The day after we tried Flesh and Buns for lunch, Caroline and I had dinner at a restaurant with similar cuisine, a pop-up restaurant in Chelsea called Kurobuta, but it will soon have a permanent spot near Marble Arch.
We shared a lot of different dishes, starting with the yellowtail tuna sashimi with kazimi wasabi salsa and yuzu soy sauce (above). Very nice and great texture.
Barbecued chicken scewers with Japanese barbecue sauce. Tender meat and very nice smoky flavour.
The pumpkin tempura was lovely and served with a delicious dip with spicy shiso.
Tea smoked cutlet of lamb with spicy Korean miso. Very nice indeed, and one of my favourites. The lamb was tender and quite rare which I like and with a thick coating of the delicious glaze.
The crispy soft shell crab roll with kimchi mayo was also very nice.
Kurobuta’s menu has a few different sections; one with snacks, one with barbecue, one with crispy food, one with sushi and one with cold and raw dishes (like sashimi). One section was called ‘Significant Others’ and sounded so boring that we didn’t try a single dish, but apart from that we sampled every section on the menu.
The food at Kurobuta is tasty and well-made and I always like to share small dishes, especially when you can have sushi and barbecued dishes at the same time. Compared to Flesh and Buns this is a lot better. It feels like Kurobuta has a clearer concept, but there is still room for improvement.
The service was very varied; we had a great waitress but a few others ran around like headless chickens and that is quite easy to fix. And hopefully the new place will have a better ventilated kitchen as half the restaurant on our visit was filled with thick smoke from the barbecue.
Kurobuta, 251 King’s Road, London SW3 5EL