Telephone: 020-7747 9380
Address: 23 St James's Street, London SW1
Rating: 5/20
Ah, Shumi is a paradox wrapped in an enigma, a piece of pasta wrapped in a strip of nori. No, it is "an Italian restaurant with a Japanese twist". So says the press release and so repeated a succession of waiters, as if Tucker and I were a couple of slow learners.
Shumi occupies the site of the late, and unlamented (by me, at any rate), Che. Something of Che lingers about the place - that sense of surfing the breakers of chic, which has nothing to do with food other than eating out as a social accessory. The 1990s zeitgeist design has been replaced by the zeitgeist design of the new millennium, which brings together the elegance of the Concorde departure lounge with a louche retro wash.
Still, it does not do to be prejudiced before you start eating and, although I was inclined to raise an eyebrow at the concept, I was open-minded on the matter of this curious fusion of Italy and Japan, of substance and style. There are even one or two restaurants in Italy working along vaguely similar lines, though the chefs there have the advantage of working in a medium and tradition they thoroughly understand.
As far as I could make out, the only elements that were remotely Japanese about our lunchtime experience were the chopsticks set beside the knives and forks, and a bowl in which one of the dishes was presented. If I were inclined to stretch a point, I might also accept that there is a generic technical similarity between carpaccio and sushi - but I am not so inclined. It is difficult to treat rationally a restaurant that charges £6 for a "carpaccio" of zucchini with walnuts and lemon, £7 for a "tartare" of tomato, red peppers and olive, and £8 for a salad of baby beets and young goat's cheese, any of which, by my calculation, represents a gross profit of between 3,000% and 5,000%. However, I will do my best to be civil.
"None of the core ingredients would look out of place in a typical Tuscan or Milanese kitchen," says the press release. Yes, maybe that's true; even so, of the six dishes we ate, none bore any resemblance to any dishes I have eaten in Italy. Take bresaola of tuna with fava beans, pancetta and Planeta olive oil. Actually, tuna takes rather well to the air-curing process, but on each slice, laid out in a dinky fashion on a fancy glass plate, was a single, peeled broad bean, a single pea and a single sliver of pancetta. Seasonality is one of the abiding principles of Italian cookery and, as far as I am aware, peas and broad beans are not in season in November. And they were as tasteless as they were pointless.
In the hands of Richard Corrigan or the chef at Da Dirce in Asti, veal tartare is a thing of wonder. In the hands of Lee Purcell, chef at Shumi, it was a thing to wonder about. Veal is not what you'd call an overflavoured meat: it needs help to bring out its qualities. So whatever you add to it must bring something to the party. Whatever had been added to Shumi's version, among which I think I identified mustard seeds, did not bring so much as a tin whistle. It was a very dull dish.
The saffron calamari with chilli pepper looked pretty in its yellow batter, but for all the flavour the saffron added, it could just as well have been food colouring, while the chilli sauce was undernourished. Porcini arrived in a Japanese braising pot, and very nice they were, too - what there was of them. They had been stretched, as the word goes in kitchen circles, with a chickpea "gnocchi". I am not going to say there is no such thing as chickpea gnocchi (you have to be foolhardy to make any definitive statement about Italian food) but I have never, ever come across one, and neither has anyone else I know. And it was inedible.
And so we marched on, course succeeding course with dispiriting verisimilitude. Steamed halibut with clams and trompette mushrooms was a fine, generous piece of fish, and it had been blissfully steamed - some time before it got to our table, so it was almost stone cold. Cold halibut is not nearly as nice as hot halibut. By the same token, sweet duck is not nearly so interesting as agro-dolce (sour and sweet) duck. Sadly for Shumi, the duck had been advertised as agro-dolce and, while the dolce side was well in evidence, the agro was conspicuous by its absence, so making the dish largely pointless. Indeed, it would have been totally pointless had it not been for a very fine curl of caramelised chicory.
Still, there were puddings to come. Matters might yet be saved. Tucker went for a trio of brûlées: amaretto, vin santo and limoncello. He tasted them. I tasted them. He tasted them again. Impeccable texture, thin layer of caramel, all very nice, but could we tell them apart? We could not. Which rendered the point of having a trio pointless as well. I finished with a fine slab of piave cheese "with peppered pear". And that's exactly what it was: a bit of not very ripe pear, sliced with the kind of fancy technique they teach in the lesser catering colleges, with some ground black pepper on it. £5-worth? I think not.
Lunch cost £79, excluding drinks. Worth it? I think not. There is, however, something to be rescued from Shumi. The more I think about it, the more it makes me laugh. But I am not sure that's the point.
· Open Mon-Sat, 12 noon-3pm; 5.30-11pm; Sun, lunch only, 12 noon-4pm. Menus Single tray bento box, £15-18; double tray bento box, £28. Chef's choice, £55 for three courses. Wheelchair access and WC.
