New Openings: Yen - Paris's best noodle bar crosses the channel

From Saint Germain to the Strand, Parisian soba specialists Yen bring their handmade noodles to London.

What’s new?

London diners have a rollicking season of new launches ahead of them (Ollie Dabbous’ HIDE, Jackson Boxer’s St Leonard’s, Tony Conigliaro’s Gazelle... I could go on). Now’s the time to take a quiet moment out to slurp soba at Parisian import Yen at the 190 Strand development.

Behind the scenes

Yen’s in good company at Japanese fashion company Onward Holdings, with Jil Sander and Joseph among its stable mates. A crack team has been assembled at the London outpost comprising ex-Zuma sushi chef Akinori Yasuda, Hiyama Hiroki (ex-Italian three star Da Vittorio), and two soba masters Maruno Hidenori and Katsuki Sakurai who’ve relocated from Paris to do noodle duty here.

The concept 

Though Paris is a step ahead of London on the soba trend (consider the original Yen, now 18 years old, Abri in the 9th arrondissement, and cool newcomer L’Atelier Soba in the 11th arrondissement), London, already obsessed with udon and ramen, won’t take long to catch up.

Yen’s designers Sybarite (best known for Marni) have incorporated a glass-walled soba station into the restaurant where, at around 5pm to 6.30pm daily, guests can see the noodles being cut by hand. A ‘timber treescape’ – shades of Kengo Kuma at Sake No Hana – reimagines a bamboo forest beneath Yen’s lofty ceilings.

What’s cooking?

Pure Japanese food with, as the waiter tells me, ‘no twists, no innovations’: an admirable sentiment. Yen’s too huge (there’s room for over 100 across restaurant, mezzanine bar and private dining) to push the single-minded soba-or-nothing agenda of a traditional soba-ya.

Instead, it touts ‘Japanese fine-dining’ with formal European service and a diverting drinks selection, strong on classic Burgundy and prized sakes.

Homemade tofu, whipped to tahini-like smoothness, is a bold beginning, comfortingly bland and cooling, followed by tempura courgette flower (a celebration of surface area, it’s as good a vehicle for batter as you could hope to find) with lemon and salt à la fritto misto.

From the sushi counter, sashimi delights, in particular creamy cross-hatched squid, and a pair of blowtorched high-grade A5 Hida Wagyu nigiri, with orange zest-flecked pickled ginger – an inspired addition. As for the main course of luscious black cod in miso, it’s better than you-know-where’s.

Signature dishes

Yen’s soba chefs follow their mentor Takahashi Kunihiro, Japanese soba legend, in using a ratio of 80:20 buckwheat to wheat flour to lend elasticity to the firm dun-coloured noodles. Order them plain and cold (‘mori soba’) and slurp them as loudly as possible to better appreciate their sharp corners and subtle nutty savour.

Traditionally served with tsuyu dipping sauce and a chaser of sobayu (the noodles’ cooking broth – terribly good for you, apparently), mori soba was mindful eating long before the term was even invented. Yen’s don’t disappoint.

Best for

Style-savvy slurpers, Yen will be your next London Fashion Week saviour.

Yen 190 Strand, 5 Arundel Street, London, WC2R 3DX, 020 3915 6976; yen-london.co.uk