Nice - for a price

I'll cheerfully admit that I wouldn't recognise a genuine Kyoto restaurant - as Umu purports to be - if I met it in my porridge.

I could regurgitate the substantial PR bumph for you: it's owned by Marlon Abela, the eminence grise and restaurant collector behind the newly fabulous Greenhouse.

It's managed by the magnificently monickered Eric Kebbab, ex-Suntory. Executive chef Ichiro Kubota, late of Kyoto's renowned Tsuruya restaurant, flies in his own ingredients from the motherland - wild fish, native Kyoto aubergines, red carrots. Even the soft water used

Or I could do a bit of research on kaiseki, a form of dining in which Umu specialises. This sequence of small dishes, beautifully and painstakingly presented, comprises of a perfectly balanced collection of the raw, the simmered, steamed and grilled. It's a formal way of eating, evolved from a vegetarian Zen Buddhist background - and, as we'll see, an expensive one.

A Japanese expert pal (thanks, Jin), tells me that in kaiseki restaurants in Kyoto, you should expect exceptional attention to and evocation of place and seasonality (so where does that leave those poor flown-in fish and veg?). She doubted this could be replicated in London, or, for that matter, anywhere other than Kyoto.

But this is second-hand information. What I can do with a degree of authority is compare Umu with London's other high-end Japanese restaurants. And, though it's spectacular on a number of fronts, you could eat better - Miyama or Yumi for traditionalists or Sumosan, Zuma or Nobu for rulebreakers - elsewhere.

Anyway, back to the spectacular. It looks fantastic. Once you've found your way in - the featureless wood front only slides open once you've put your hand into a recess beside the hidden door; it's hilariously Bondvillain - you enter a darkly twinkling, snakey-wood decorated, multi-mirrored interior of rich gorgeousness. In the middle of all this luxury, it's quite jarring to see the sushi chefs slogging away behind their glass, fish-filled counter.

The kaiseki menus start at a nosebleeding £75 a head and teeter up to £240. This, deep breath, is even dearer than Sketch. What the largely American clientele were making of it with their poor, weedy dollars is anyone's guess. Unnerved, we decided to create our own kind of kaiseki from the a la carte. Portions are weeny, so we still managed to chalk up a bill, with wine, of £172 for two.

Food is, well, quite nice, really. Not startling, nor as important as its presentation - things arrive in intricate baskets, the kind of thing your gran hangs above her phone table - would lead you to infer. Rice, importantly, is flawless: pearly and just-tacky-enough to hold together beautifully under sushi. Tsukuri (Kyotan for sashimi) is sink-your-teeth-into tender, especially a collection of tuna; although I question the wisdom of bludgeoning the delicate fish with the powerful musk of truffle oil in one treatment.

My 'modern' sushi was good, a seared tataki of tuna belly spiked with pepper and ginger a cushiony pleasure, a raw langoustine with caviar and wasabi a revelation. I loved the smoky punch of my eel rice and two sorts of miso soup, one conventional and one a slightly sweet white miso, were the best I've tried anywhere.