The mile high sushi club

Full review - Nobu

Having trouble getting a table at Nobu, where a chance to taste Japanese-with-a-western-twist is currently the hottest weekend ticket you can't get? The answer, my friend, is at 35,000ft. Nobu - with branches in London, Milan, New York and Tokyo - has just opened its latest branch ... in midair: announcing the departure of the new First Class and Club World menus from Heathrow Terminal 4 on BA's Tokyo route.

There are times when being a journalist is hell, but this is definitely not one of them. When BA offers to fly you across the world, pamper and feed you, you do not pause for breath (for a massage in Heathrow's spa, perhaps; but breath? No sir).

For anyone who doesn't know, Nobu is the creation of Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, a Japanese sushi chef who with the backing of Robert De Niro has created a global phenomenon of a restaurant chain. So successful is his London gig at the Metropolitan Hotel, that they have introduced a room of no-booking bench seatings for Friday and Saturday nights. The only other way ... is up.

And so to business - or rather, pleasure. Somewhere over Scandinavia, I am presented with a grey slate monolith topped with sushi-style hors d'oeuvres. So proud are BA of this slab that they have lightened the plane to accommodate the extra load. A roll of spinach with sesame paste and prawn with caviar slip down as easily as an 18-stone banker on an emergency chute.

Up in the air, your taste buds lose 35 per cent of their effectiveness: the chilli bomb of chicken anticucho - inspired by Nobu's Peruvian days - exactly targets the remaining 65. Salmon tartare (cured with oniony marinade) is a fair crack at the restaurant version, as is the spicy soup; to follow, saut?ed lobster with shiitake, or marinaded beef with Japanese pickles. As we cross into the old Soviet Union, out comes the "signature" bento pudding box - with chocolate sponge and green tea ice-cream (after 48 different recipes, the solid pellet of chocolate in the sponge is now guaranteed to turn the right amount of runny, no matter how the airborne "chefs" treat it.)

My hastily assembled tasting panel include the immaculately coiffured Lady Paulett, from Jersey; H Yasukawa, a smiling Japanese involved in Formula One, and Dr Lennart Olsson, a dour scientific adviser to the son of the Emperor, and, unless I misheard quite drastically, a Nobel Prize winner.

Excellent lobster, said Lady P. The beef really very good indeed, said HY, better than trad Jap. "I don't like the soup," said Dr Olsson, whom I had deflected from his usual own specially-requested healthy, low-salt alternative meal. "Too spicy; you need simple food, lots of water, easily digestible." So not for Danish oncologists, then.

Neither would he have been impressed with what I used to wash it down: a quite literally horizontal tasting of Aussie, French and Italian alternatives (chosen by experts tasting in depressurised rooms). Oh, what a ball we had. Talking of which: Lady Paulett was keen to explore Nobu's other famous attribute, that inspired Boris Becker to get amorous in that broom cupboard.

What is it about Nobu, she wondered, that inspired such urges? "The food is very light, there's a lot of protein," said Nobu's chef Mark Edwards, who had come along for the launch. In the air, with the booze, the reclining beds, a potentially incendiary combination (though my request for a broom cupboard is met with puzzled looks by the stewardess. Nobu, may be filling up, but there are still spaces in the mile-high club.)

And the cost? At Nobu, London, a meal for two will cost from around £60 to anything you like. More at Nobu Tokyo, where a nice bit of Kobe on its own will set you back 10,000 yen (about 70 quid). And for the First Class version, with a table that turns into a bed quicker than you can say "Boris", one way will set you back four and a half grand. Which, as Dr Olsson will tell you, is a price worth paying. Particularly if you're not paying it.