It was almost two years ago now that I totally fell in love with the food at Jordan Sclare’s first restaurant Chotto Matte, a super-cool Nikkei restaurant in Soho. My admiration for Jordan’s cooking and the fact that Hawaiian food is something rarely found in London meant that I was intrigued to try his new restaurant, Black Roe. 
Located in Mayfair, and very conveniently near where I get my hair done, Mr S and I popped in for lunch just before I was due to get a blow dry one Sunday. 
Plush banquettes in moody blues, and large monochrome portraits on the wall gave the restaurant a casual yet sophisticated look with bar at one end and a seafood counter at the other.
Being new to this cuisine, we just went ahead and ordered a few dishes starting with the Black Roe ahi and yellow tail poke with yuzu dressing. Firstly to explain a poke (pronounced poe-kay), it’s quite like a ceviche but the Hawaiian version is marinated chopped ahi tuna served on seasoned short grain rice. At Black Roe they’ve evolved the concept by offering different marinated meat, fish and vegetables as well as varying tuna concoctions. We absolutely loved our first try of a poke, the tuna was flavoured beautifully with a generous portion of caviar on the top and delicious bed of crunchy rice. 
However, this simple sashimi salad with avocado and onion dressing was my favourite dish of the day. The addition of pineapple may seem odd, but it actually really worked and I absolutely loved the dressing which reminded of the famous Nobu sauce. Jordan is actually a former Nobu chef, so there’s no surprise that the famous Japanese restaurant has inspired some of his food. 
We also tried the beef tataki poke which had very high quality beef that was perfectly prepared but we found the sesame dressing a little too sweet. The restaurant is much more about the fish and I’d recommend choosing a few seafood pokes over the meat ones.
Monkfish and prawns were perfectly cooked and beautifully presented with a balanced citrus sauce that didn’t have overly sweet notes like the beef. 
A side dish of asparagus was charred and salted to perfection. 
While the grilled chicken breast was juicy and succulent and the sunny colours of the corn salsa made me dream of being under the blue Hawaiian skies! Once again the fruit mixed with the meat really worked with this dish and it wasn’t overly sweet or jarring in flavour combinations.
Mr S likes his food but he’s not a food obsessive like me, and after our lunch at Black Roe he mentioned several times how much he liked it. To me that’s a sure sign of a good place.
Black Roe
4 Mill Street
London
W1S 2AX
020 379 48448
