Bloomsbury Street Kitchen - Bloomsbury, London

There have been a few restaurants of late that have mashed up Japanese techniques with other cuisines to great effect (ahem, Ikoyi and Angelina) so we were curiously to see what was going on at Bloomsbury Street Kitchen, nestled just a stone's throw north of Oxford Street. Specialising in Mediterranean cuisines (predominantly Italian, Spanish and Greek) alongside Japanese, we dropped in to see whether BSK translated from paper to palate.  

The dining room was exceptionally light and airy with an open-plan kitchen providing a bit of fire. Exposed brick walls were decked with bright green plantlife, luxe cream leather seats and wooden chairs surround tables overhung with white netted pendant lighting. There's high-top counter dining surrounding the kitchen as well as a semi private dining table next to it. The waiters wore trendy baby blue suits. We recommend you go later in the evening to get the full effect of the mood lighting, and wind down before dinner with one of their excellent cocktails (the Hobo Smoked Old Fashioned as our favourite.  

From the Med menu we ordered zucchini and eggplant chips with a creamy tzatziki, crispy-spiced lamb bites and oven-baked lobster and king prawn with parmesan crème and a chilli herb crust. All were very nice, particularly the latter, which luxuriated on the plate. From the Japanese section of the menu we had tuna sashimi with truffle ponzu tacos, crispy soft-shell-crab harumaki rolls with spicy ponzu and sake-flamed black garlic king prawns with chilli and cumin. We wrapped up wthe meal with a yoghurt and white chocolate cheesecake with activated charcoal sorbet.  
All in, we were really quite pleased with Bloomsbury Street Kitchen. For something tasty in Bloomsbury, it's a shoo-in.