Nobu by numbers

It is indestructible, bulletproof: every branch, from Texas to Tokyo, is permanently rammed with punters keen to buy into the whole shtick, no matter what it costs. We went to Nobu Berkeley the day after it opened. There had hardly been a whisper of publicity and already it was heaving. And I'm damned if I can see what the big deal is.

I mean, it's quite nice. But there are far better Japanese restaurants in the world: heck, there are far better Japanese restaurants in London. We ordered Nobu signature dishes such as the yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno and tempura rock shrimp, and novelties such as the wood-fired oven choices. Nothing was bad, but nothing was standout either.

Take the yellowtail, for instance. It had the vaguely petrified air of fish that hadn't been freshly cut and was overwhelmed into redundancy by the pungency of its accompaniments. Or the shrimp: drop-dead accurate cooking time is needed for the marriage of light, crispy batter and moist, just-cooked crustacean. This wasn't it. The shrimp were fine; the batter soggy.

Wagyu beef, that foie gras of the bovine world (£26 for a serving the size of a condom wrapper), had been cooked medium, a tragic waste of a delicacy that needs only the lightest subjection to a fierce heat to bring out its sumptuous, silky luxury. A wood-roasted poussin was just ordinary. Sushi is typically good but not as good as Nobu New York.

David Collins has done his usual assured job with the design. There's a green, frondy fabric backdrop and some twinkly lights in an otherwise rather uninvolving room. A gold staircase leads you from a downstairs bar that looks like the foyer of a swanky Manhattan hotel. But it's not a patch on the Super Potato-designed Roka, or the lush Christian Liagre fabulousness of Hakkasan.

However, we all know that the rich, as F Scott Fitzgerald said, are different (not from each other, though - we sat between two chaps, both, I promise you, dead ringers for Donald Trump). Here in London, some of the restaurants that regularly pack in a loaded, star-studded crowd leave me stone cold.

San Lorenzo and Cipriani are ludicrously overpriced, bog-standard trats with a bad attitude; Nobu in Park Lane has all the atmosphere of a dentist's waiting room furnished with elderly copies of Hello! But their incomprehensible popularity is selfperpetuating: the slebs like to eat with their peers and the rubberneckers like to clock the slebs - everybody's happy. Kerching!

And this new Nobu is more of the same (apart from a 'democratic' no bookings policy). There's nothing actively wrong with it (hence the three stars) but it's actually just a posh chain, a TGI Friday's for the platinum-carded.

Everything about it, from the menu and the 'irashaimase!' bellowed by the staff on your arrival, to the 'have you eaten at Nobu before?' from your breathlessly excited waiter, is formulaic.

As far as I'm concerned, the rich are welcome to it. But Nobu should care less: even if you and I never darken its door, it won't make a jot of difference.

Nobu Berkeley
Berkeley Street, London, W1J 8DY