Studio Gauthier, London: Tasting Menu + All-You-Can-Eat Sushi!

Since I have no concept of time other than it is flying, I’m finally publishing this rundown of the birthday dinner I had – in 2024. For those who know when my birthday is, you’re laughing! This year, we went to Gauthier Soho, Alex’s original fance pants place, which we hadn’t been to since before it went vegan several years ago. But last year we went to Studio Gauthier, famous chef Alexis Gauthier’s other London restaurant. And I forgot to write about it! And I have to write about it before I can do the more recent one because that’s my rule! The tasting menu at Studio Gauthier was a perfect special occasion treat – impressive, delicious, and more accessible and approachable than a full-on extravaganza at Gauthier proper.

There’s more! Last week, I went back to Studio Gauthier with a friend for my birthday-week celebration of Bottomless Sushi. I’ve been waiting for YEARS to try Studio Gauthier’s Bottomless Sushi, because after practicing in NYC with my brother I knew I could do serious damage. Well, I overestimated my stomach, and although I’m glad I finally tried it, I’m okay with never. ever. ever. doing that again. Maybe no all-you-can-eat activities at all for me!

I still can’t explain the difference between the new restaurants – there’s Studio Gauthier (tasting menu), and then they have a separate menu with the Bottomless Sushi, and then there’s 123V (lunch counter and bakery possibly?), and there’s a chance they are both in the same room? they are not two completely separate entities? or maybe they are? and there’s also a new 123V outpost that is more sushi focused but also fancier? It’s all very dramatic! Suffice it to say, London’s simply teeming with options from this talented Frencho, probably my favorite Frenchman in food aside from that chocolate wizard on instagram who makes the Eiffel Tower and working bowling alleys out of chocolate and cake and is just like wheeee oui oui oui about it and then at the end takes a bite out of the art he made and it looks DELICIOUS but is also art, he really deserves having 16 million followers.

So first we’ll go over the tasting menu experience at Studio Gauthier and then the much more recent experience of the all-you-can-eat vegan sushi menu. It didn’t feel right to do on my bday proper when I was wearing a dress but the tasting menu is a lot of food too!

Since we were celebrating another year of the sun moving around the earth we chose the tasting menu, which at £50 is a great deal. They sat us in a fancy booth and brought us bottled water, which was annoying so we put a stop to that! If I had to pay for all the water I drink in a restaurant I might as well buy the restaurant.

First up were canapes: spring Barbajuan plant ricotta, parsley, chervil, and chives. Barbajuan is a little pastry filled with cheese and greens. I learned that! This was a nice little bite! Good! Small! Good start!

Next was one of my faves because it was two of my faves: big old piece of good bread, and hummus. Or, fresh house focaccia with wild herbs, with an artichoke and wild garlic dip. You can’t go wrong with any kind of bread and dip but this was really good. The focaccia was incred. I wonder if they sell that in the bakery I don’t understand.

Deciding to wait on the bottomless sushi was a great idea, because the next course was sushi! We had a selection of four rolls: the aubergine and cumin (great flavor combo but not really for sushi. wrong Asian!), asparagus and avocado (basic but well done! and where did they get good avocado?!), thin plant meat (this was THE BEST – I think it was their new 3D printed steak and it was fantastic. again not a classic sushi flavor but the quality of the steak outweighed that), and black kelp caviar (amazing). I think the little dollops of flavored mayos were unnecessary (read on for more about that).

I loved the next dish – the spring morel tortellini with dashi cream sauce and fresh enoki mushrooms. Well that’s according to the menu; I’m pretty sure these were fried enoki mushrooms. Like all pasta dishes in fancy restaurants, the one single piece of pasta was amazing and made you wish there were more than one, but that’s what makes it fancy and delicious!

The last savory dish was kohlrabi de la mer – a big old piece of kohlrabi in beurre blanc, with a green that wasn’t spinach but looked like it, and a big old piece of crispy. It was good, but probably the weakest of a (relatively strong!) lineup. The hunk of kohlrabi meant that every bite of it was just WOW KOHLRABI and just too much, and the crispy was flavorless. The greens were good! This dish wasn’t bad at all just could have been more inspired.

The dessert was by far the best part!

Although my bday preference is usually to make my own giant mess of a cake, this year’s dessert was a fine change because this was literally one of the maybe top 3 best desserts I’ve ever had in a restaurant. I cannot get over how incredible this little cake, their Louis XV cake, was, how complex all the flavors and layers and bits and bobs and magic and madness. There was chocolate mousse, there was a crispy crunchy layer like out of a Carvel ice cream cake, there was darker chocolate ganache, and the most incredible vanilla cream, and caramel, and hazelnut maybe in the crispies? I know not what it truly was but I know it was the best dessert in London. What a birthday treat! Not a bad deal at all for 50 quid (as they say) and I highly recommend it for a special occasion.

Now I don’t remember how the service was, because it was last year, but when I went back last week, it was solidly Not Great.

It’s Bottomless Sushi time!!

For £34 per person (and the whole table has to do it, for obvious reasons), you ostensibly get unlimited sushi. I wanted to ask if there was a record, because I intended to break it, but I never had the server’s attention long enough to make conversation.

Let’s start at the very beginning! I made a booking, which is recommended because even though it was fairly early on a Tuesday, it filled up by the time we were underway. Once we were seated, my friend and I were like, well we’re doing the sushi, right? So let’s tell them to get it started? And we could not get a waiter for like, 20 minutes. It was pretty incredible! and annoying! (It was not at all crowded yet.) Finally we got a guy and said well let’s do the sushi, can we try one of everything to start? And he was like well first we recommend trying the petit sushi set, and then after you have that, we can bring you the good stuff. He didn’t say the good stuff, he pointed to the left side column of the menu, which has the fancy tofu, steak, caviar etc rolls that the people come for. We were like, okay whatever! Listen! Do not listen to the waiter! Do not let them fill you up with the petit sushi set! Aside from the vegan salmon, which you can see in the picture is pretty impressive, it’s a waste of space. Lots of red pepper, I think some sundried tomato?? And only ONE inari tofu pocket which like, you KNOW there are two of us! (But funnily enough one was too many; it tasted like burnt and we couldn’t even finish the one.) Okay so the basic rolls here with avocado and vegan fish on top, that’s okayy , but the problem here is the use of roasted sesame seeds. If you are rolling the rolls in roasted sesame seeds, ALL YOU WILL TASTE, no matter what’s in the roll, is roasted sesame seeds. Not what you’re going for with sushi! Get rid of the seeds!

A little disappointing to start. Again the fish is impressive, but as you can see it’s just on top of plain rice. They need to incorporate the salmon into a more impressive roll, maybe with that avocado. It felt like they give you these, the nigiri style sushi where it’s a whole mound of rice with a slab of something on top, to fill you up before you order the good stuff. Do yourself a favor, stand up to the waiter, and start with the good stuff.

The complicated rolls (that we considered ‘the good stuff’ all, before we tried):

the crispy and spicy vegan tuna roll, with Korean spiced vegan tuna, avocado, pickled cucumber, spring onion, and zingy miso

the crispy rice ‘green dynamite’ with spicy tofu crab, guacamole, battered crispy rice, sriracha, and big ole slices of jalapeno

the crispy tokyo with kimchi and cauliflower

the asparagus tempura and avocado nigiri with truffle miso

the hoisin cucumber nigiri with peanuts and coriander

The biggest and most common problems with the rolls were the extraneous sauces, like the truffle miso dollops, that totally overpowered the flavors, and the egregious use of sesame seeds, for the same reason. The seeds also added a weird chewing experience that just did not work. All you tasted was roasted sesame, or truffle. Get rid of the seeds and the sauces and it would be great! You’ll save time, effort, money, and you’ll save these rolls from being ruined.

If you go, you need to order several plates of the 3D steak with caviar. Honestly do that hard and heavy before you think about anything else. Then do the Green Dynamite, the one with the tofu crab and the jalapenos. Unfortunately I think the best sounding roll, the V-Tuna, is one that was ruined by the sesame seeds. I wonder if you can ask for no sesame seeds! That would be a game changer! Ask for a plate of just avocado and salmon nigiri – no wasting space on the peppers or tomatoes unless you are out of your mind – and you are golden.

I’m glad I got to try this, because some of the sushi really was great and unique. And I haven’t had really good vegan sushi since Soy & Sake closed. (Beyond Sushi is pretty good but that’s been so long too). But those little sauce dots and the sesame seeds ruined some of the rolls. I know I said that 100x but it’s SO ANNOYING! It was so close to being great but they repeatedly took a great roll and smothered it with crap! Also, the service was incredibly slow. It was hard to order the sushi we wanted. At one point it took more than 10 minutes to get more water from someone. (Luckily the waitress who finally came over and got us more water was from then on super quick on the water, but that was like the last 20 minutes of our time there.)

Honestly though, I think the all-you-can-eat jawn is not for me. My friend and I felt so sick wayyy before we expected to. That’s a shittonne of rice we ate! I felt kind of gross after and I think I am gooood for life on trying to eat more than my money’s worth.

I would definitely return to Studio Gauthier, for the tasting menu (which changes regularly) or the a la carte menu. For the most part, the food is fantastic and it’s a great restaurant. Hopefully the service improves and they get rid of the sesame seeds.

Best part: CUTE DOG ALERT! I said hi.