Splash out, Umu style

The owners of London's most luxurious restaurants must face a dilemma when it comes to fixing their prices each year: should they put them up by three times the rate of inflation, as they generally do, or should they be really bold and simply triple them.

This latter strategy might seem counter-intuitive - it's one of the elementary rules of economics that demand falls as prices rise - but if your particular restaurant ends up being the most expensive in London there's a good chance that the ensuing press coverage will actually boost demand.

This appears to be what has happened in the case of Umu, a new Japanese restaurant in Mayfair. To be fair, Umu hasn't suddenly jacked up its prices. Rather, it has been the most expensive restaurant in London since it opened last year and it has just taken a while for the press to catch on.

However, thanks to an article in the latest edition of Harden's, Umu has now been officially handed the crown that used to belong to Sketch and the resulting hullabaloo has put this previously unknown restaurant on the map.

"Business-wise, it did help," says Eric Kebbab, the North African maitre d'. "I'll be honest with you about that."

Trying to work out just how highly priced a restaurant is can be a tricky business. Should you include wine in your calculations? According to the Guinness Book of Records, the most expensive meal per capita ever consumed was at Pétrus in 2002 when six bankers celebrated the closing of a deal by running up a bill of £44,007.

However, this was largely due to their extravagant wine bill. Judged on the basis of food alone, Umu takes the biscuit, thanks to its £240 Sushi Kaiseki dégustation menu. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to try this since my editor would only stretch to a budget of £120 and I had my wife and two friends in tow.

Our bill, which included four cocktails and two carafes of chilled sake, came to a fairly modest £268.31 - only £18.31 more expensive than the cost of a meal for two at nearby Sketch. Not exactly cheap as chips, but not the bombshell we were expecting.

Umu has a chocolate-and-gold interior, designed by the New York-based Tony Chi, which certainly radiates luxury. Our wooden table for four was a little on the small side, but at least it was at a safe distance from the raucous hedge fund boys metaphorically spooning sushi into their mouths with their black American Express cards. As you might expect, the main market for this restaurant is rich, single men trying to impress either their dates or their mates.

The food was good, but a little too busy for my tastes. For instance, my warm organic salmon sushi (£4 per piece) was sprinkled with grated pistachio nuts. These inevitably fell into my lap as I tried to manoeuvre the salmon into my mouth with a pair of chopsticks. My bowl of yellowtail sashimi (£8) was accompanied by what looked like a sprig of lavender - though the waiter assured me it was edible - and my piece of crab sushi (£3) had a blob of emulsified courgette on top of it.