrast, Soseki's interior is soothing and serene - dark wood, high ceilings, and intricately-carved bamboo lanterns all combine to give a feeling of Eastern luxury. The main restaurant comprises of several booths set alongside tall windows, soft embroidered chairs ranging along the sushi bar, and a tatami-mat table at the back. For a special occasion, book a table in one of the pagodas, where you climb a few wood steps to enter a tiny tree-house-like area, with an intimate table for two and a table for four-to-six opposite.

The Atmosphere
Refined but not excessively formal, open-plan but with several semi-private tables, Soseki caters perfectly for both the business lunch and romantic rendezvous. Japanese lounge music plays in the background, while the sushi chefs, who take centre stage in the open kitchen area, exchange sporadic shouted orders in Japanese, whilst hand-moulding your dinner in front your eyes.

The Food
Soseki offers a short selection of set menus in the omakase tradition (roughly translated as chef's choice), whereby the chef creates a set of dishes based on the freshest seasonal ingredients in his supply. For example, the Haiku menu (£50) consists of 11 mini-courses, which on one particular day could include such items as an appetiser of lotus root, truffle potato, and wasabi monkfish liver, followed by high-quality sashimi (salmon, sweet shrimp, scallop), wan mono soup (a clear broth with sea bass), and chawanmushi (a savoury egg custard with mushrooms and chicken - silky-textured and delicately-flavoured). The menus range from the £25 Sushi menu to the £100 Hanashi wine tasting menu, where each dish is accompanied by a specially selected wine. Whatever the choice, you'll soon lose count as dish after beautifully-assembled dish appears at your table, until dessert (such as creamy black sesame pudding with green tea mochi-roll) signals the end of the culinary adventure.

The Drink
From the short cocktail list (all £8), the sweet and simple Tokyo Martini (fresh ginger, lychee juice, vodka) hits all the right notes, while the fresh juices include the robust-sounding Tomato Arigato (tomato, broccoli, spinach, cucumber) and the more palatable Pear Tang (pear, apple, carrot, ginger). As for the wines, the French-dominated list holds over a dozen whites and a handful of reds, spread evenly across the £20 to £100 range. There is also a variety of sake (around £12 for a 175ml flask) and shochu (around £6 for 50ml), a Japanese liquor distilled from ingredients such as buckwheat, sweet potato, and barley.

The Last Word
With the menu choice left in the chef's hands, this isn't the place for fussy eaters, but turn up with an open mind and Soseki will take you on a sophisticated, varied, and hopefully surprising ride.

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