What: Located on the seventh floor of The Stratford Hotel, Kokin is a new 140-cover kaiseki restaurant that replaces Patrick Powell’s Allegra. The restaurant’s name reflects a spirit of timelessness, translating directly from Japanese as ‘past and present’. As well as a dining room, Kokin has two roof terraces and a sushi bar.
Who: Kokin is led by chef Daisuke Shimoyama, who also runs restaurant Hannah in London’s Southbank. Shimoyama began his culinary journey at his uncle’s restaurant in Kanagawa, a coastal prefecture south of Tokyo, at the age of 15, initially working as a dishwasher, before working at restaurants in Japan, including three Michelin-starred Ryugin. He later moved to London, joining Umu as a sous chef and working his way up to head chef, and on his days off started a street food business on Brick Lane Street Food Market serving Japanese comfort food for nearly five years. In 2017 he opened omakase tasting menu restaurant Hannah, which has more recently changed into Donabe, specialising in Japanese clay pot rice.
The food: Kokin is described as serving ‘a bold and elemental vision of Japanese cuisine shaped by fire and guided by seasonality’. Many dishes are cooked either over cherry and apple wood on the restaurant’s woodfire grill, used to impart a delicate, fragrant smokiness, or over binchotan charcoal, used for its high heat qualities. Menu highlights include woodfire grilled tuna kama/collar - slow-cooked wild Portuguese blue fin tuna with freshly grated radish and an eight-year-aged mature ponzu sauce; woodfire grilled miso Iberico pork with charcoal grilled leek; woodfire charcoal grilled wagyu with wild mushrooms and onsen tamago; Kokin style fish & chips - crispy scale Japanese amadai fish with thin purple potato and smoked N25 caviar; and native lobster tempura with morels and XO sauce from its agemono (deep fried) section. The sushi bar has two separate offers of temae and omakase. The temae offer includes woodfire-smoked sushi rice (Kokin says it is the first restaurant to do this), topped with wild tuna, in various forms including smoked akami, tartare chutoro, and Maldon salt-cured otoro with diners able to choose their preferred ingredients and have it either in chirashi-style (as a rice bowl topped with fish) or wrapped in seaweed as temaki. The wood smoke element continues into the dessert offer with the choice of either woodfire ice cream or a special four-piece wagashi selection.
To drink: Kokin’s wine offer comes courtesy of Provisions Wine and premium sakes alongside a menu of Japanese inspired cocktails are also available. The latter include the Wasabi Gin Tonic, combining Okinawa gin, wasabi lime juice, and shiso; the Summer Breeze - mix of Mio sparkling sake, Japanese black tea plum liqueur, and peace juice; and the Nara, a mocktail of sparkling houjicha tea, orange juice, and elderflower soda.
The vibe: The restaurant has retained much of the light, cool vibe of when it was Allegra with a neutral colour palette throughout and a stripped-back terrace (see picture above).
And another thing: Shimoyama has also trained to become a professional sake sommelier.
The Stratford Hotel, 20 International Way, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, E20 1FD