Sitting in a new Japanese restaurant, an imposing chap wearing chef's whites and speaking with an American accent announced to us that he figured if Nobu could come to London then so could Kobe Jones.

Kobe Jones (no relation to Indiana) is a restaurant group specialising in Japanese-Californian food, which has outlets in Sydney and Melbourne, now London and soon Bangkok.

What our new acquaintance seemed to have left out of the equation was Nobu's first London appearance in the Metropolitan Hotel overlooking Hyde Park, compared with Kobe Jones's perch on the ground floor of St Giles Hotel - a favourite of budget travellers just off Tottenham Court Road.

And then there is the business of celebrated chef Nobu Matsuhisa and celebrated backer Robert De Niro, compared with the unknown Kobe, whose namesake beef doesn't even appear on the menu.

The spacious premises, which have their own entrance in Great Russell Street - but as so often with these hotel-restaurant deals, share the lavatories with the main building - are decorated in a Japanesey rustic style with lots of dark wood and dim lighting and have as a striking asset a series of small rooms surrounding the main dining area.

Three of us were allowed into one of these spaces - a less kind reviewer might call them booths - which, since the brand new restaurant was understandably underpopulated, provided instant intimacy.

The menu kicked off with a selection of Kobe rolls, most of them sporting rice on the outside. We tried Dynamite Roll with our choice of yellowfin tuna - kingfish, salmon and scallops were the other options - and specified three as the chosen heat level on a scale of one to five.

We also ordered Volcano Roll, featuring baked scallops on a Californian roll. Both dishes were arranged as large heaps of ingredients, appealing in the same mushy/crunchy, strident/cooling way that Gujarati snacks do, but at considerably more expense.

The apparently deliberate lack of precision in the presentation and liking for creamy sauces seems antithetical to the traditions of Japanese cuisine, but possibly appeals to those nervous of raw fish and restraint. Indeed, connoisseurs of raw fish should skip the sashimi omakase, which turned out to be a drab gathering.

We liked one of the Kobe Jones signature dishes, Number One Special. Composed of crab salad, avocado and snapper, it was also robed in "KJ's cream sauce" but managed to emerge delicious.

Our choice of main dishes served with miso soup and rice were grilled Chilean sea bass and Iberico pork ribs. The sea bass resembled miso-marinated-black cod. The ribs were fatty and f labby with an over-emphatic sauce.

Our waitress, with movie star looks, found it hard to understand us and vice versa. She didn't get our pronunciation of edamame, while we struggled to realise what sheebers (sea bass) was.

We very much liked the restaurant's sake-pouring tradition, which involved the drink spilling over the cylindrical glass into a lacquered box from which it could also be drunk. This seemed to me quite the best innovation that Kobe Jones has introduced.