Ubon doubles the sushi fun

This review was first published in February 2001

Nobu is quite brilliant. It is the apotheosis of 'event' dining. To be able to book a table at Nobu, when you want one, says more about you than you would want to say yourself. I have always eaten well and had a good time at Nobu on Park Lane. I still remember the lunch that Nobu himself cooked for me.

I recall the time that head chef Mark Edwards and his brigade came to my fabulous stucco-fronted Shepherd's Bush palazzo and prepared a 72-course banquet. I was the panel that judged Nobu to be the most fashionable London restaurant in the Carlton Restaurant Awards. I am, quite clearly, a huge Nobu fan.

But essentially I am a shy person, and the older I get, the more my hearing and dodderiness are at odds with a brash, noisy environment such as Nobu. The problem is that wherever the likes of Posh and Becks, and Naomi and Kate go, the hordes are sure to follow.

There are times at Nobu, especially in the evening, when customers sometimes try a little too hard to appear internationally rich. Women attempt to look like Notting Hill heiresses and bra models or, failing that, Russian gangsters' molls in tight T-shirts and purple patent python-skin with fur trim. Men try to ape Tom Ford and usually wind up looking nothing like as hip as the black-clad waiters.

Yet there is a palpable buzz about the place. Tables empty and are rapidly refilled - sometimes perhaps a little too rapidly. Imagine that you have dressed up in your Bond Street best, then trekked in from Rickmansworth, only to find that you're unable to linger over coffee because the table is needed for the latest footballing sensation.

Which is why I am glad that there is now a second Nobu, called Ubon, in Canary Wharf. After all, if we can have two Tate Galleries, we should be allowed two Nobus. And, although it sounds heretical, I prefer the new East End incarnation.

At night, about the only time I can countenance making the perilous, 90-minute journey across town, Canary Wharf shimmers like a magic realm, the top of the tower wreathed in clouds that enhance the mystical air. Ubon is tucked behind the swish new Four Seasons Hotel, surrounded by clipped lawns in a building, part lighthouse, part metal-clad Mayan-style structure, that reminds me of the Altar de la Patria in Santo Domingo.

Given the glamorous, manicured and antiseptic modernity of the location, it's hard to believe you are in London. Instead, it's as if one has stepped into one of those weird cities eulogised in the pages of Wallpaper* - Toronto, Helsinki, Stuttgart or Stockholm. Except that having been to Stockholm, I can confirm that it is as glamour-free as it is possible for a city to be; while Canary Wharf is quite invigorating in its modernity.

The dining-room is smaller than Park Lane, more intimate, and commands a spectacular view of the Thames. The slightly unnerving thing about Ubon (and indeed Nobu) is that, as soon as you enter, waiters stop what they are doing and shout out some extraordinary greeting in Nobuese. That aside, Ubon possesses an understated chic. And as my companion I took one of London's chicest journalists.

'Nobody here has had a blow-dry,' was her epigrammatic summation of the feminine style quotient. And, indeed, there was a home-made quality about the women's appearance. One female customer had obviously been told she looked vaguely attractive, and on the strength of this had purchased a moderately expensive, backless dress. While she did not look too offensive, she was obviously a Birkenstock girl at heart, and had yet to get her head around the concept of Jimmy Choo or Manolo. Her shoes would not have looked out of place at Greenham Common peace camp, and rather marred her frequent and endearingly clumsy attempts to sashay through the restaurant.

However, to cast all the customers as style ing?nues would be unfair. On a previous visit I had sat next to a party of Belgravia-dwelling Italians, who were obviously regulars at Nobu, and, for all I know, the Nobu in Milan too. They were the sort of people one might bump into enjoying a flute of Cristal at the Caves du Roy in St Tropez, or sitting outside the Chuflay bar of the Splendido Mare in Portofino. We were immediately united by our shared love of the black cod, one of the great restaurant dishes of the late-20th century, of which they had ordered numerous portions.