Aqua Kyoto’s Home-Grown Menu Review: London’s First Japanese Urban Farm on the Plate

Our fourth time dining at Aqua Kyoto and it certainly won’t be our last. If you’ve not experienced the group of Aqua London Restaurants, then they should definitely be on your radar. Spanish at Aqua Nueva, Japanese in Aqua Kyoto and modern British at Aqua Shard, located inside the iconic London Shard – though we’re yet to experience that. Here at Aqua Kyoto, Executive Chef Paul Greening has brought London’s first Japanese urban farm into the kitchen to create his brand new home-grown menu – and it’s fabulous.

The field to plate dishes includes unique and exciting ingredients never grown in the UK before. By using an in-house Evogro urban farm, Aqua Kyoto is able to produce a menu with ingredients which are more sustainable. For just £30 per person, you can enjoy 3 courses and a deliciously refreshing cocktail. We started our evening with that cocktail, which is not too dissimilar to a mojito, laced with Tio Pepe sherry, Campari and lots of fresh mint.

To start, the “Osaka” style sushi is a must. Layers of rice, salmon, avocado, home-grown Japanese mizuna and Japanese botanicals. The quality of the salmon was excellent, the flavours subtle but satisfying and if that wasn’t enough for you, a small bottle of Sake was on hand to spray over the top for extra flavour.

Our other starter of Mizuna miso & green chilli aubergine with homemade shisho karage and wasabi salt was again very nice, but much more of a side so ordering both and sharing is my advice. It’s delicious too.

While the food doesn’t have to be shared, everything served here at Aqua Kyoto is designed to be and the set menus are no exception. I had the baby chicken, marinated in ginger & yuzu koshu, topped with Japanese herbs. The chicken cooked over the grill was juicy, the skin crispy and a nice touch of smokiness from the flames they were cooked over. Flavour wise it was very good and there was a very generous amount of chicken on the plate. The best part? Those Japanese herbs grown in the kitchen.

A fillet of perfectly cooked salmon, smothered in a teriyaki marinade and served alongside some braised homegrown shungiku with a sesame miso dressing. In terms of main courses, this was the best for me – especially the cooking of that fish. My only piece of criticism was that both this and our chicken dish needed a more substantial side other than the greens. Some rice would have been sufficient and like all set menus, some extra offerings of sides as a supplement is a great way to sell up and I certainly would have been swayed.

Star dishes of this home-grown set menu was its desserts. Though I may be a tad bias given how much I love them! Beautifully presented and incredibly satisfying. I loved the edible ice cream cones and in fact, these were some of the best ice cream cones I’ve eaten, with two layers of chocolate and crunchy nuts. The flavours? Green tea, satsuma sorbet and black sesame. The latter, good enough to want to take a tub of it home.

My favourite single dish of the evening was the “Chocolate Zeri”. A very creative dessert which clearly had been given a lot of thought into constructing. Milk chocolate soya cream jelly, nato brown sugar sable, Aqua farm herbs, a chocolatey Japanese garden and a shisho coconut & sudachi sorbet. Rich and decadent – just the way I like it. If I hadn’t come to Aqua Kyoto for the set menu, I hope it would have been for the desserts.

We had a lovely time again at Aqua Kyoto sampling the new home-grown menu and I can highly recommend it to anyone, especially for those who love modern Japanese cooking. The freshest of ingredients, perfectly cooked main courses and decadent desserts. There are so many reasons to love this brand new menu and I can’t wait to come back soon.

NB: My meal was complimentary. All views are as always, my own. My views are not influenced by anyone other than my own palate and slightly poor eyesight.