Using a somewhat lazy approach to life, I took the recommendation to go to Dons De la Nature based on this thread and a few others on FT. My partner wanted to try high grade Japanese beef and due to an earlier return to London than planned we had to skip our Kyoto restaurant.

As opposed to most people who rave about this place, I will strongly argue against going there.

We had the best cut they recommend. Please note that if like me you’d expect to pay the price on the website, add JPY 10k to that number as the website does not reflect the cost. We paid JPY40k (£280) for a 400g steak. For info, the cheapest cut they had was 35k. For this we got the steak, a potato that clearly wasn’t cooked on th day, some badly cooked green beans and carrots. I get it, the meat is the star, however, whilst nice, I’d hardly call it amazing. For instance, I’ve found Benjamin’s in NYC to do much better steak (of course different cut) which I rate above the ‘great London steak houses’ of Hawksmoore etc.

We got excited to see the wine list (it is very good), and with very reasonable prices we thought it may be an excellent meal. Other people had obviously had the same idea and we basically got presented with two over priced French wines for about a 5x markup. We opted for a glass of wine instead, a red Bordeaux. Having been obviously stored in a fridge, I noticed things floating on top and it tasted rancid. Asked when opened, and told yesterday, which I’d class as nothing short of a lie. Got them to open a new bottle (not without huff) which was drinkable.

Now, call me petty but when a meal costs around £350 I expect service that’s at least respectful. The owner obviously got annoyed by the slightest request. There was layers of noticeable dust by the wall and most things frayed.

You obviously won’t need a reservation. When we were there someone was in when we arrived, and based on table settings only one or two mor tables that night.