Restaurants

Sumosan

26 Albemarle Street,  Mayfair,  London,  W1S 4HY
020 7495 5999  / www.sumosan.com / view map

Surveyed 10/08/2011
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About this restaurant

Sumosan is a trendy Japanese restaurant based is Mayfair that is something of a celebrity hang out. The Wolkow family from Russia own and run the restaurant which opened in 2002. Bubker Belkhit, Sumosan’s executive chef, has been associated with the Wolkow family since the 1990s when he ran the kitchen in what was to be the first of three Sumosans in Moscow. It opens for dinner seven days a week, lunch from Monday to Friday and is a short walk from Green Park tube station. It gets a 3.5 star Google rating. As always, high end London restaurants come with high prices, average price of food: £60.00.

They say...

Head chef Bubker Belkhit has created a sumptuous and varied menu, which compliments the excellent raw materials, sourced for the restaurant. The sushi and sashimi is some of the best to be found in the capital. No compromise is ever made on the quality of the fish. Owner Janina Wolkow readily reduces her profit margin if it is required that the fish are sourced from a more obscure part of the world to maintain quality. Sumosan’s consistently high standards attract many regular faces from the celebrity world.

We say...

It is to be welcomed that this restaurant has improved its Fish2fork rating but it still has a poor record. It has at least risen from the depths of 5 red fish, the worst rating possible, but its 3.5 red fish remain a source of concern. One of the biggest problems posed by Sumosan is its willingness to serve European eel, a species classified as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). But there are other worries, too, not least a complete failure on its online menu – it did not submit a Fish2fork questionnaire – to display any indication of having any policies in place that are designed to ensure sustainable sourcing of seafood. There are a number of fish on the menu for which in some parts of the sea there are concerns about stock levels and catch methods. They include seabass and turbot but there is no way of knowing which stocks the restaurant uses because it does not say. However many celebrities Sumosan attracts to its tables, it could and should do much better on the issue of sustainability.

Emil Levendoglu says:

I agree that Sumosan's record on sustainability is abysmal. And I recently read a review on Square Meal which made the same point: http://www.squaremeal.co.uk/restaurants/london/view/81468/Sumosan

August 05 2010

Simon Tompsett says:

Not good

August 11 2010