Ginza Onodera review: A feast fit for a prince

Reviews of Japanese restaurants often tend towards cliche, if not outright racial stereotyping, so I'm grateful that the staff who take care of us at Ginza Onodera, unfailingly polite and efficient as they are, hail from no further east than the Baltics.

We enter a luxurious underground lair via a brightly-lit bar, clad in polished black-and-white marble. International in style, it could be almost anywhere, though in fact it's on Bury Street in London. Or rather in Mayfair, a different place entirely.

Until last year it was Matsuri, a teppanyaki restaurant run by the upmarket Onodera group. Now, after a £2.5m refit, it's been rebranded to match its sister properties in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Shanghai, Hawaii and Ginza, a district of Tokyo.

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The dining room, at the foot of a dramatic staircase that spirals down past shelves of wine and sake, is less hard-edged than the bar. The lighting is subdued and the marble confined to a few high-level seating areas, while the furniture and wall panelling may well be bamboo. It's modern, crisp, comfortable – and very definitely Japanese.

The waiters and waitresses, who are, as we have already established, definitely not, bow diffidently as we are led to our table and I'm handed what's described in the menu as a "flawless" Manhattan. No obvious flaw presents itself.

We choose a selection from the sushi, sashimi and robata sections of the menu, seeking maximum exposure to the Japonaiserie.

When the first act arrives, it's as elegant and precisely put together as your preconceptions would lead you to expect. Scottish scallop, diced and served with caviar and ponzu jelly, is wonderfully fresh with delicate sea flavours.Salmon, gently smoked and marinated in soy sauce, is more assertive, yet still tastes overwhelmingly of salmon rather than salt and smoke.

Act two fills the stage with raw fish, minimally adulterated. Sea bream and yellowtail are light but firm, tuna softer and richer. The latter comes in three grades, the highest of which is marbled like fine steak.

Act three is the preserve of the robata grill and flesh cooked slowly over hot coals. There, lurking innocently under the scallops, mackerel, duck breast and lamb chop, is Kobe beef at £145 for a 4oz fillet.

If this is food as theatre, then, like theatre, it demands a hefty financial investment. Is the Kobe worth the price? Who knows, but it's fantastically good. Laden with rich, melting fat, it has the tenderness of bone marrow and a deep, lingering meatiness.

"Cuisine is when things taste of what they are," said the French food writer Curnonsky, better known as the Prince of Gastronomy. Even for a prince, an evening at Ginzo Onodera might be ruinously expensive, but he would not find fault with the flavours.

Ginza Onodera is at 15 Bury St, London SW1Y 6AL