The Best Japanese Restaurants in London, and the Booking Rules Nobody Prints

Ask for the best Japanese restaurant in London and you get one list. It should be three, because the question hides three completely different evenings: a ten seat omakase counter, a set menu at forty, and a bowl of udon at fifteen.

All three are excellent. What separates them is not quality, it is the booking rule, and that is the part every other guide leaves out.

The rooms below publish some of the strictest conditions of any cuisine in this city. One releases two months of tables at nine in the morning on a single announced date and takes nothing by email. One takes bookings exactly one month ahead and not a day sooner. One takes no bookings at all, while its own sister branch does. Read the rule before you read the menu.

The single most useful thing on this page

The expensive rooms have a cheap entrance and they do not advertise it. The same kitchen, the same room, a fraction of the bill, and usually at a time of day nobody thinks to ask about.

At Roka the set menu is 39.50 and it runs at dinner as well as lunch, Monday to Friday, which almost no London set menu does. At Umu, a Michelin starred Mayfair kaiseki room, lunch starts at 50 pounds. At Koya a full Japanese breakfast is 12.60.

The set menu guide covers this pattern across the rest of the city. In Japanese restaurants it is at its most extreme.

Omakase in London: the counter, and the move to Chelsea

Endo, Blacklands Terrace

Ten seats in Chelsea, in the chef’s own words a new beginning. It is the most sought after counter in Japanese London, and neither of the two websites now carrying the name publishes hours, prices or a telephone number.

Endo

Address

8 to 9 Blacklands Terrace, SW3 2SP. The Rotunda site is at 8th Floor, The Helios, Television Centre, 101 Wood Lane, W12 7FR

Nearest

Sloane Square for Chelsea

Booking

Website only, with reservations for November and December 2026 opening on 5 October at 9am UK time. The Chelsea site publishes a reservations email address and nothing else

Standing

Ten seats, in Endo Kazutoshi's own words a new beginning

How to get in

This one has moved. The Rotunda's own site now leads with the Chelsea opening and publishes no prices, hours or booking route of its own, while the Chelsea site says plainly: this is ENDO, now. It is ten seats on Blacklands Terrace rather than a counter above Television Centre, and the booking is a diary exercise rather than a reservation, released in two month blocks at nine in the morning on a published date. If you read the 290 pound eighteen course figure anywhere, including in older versions of this page, treat it as the Rotunda's and confirm before you count on it.

They are opening a second omakase room in Chelsea. Their own announcement says this October, with further details to follow. Nothing else about it is published yet, so treat any price or date you see elsewhere as invention.

The Michelin room, and its two hour lunch

Umu, Mayfair

Kyoto kaiseki on Bruton Place, a Michelin star within five months of opening in 2004, and the only room here sourcing line caught Cornish fish handled by ikejime.

Umu

Address

14 to 16 Bruton Place, Mayfair, W1J 6LX

Nearest

Bond Street or Green Park

Hours

Monday dinner 6pm to 10pm only. Tuesday to Saturday lunch 12pm to 2pm and dinner 6pm to 10pm. Closed Sunday

Booking

reception@umurestaurant.com or 020 7499 8881

Price

Lunch from 50 pounds for the vegetarian shojin bento, 55 for cold somen, 70 for the shokado bento, 75 for chirashi or ten pieces of nigiri, and 98 for either the tuna chirashi or the shokado with wagyu. Every one comes with salad, rice, miso soup, pickles and a fruit dessert

Standing

Kyoto kaiseki, one Michelin star, sixty four seats

How to get in

Lunch is a two hour window and nothing else. Twelve to two, Tuesday to Saturday, and on Monday there is no lunch at all. That is the constraint people miss when they picture a leisurely Mayfair afternoon. Every lunch menu comes with salad, rice, miso, pickles and a fruit dessert, so 50 pounds is a whole meal rather than a starter price. Allow twenty minutes for the sushi selection, which they ask for in writing.

Best sushi in London: the Marylebone counter with the strictest diary

Dinings, Marylebone

Opened in 2006 by two ex-Nobu chefs on a quiet residential street off the Edgware Road, and still the best value sushi counter in central London.

Dinings

Address

22 Harcourt Street, Marylebone, W1H 4HH

Nearest

Marylebone or Edgware Road

Hours

Dinner Monday to Saturday 6pm to 10.15pm. Lunch on Saturday only, 12.30pm to 3pm

Booking

020 7723 0666 or reservations@dinings.co.uk. The diary opens exactly one month ahead. Cancel inside 24 hours and it is 30 pounds a head, do not turn up at all and it is 50

Price

Modern Japanese small plates and sushi

Standing

Opened 2006 by ex-Nobu chefs Tomonari Chiba and Keiji Fuku

How to get in

Three published rules worth knowing. Lunch happens on Saturday and on no other day of the week. The diary opens exactly one month before the date, so if your date is full you come back a month before the next one rather than joining a list. And Dinings Marylebone and Dinings SW3 are separately managed companies, so a booking at one cannot be moved to the other. The cancellation line is only answered between half three and ten at night.

The set menu that runs at dinner

Roka, Charlotte Street

The original Roka, open on Charlotte Street since 2004 with a robata grill in the middle of the room and the Shochu Lounge in the basement below it.

Roka Charlotte Street

Address

37 Charlotte Street, Fitzrovia, W1T 1RR

Nearest

Goodge Street or Tottenham Court Road

Hours

Lunch Monday to Friday 12pm to 3.30pm, Sunday 12pm to 5pm. Brunch Saturday 11.30am to 4pm and Sunday 12pm to 4pm. Dinner Monday to Thursday 5pm to 10.30pm, Friday 5pm to 11pm, Saturday 5.30pm to 11pm, Sunday 5pm to 10.30pm

Booking

020 7580 6464 or infocharlottestreet@rokarestaurant.com

Price

Classic teishoku set menu 39.50 a head, premium 49.50, both Monday to Friday at lunch and at dinner. The vegetarian robata option carries a 9.30 supplement

Standing

Robatayaki, the original of four London Rokas

How to get in

The set menu is the point and the timing is the trick: it runs at dinner as well as lunch, Monday to Friday, which is rare enough in London to be worth planning a week around. Classic at 39.50 is miso soup, beef gyoza, three sashimi, a salmon maki, prawn tempura and a robata main. Read the supplement line before you order, because choosing the vegetable robata adds 9.30 rather than saving you anything. There are four London sites and this one is the original.

The other three are in Mayfair, Aldwych and Canary Wharf.

The Kobe beef room

Hot Stone, Fitzrovia

Hot Stone

Address

3 Windmill Street, Fitzrovia, W1T 2HY

Nearest

Goodge Street or Tottenham Court Road, five minutes from either

Hours

Monday and Tuesday dinner only, 5pm to 9.30pm. Wednesday and Thursday 12pm to 2pm and 5.30pm to 9pm. Friday and Saturday 12pm to 2pm and 5.30pm to 9.30pm. Sunday 12pm to 2pm and 5.30pm to 8.45pm

Booking

020 7419 0305 or info@hotstonelondon.com

Standing

Their own claim: certified Kobe beef, held by only nine UK restaurants, cooked on a 450 degree volcanic stone

How to get in

No lunch at all on a Monday or a Tuesday, and on the days lunch does run it is a two hour window from midday. Sunday dinner stops at a quarter to nine, the earliest last sitting of their week. The ishiyaki method means the stone arrives at 450 degrees and you cook the Kobe sirloin at the table, which is a choice to make deliberately rather than discover. Wasabi is grated fresh and the soy is barrel aged.

The cheap end, which is where most people should actually go

Koya, Soho

Udon and dashi made fresh every morning and delivered across London by bicycle. Open since 2010 on Frith Street, and the breakfast is the underused part.

Koya Soho

Address

50 Frith Street, Soho, W1D 4SQ

Nearest

Tottenham Court Road or Leicester Square

Hours

Their restaurant page lists 10am to 10pm every day, Sundays and bank holiday Mondays included. Their own FAQ says Monday to Thursday 10am to 10pm and Friday and Saturday to 11pm. The two still disagree, so ring if the last hour matters

Booking

Walk ins only. No reservations of any kind

Price

Japanese breakfast from 12.60 for tamago gohan, 16.90 for grilled fish, 21.90 for the full set with a pot of hojicha

Standing

The original udon noodle bar, open since 2010, with a weekly blackboard

How to get in

Walk ins only, and the branch that does take bookings is the City one rather than this one, which is the opposite of what most people assume about an original site. Breakfast from ten in the morning is the thing almost nobody uses: a full Japanese breakfast set at 21.90 in Soho, with a pot of tea, is better value than anything on the street at that hour. No takeaway here at all. The weekly blackboard is where the cooking actually is.

Their sister sites are Koya City, near Bank and Cannon Street, which takes reservations, and Koya Ko on Broadway Market in Hackney, which does not.

Kanada-Ya, St Giles

Kanada-Ya

Address

64 St Giles High Street, WC2H 8DA

Nearest

Tottenham Court Road

Hours

Sunday to Wednesday 11.30am to 10pm, Thursday to Saturday 11.30am to 10.30pm

Booking

020 7240 0232. They publish no booking policy, so this is a turn up restaurant

Standing

Tonkotsu ramen in the Fukuoka style, six London sites

How to get in

The original London site and still the one with the queue, a minute from Tottenham Court Road but hidden on St Giles High Street where people walk past it. Tonkotsu is the whole menu rather than a section of it. The Thursday to Saturday half hour of extra time is the difference between catching it after a film and not. Five other branches at Angel, Carnaby, Ealing, Piccadilly and Westfield spread the load.

Eat Tokyo, Soho

Eat Tokyo Soho

Address

16 Old Compton Street, Soho, W1D 4TL

Nearest

Leicester Square or Tottenham Court Road

Hours

Monday to Thursday 12pm to 4pm and 6pm to 11.30pm. Friday and Saturday 12pm to 11.30pm. Sunday 12pm to 10.30pm. Last orders one hour before closing

Booking

020 7439 9887

Standing

Japanese owned, forty years old, with eight London branches and six more in Tokyo

How to get in

Two published rules that catch people every week. The kitchen shuts between four and six on Monday to Thursday, so a late afternoon plan is not a plan. And last orders are a full hour before the stated closing time, which means the 11.30 on the door is really half past ten. Fridays and Saturdays run straight through without the afternoon break. Closed on the last Monday in May, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

Why this list is eight restaurants and not thirty

Every line above was read off the restaurant’s own website. That rules out a good number of famous names, and it is worth saying which and why.

One celebrated Clerkenwell sushi counter’s website would not load for us at all, across repeated attempts. We will not describe a booking policy we could not read.

A well known Mayfair sake restaurant’s old web address now forwards to a dash cam retailer. That tells you the domain lapsed. It does not tell you the restaurant closed, and we are not going to guess which, so it is not on the list.

The clearest current example is OITA. Google puts it in the top three for this search, alongside Zuma and Hot Stone, both of which are on the list above. OITA’s own website publishes an address and a telephone number and no opening hours at all, for either of its two sites. We checked the restaurant page and the contact page. There is a booking button and a paragraph about its karaage, and nothing you could plan an evening around.

That is not a criticism of the cooking, which we have not judged. It is the rule doing its job: a restaurant we cannot read is a restaurant we cannot describe. Worth knowing too that OITA is at 47 Gerrard Street, which is Chinatown rather than Soho, whatever the name on the door suggests. Our Chinatown guide covers that street properly.

If a specific room matters to you, telephone it. Japanese restaurants in London publish less than almost any other cuisine, and the ones that publish most, like Dinings and Umu, are the ones you can actually plan around.

Practical notes

The booking rule is the decision, not the ranking. Endo cancels late arrivals and keeps the money. Dinings opens its diary exactly a month ahead and charges 50 pounds for a no show. Koya Soho takes nothing at all. Work backwards from that.

Lunch is the loophole and it is narrow. Umu serves it in a two hour window and not on Mondays. Hot Stone does not serve it on Mondays or Tuesdays. Dinings serves it on Saturdays alone. Roka is the exception that also runs its set menu at dinner.

Last orders are not closing time. Eat Tokyo stops taking orders a full hour before the door shuts. This is the most common way to arrive at a Japanese restaurant in London and not get fed.

Fitzrovia is the cluster. Roka and Hot Stone are four minutes apart and both a short walk from Goodge Street. If one is full the other is a genuine second choice rather than a consolation.

Everything here was taken from each venue’s own published information and rechecked on 28 September 2026. Where two pages on the same site disagree, as Koya’s do, that is stated rather than resolved. Confirm before you travel.

Where to go next

The best Chinese restaurants in London and the best Korean restaurants, where London has no starred restaurant at all, is the closest page on this site in method: three rooms, each with a cheaper way in that they do not advertise. The Michelin guide puts Umu in context against the rest of the starred rooms.

By neighbourhood: Marylebone for Dinings, Soho for Koya and Eat Tokyo, Covent Garden for Kanada-Ya and Knightsbridge for Zuma, which sits in that guide rather than this one.

The seafood guide is the other page on this site built around a counter rather than a dining room, and it has the same lesson in a different form: find out when the raw bar is working before you decide what time to arrive.

The ramen guide covers the cheaper counter version of this cuisine, where the branch matters more than the brand: Kanada-Ya has six London sites and takes walk ups at one of them.

For the wider picture, the restaurants guide and set menu restaurants, which is where the lunch loophole is covered across every cuisine.

Questions we get asked

What is the best Japanese restaurant in London?

It depends which of three evenings you mean. For the counter, Endo has moved to ten seats on Blacklands Terrace in Chelsea, where the chef says plainly: this is ENDO, now. For a Michelin starred room, Umu in Mayfair does Kyoto kaiseki with lunch from 50 pounds. For a bowl of noodles done properly, Koya on Frith Street has been making its own udon since 2010.

Which Japanese restaurant in London has a Michelin star?

Umu on Bruton Place in Mayfair, which won its first star within five months of opening in 2004 and has held one since. It serves Kyoto style kaiseki using line caught fish from Cornwall and the British Isles, handled by the Japanese ikejime method. Lunch runs Tuesday to Saturday from midday to two and starts at 50 pounds for the vegetarian shojin bento.

What is the best Japanese restaurant in London with a view?

The obvious answer used to be the Rotunda counter on the eighth floor of the old Television Centre in White City, but Endo has moved to ten seats at street level in Chelsea. Zuma and Roka are the better known names and neither is a view restaurant. For height rather than cuisine, our guide to restaurants with a view covers the rooms where the window is the point.

How much is omakase in London?

Endo publishes no price at all for its Chelsea counter, and the 290 pounds a head for eighteen courses you will still read elsewhere was the Rotunda’s. Either way that is the top of the market. The counter at Dinings in Marylebone is the value answer at a fraction of it, and Umu serves ten pieces of nigiri at lunch for 75 pounds including salad, rice, miso, pickles and dessert.

Do you need to book Japanese restaurants in London?

For some, and the rules are unusually strict. Dinings opens its diary exactly one month before the date and charges 30 pounds a head for a late cancellation and 50 for a no show. Endo releases its Chelsea diary in two month blocks at nine in the morning on a published date, so that one is a calendar exercise rather than a phone call. Koya Soho and Kanada-Ya take no bookings at all, so those are walk ins.

Where can you eat Japanese food late in London?

Eat Tokyo on Old Compton Street runs to 11.30pm on a Friday and Saturday, though last orders are a full hour before that. Kanada-Ya on St Giles High Street serves until half past ten Thursday to Saturday. Roka Charlotte Street takes its last dinner bookings up to 11pm on a Friday. Outside those, most Japanese kitchens in central London stop by ten.

What are some cheaper Japanese restaurants in London?

Koya in Soho serves a Japanese breakfast from 12.60 and the full set with tea at 21.90. Kanada-Ya does one thing, tonkotsu ramen, across six London sites. Eat Tokyo has eight London branches and has been running for forty years. At the other end, Roka’s set menu at 39.50 is the cheapest way into a room where the carte costs considerably more.