KINTAN - JAPANESE BBQ, HOLBORN

Kintan offers a first of its kind dining experience in London - Yakiniku BBQ - a premium Japanese "cook at your table" meal. I've been to a couple of Korean "cook at your table" restaurants in London so was keen to try out Kintan. I was invited along to try their premium menu which offers a selection of light vegetable and fish starter dishes followed by a plethora of meat and seafood to cook yourself at the table.

Kintan is near Chancery Lane station, on High Holborn, which is somewhere I don't frequent at the weekends (unless I'm at a club round the corner, when I don't think Kintan is open!!). So we headed into Central a couple of Sundays ago and finally found the restaurant after overcoming my rubbish navigation skills. The restaurant is dark wood interiors, with lots of tables for 4, each with their own barbecue in the middle of the table. It's a slick looking restaurant and despite the number of open barbecues cooking meat at tables it wasn't at all smoky.
 
We started with drinks, in the form of sparkling sake. To my surprise, this was both low in alcohol (5%) and quite sweet, unlike other regular sakes I've tried which are much stronger and drier. It was quite nice, but I couldn't drink more than one glass of it, so moved on to Asahi beer soon after.

 
Starters appeared in the form of salted edamame, which I love snacking on while waiting for food:
 

 
Then the Kintan salad - a mix of leaves, sliced cabbage, tomatoes and boiled eggs - nothing too exciting but nice to start the meal with something fresh and green.
 

 
Next was the hot oil seared salmon, which I really liked. It looked like it would be too oily, but really wasn't greasy at all and was full of flavour.
 

 
Our final starter was the tuna tartare volcano, a creamy raw tuna mix on top of a crispy deep fried block of sushi rice. I enjoyed this dish, though felt that the block of rice was a little stodgy - it could've been half the thickness and worked even better. I also enjoyed the topping though was expecting a little more of a kick after it being described as volcanic!
 

 
Starters done, it was on to the main event. A platter of filet mignon, premium rib eye, premium Kaibi short rib, Harami skirt steak, tiger prawns, scallops and halloumi cheese arrived, all ready for us to cook for ourselves on the grill. It was a huge amount of food, and all delicious. I particularly liked the short rib and the tiger prawns. Each meat is marinated in a different sauce, and it is all top quality produce, which you can tell when you eat it. It's such fun being able to cook your own food, at the pace you want, right in front of you, and would really suit any groups who have different tastes in the way they like their meat cooked, as you can control whether you want it rare, medium or well done. You also get a bowl of garlic fried noodles with your barbecue (not to cook on the barbecue, obviously) which were really delicious too. The main course was definitely my favourite part of our meal.
 

Pudding was mochi ice creams in salted caramel, green tea and sesame flavours. I didn't really love these to be honest as I felt they lacked any real strong flavours, but then after all that food, I didn't have much room for pudding anyway.

The premium menu that we had costs £44.50 a head, and you get a lot of food for your money - the restaurant can arrange for doggy bags if you can't eat it all then and there! They also do a la carte menus and offers so you don't have to spend that much to enjoy it. Kintan would be great fun for a group of friends wanting a good feeding, and an exciting alternative to a Sunday roast, for example. We went on a Sunday, ate at around 2.30 and didn't need much food for the rest of the day.

Kintan is at 34-36 High Holborn, WC1V 6AE.