The Humble Gourmand

I originally intended this to be a standard restaurant review. A glowing one, because on any measure Soseki is a fine restaurant. I’d happily recommend it to anyone (assuming you like your fish raw): the food is great and unusual, and the venue’s equally interesting, with various sets of steps leading up to individual, concealed booths off a central, open kitchen. If you want a great night of Japanese food and don’t mind splashing out a bit, here’s your place.

But writing this, I realised my favourite thing about Soseki is something I want to see in almost all restaurants, and it would be more interesting to talk about that: The comforting lack of choice.

The main draw for me here is the sampler menu. You can go a la carte, of course, but for me, the sampler (called Haiku or Hanashi, depending on the cost and number or courses) offers the greatest experience: 1) a mixture of safety, believing the kitchen has your best interests at heart, and surprise, since you don’t really know what’s coming; 2) probably the best value on offer; and 3) being able to close the menu after five seconds and get on with the crucial business of drinking and socialising.

Soseki’s sampler (we had the Haiku) included boards of sashimi, sakizuke, yakimono, agemono — basically a multitude of things that I hadn’t heard of but that were all delicious, fresh, and high-quality. If I had to choose Japanese food from a menu, I’d be staring at it for minutes and even then I’d have to guess.

Sampler menus aren’t that rare, of course, but they’re not exactly widespread. I think they should be. After all, what are the main reasons you go to a good restaurant? For me, it’s to relax and be with friends. The less time I spend choosing between 20 or 30 dishes, the better. And if someone who knows what they’re talking about can make the choice for me, so much the better!

Another bonus: even if one dish on the sampler doesn’t do it for me, there are others. With a standard menu, though, even at a decent restaurant there’s a chance you’ll luck out and choose the ‘worst’ thing out of everyone on the table (and we’ve all been there). Then you get no second chance: you have to put up with it, go without, look enviously at what your friends have got, or scavenge from them. The latter option doesn’t always make you popular.

Ultimately, my love of samplers aside, I guess I’m not suggesting all restaurants should offer one (although there’s no real reason why not). What I really want is more of the comforting lack of choice. If restaurants pared down their menus a bit and got rid of the mediocre dishes they use to pad out their selection, I could choose much more quickly and get back the all-important wine and conversation, secure in my trust that whatever the kitchen makes me, it’ll be something they’re great at.

In the meantime, I’m for samplers all the way. And if they serve warm sake afterwards, so much the better.