Grace and flavour: Sumosan

Truthfully, I’m not big on celeb-hangout restaurants. I’m sure Keira Knightley and Victoria Beckham are smashing people, but their counsel on London’s most buttery, syrupy tarte Tatin I do not seek. Most celebs aren’t tremendous eaters, spending Nobu visits pushing an edamame bean around a side plate while moaning about press intrusion and their next day’s costume fitting for an 18in-waist Edwardian hobble skirt.

However, this week I popped along to Sumosan, the chic, celeb-friendly Japanese restaurant in Mayfair. I arrived just after Cheryl Cole and her ‘new beau’ Tre Holloway. I won’t be casting aspersions on Cheryl’s commitment to ‘getting a good dinner down her gullet’, but personally I wouldn’t celebrate getting my damaged arm out of a sling in a place that used chopsticks. That said, I tend to really want my dinner.

The thought of exclusive London sushi restaurants rarely fills me with joy, as they tend to be a snoozesome mixture of formal service, bland styling, barely there portions and literally squeakable prices. Sumosan is all of these things. Whoppingly pricey: black cod with miso — which I adore — costs £29.50 for a small fillet (and yes, it tastes like earthly heaven with a sticky-sweet orgasmic glaze for around 120 seconds of pleasure), but then Sumosan’s clientele — namely, women who share Donatella Versace’s skincare regime, ageing men with ponytails and young Middle Eastern millionaires with bored girlfriends eating noodles while playing on BBM — won’t exactly be shoving their hands down the back of the sofa to find the coins to pay for it.

The sushi range at Sumosan will pique the interest of the most worldly fans, featuring amaebi, hokki clam, negi toro and goose liver. We ate mackerel sashimi, shimmery and fantastically fresh. They don't chide you for wanting soy in Sumosan and instead bring it by the bowl and tiny teapotful. I also ordered a plate of Peking duck sushi, which comes seductively dripped with pink hoisin sauce. I always order at least one non-raw dish among the rolls and sashimi as I’m Northern and even after 15 years am still contemplative about whether raw fish is truly desirable to Westerners other than the sea lions at Blackpool Zoo, who do a funny dance in a bowler hat for a bucket of it each day at 4pm. There should be a secret, discreetly served menu in sushi places for Northerners filled with ‘nushi’ (Northern sushi) where the fish, whatever it’s billed as, is haddock and the haddock is cooked and the rice is secretly fried and the wasabi is actually mushy peas with a splash of Tabasco. So far my letters to Feng Sushi have been snubbed.

Alongside the cod, sushi and sashimi, we ordered a seaweed salad, which was an incredible lumpen mesh of bright green aquatic gorgeousness, some tuna furikaki — slices seared in sesame oil — nice but barely memorable, and shared a bowl of glass noodles with beef, which came in teensy child/celebrity portions. All I recall about them is that they were moist and brown. I’m the noodle duchess of London town (in my head) and these were decidedly uninspiring. And the creamy spicy king crab was certainly creamy (ie, mushed up with cream) but not at all spicy.

By this point I was spent up — estimating that with the glasses of wine we’d drunk I’d spent over £200 — but not remotely full up. I was also rapidly fading due to boredom and only the promise of a trip to a diner on the way home for a peanut butter sundae and a shot of bourbon could convince me not to sleep there, if they’d kindly turn down the Zero 7-style lounge Muzak that farts out of the stereo system.

Sumosan is the place to take someone dull with a healthy credit card who you don’t wish to risk exposing to anything edgy. Order them a taxi from their Mandarin Oriental suite, scoot them in quickly and ask for one of the discreet dining booths. The biggest risk to their nerves in Sumosan might be Cheryl Cole’s singing.

Sumosan, 26 Albermarle Street, W1; 020 7495 5999. Sumosan.com