Telephone: 020-7719 7600
Address: 34 Westferry Circus, Canary Wharf, London E14
Rating: 13/20
Back at Canary Wharf again. Crisp spring day. Light on river. Sky full of promise overhead. Made for what could have been Stage 3 of Babylon Film Studios. Actually, it was Ubon, younger sibling to Nobu (full title: "Ubon by Nobu"), on the fourth floor of Westferry Circus.
Slightly disconcerted by raising the average age in a room by 20 years by entering. Not many people wearing jackets and ties. No one, in fact. State-of-the-art youth. Young, hip and hipless. Curiously conservative. Perhaps that's what working in a material world does for you.
Probably only person old enough to recognise the reference points for the design. Very 50s. Strings of amber beads drizzling down in front of the windows and from the lights. Very, very 50s. Cream-coloured light shades. Echt 50s. Chocolate-coloured kibbled covers to banquettes and chairs. Ultra 50s (only it would have been on the floor). Dark chocolate parquet flooring. Sooooo 50s (only it would have been veneer on the sideboard or table).
Decide on Martini to while away time waiting for Hortense. Was Martini very 50s? Can't remember. Don't suppose Martini-lovers would have approved much of this one, anyway. Sent it back. Asked for a twist. Got an olive. Two olives, stuffed, to be precise. Got second Martini. No delicate shaving of lemon peel, just twisted to release oils, but two strips of thick peel bearing pith. And it was warm. Not the silver bullet whistling through the rigging, as it should be.
Hortense appeared. She lowered the average age back down to normal levels. She did not drink Martini, but took with gusto to Dr Loosen's Riesling, which we managed to winkle out of the waitress at the second time of asking. We got down to serious business of food. Or not very serious business of food, depending on your point of view.
My view is that Ubon caters for people who aren't serious about food. It's food for our time; food as fashion accessory. It's about style over substance. It's a bit Californian-Japanese, with the emphasis firmly on the Japanese, with a touch of South America thrown in for good measure: tomato rock shrimp ceviche, yellowtail tartar with caviar, tuna tataki with ponzu, spicy seafood soba, oyako donburi, anti-cucho Peruvian style spicy salmon skewer, et al.
To be honest, I studied the menu for some time and wasn't much the wiser. Rather than display my ignorance, I ordered omakase, the chef's choice, at £40, and what I hoped would be a magical mystery tour of the founding father chef Matsuhisa's culinary oeuvre. Hortense set her sights on the In & Out Bento Box, the 45-minute business special. She had, she said, been bemoaning that she hadn't had a decent hit of sushi in recent weeks, and was curious about the Ubon version.
The bento box turned out to be a bit of a happy turn-out in terms of value for money. For £25, it comprised sashimi salad with Matsuhisa dressing, rock shrimp tempura with ponzu, the celebrated Nobu black cod, oshitasi, vegetable spicy garlic, assorted sushi and miso soup. In terms of quality, however, it was another matter. The batter on the shrimp was greasy, the cod appeared to have been coated in a thick, black, sweet varnish, and the salad with the tuna sashimi merely confused the elegant texture of the seared fish. Only the miso soup and sushi seriously passed muster.
My misgivings about the Ubon/ Nobu approach to raw fish cookery were born out by my own first dish, a ceviche, in which all flavour of fish was comprehensively mugged by the savage intensity of the dressing. You might argue that this is the point of ceviche - the technique of effectively curing fish in lime or lemon juice - but I would not agree.
This set a pattern for six successive dishes, all of which were pretty as pictures, not to mention bedecked with more flowers than a Mafia coffin, but all of which were also napalmed by their accompanying sauces. There is nothing accidental about this. As I once remarked of Nobu, the concept underlying the dishes is to take a delicate or tasteless piece of lightly cooked or raw protein and douse it in some superior tasting flavouring agent, marinade, sauce, dipping sauce or whatever. It certainly makes for easy eating, for nice clean flavours, for a sense of refined and healthy aesthetic, but personally I find it disappointing and one-dimensional. It westernises Japanese food, taking out all the difficult bits and rounding off the edges, distracting from the play of textures and the subtleties of flavours. I know that I am virtually the only person in the world who thinks this, but there you go.
I should add that my sense of disappointment was sharpened a notch or two when a sudden flurry of dishes followed hard on the heels of one another, and then, with the appearance of the last one, we were told that the kitchen was closing (it was about 2.30pm). I was finally brought to a keen edge when presented with a bill for £117.50, on which the box suggesting a "gratuity" was left open, even though the total already levied a toll of 12.5% "autoservice". Tsk, tsk. Greed added to incompetence is quite a tough combination to get away with.
