New development at St James’s Market

We’ve been terribly cultural and visited the Jasper Johns exhibition at the RA – how many versions of the US flag or the numbers 0-9 do you need? So we’re in need of sustenance, but haven’t planned anywhere. We consider Cicchetti on Piccadilly again, though when we went a few years ago it wasn’t brilliant. Then I remember a new complex I’d wandered around before a meeting recently, that links Lower Regent Street and Haymarket.

It’s called St James’s Market.  There are several new restaurants here. We look at a Scandinavian one called Aquavit – too much smoked fish on the smorgasbord.  There’s Veneta, an Italian from the Salt Yard group, a patisserie called Ole & Steen, and even Duck and Waffle Local.

But we decide we like the look of the menu at Anzu, a Japanese place, with a set menu at a very reasonable looking £12.95 for two courses.  There’s no-one else in there (it is 2.30pm), but (or so?) the welcome is warm and we get a seat in the window.  The style is light wood, with displays of large sake bottles.

The a la carte menu looks interesting too, but after asking for clarification about what the set dishes are (I’d guessed “Komatsuna” was tuna, but it turns out it was braised greens!), we decide to stay with the set lunch dishes.  The wine list goes up frighteningly - we find  a rosé from Provence at £28, and order some edamame beans while we decide on the order.

To start we have the king prawn dumplings – three gyoza-like dumplings with very tasty minced prawns fillings – and duck and watermelon salad – a very creditable sized portion of crispy duck, fresh watermelon and pomegranate seeds (a bit challenging with chopsticks!).  Very pleased with those.

Mains aren’t quite as successful. Japanese Mentaiko “Carbonara” is noodles with fish sauce and pollock roe.  It’s quite rich, and fishy, though the roe are surprisingly not that interesting.  Overall, just a bit heavy and sticky.  Our second choice is the soy-roast poussin – for which we are allowed a knife and fork. It’s fine, but nothing special.  We’ve also ordered some rice, which it turns out we don’t need, and eventually (after a little reservation) manage to persuade the charming waitress to let us take away.

A second bottle of wine skews the bill towards the alcohol, taking it to £99 including the now standard 12.5% service (OK, I’ll stop whingeing about it now).   A pleasant, rather than brilliant, lunch which maybe would have felt better with other people in there.