Review: Flesh & Buns, Covent Garden

Flesh & Buns has a proper Japanese izakaya vibe, hidden down a staircase below Sevendials Market, with dark wooden decor and plenty of buzz (it’s quite a big place once you get down there). The menu also reads as a pleasing romp through the more sticky and crowd-pleasing side of Japanese cuisine.

We started with three of their small plates. Simple chicken yakitori was absolutely superb: two skewers of juicy chicken thigh, packed with flavour from the marinade, stickily charred on the outside. Didn’t come with any sauce or dip, didn’t need any. I’ve seldom, if ever, had better. Next up was a filthy thing they call “beef fat chips”. The chips are actually cubes of boulanger potato that have been dropped into beef fat, crisp on the outside and yielding within, wonderful umami beef flavour and a cheesy sauce to dip in. Finally, sweetcorn fritters, four small spheres light and crisp with a bright chilli-citric dipping sauce. So far, so yum.

Their signature mains are various dishes served with a pair of soft buns (think bao, but a little flatter and less elastic). We picked crispy piglet belly and portobello mushrooms. The pig belly was very good, flavourful and tender as you could wish for. The skin was more like a delicate glaze than a crisp topping. Went very well in the bun with slivers of apple pickle and shredded carrot. The mushrooms had been grilled with a peppery ponzu glaze and came with some very good pickled daikon, pickled cucumber and a thick horseradish sauce – all good. The two buns each weren’t really enough for this, but I guess we could have ordered more (others did). Instead, we left enough room to share some little round doughnuts with a full-flavoured “black sugar” custard inside and a frosty dusting on their crispy outsides.

All in all, a delicious meal. Probably £30 each before drinks, although we propped our bill up with a top-notch sake and a couple of very drinkable umeshu negronis to start (the umeshu makes for a sweeter drink than gin as a base, but not over-sweet and with a pleasing extra fragrance from the plum). If I fancied some sleazy Japanese food and was in the middle of town, I’d head back to Flesh & Buns for sure.