Yashin Sushi is a very classy sushi restaurant in Kensington. It has a very good reputation and was included in Time Out’s list of the best 5o restaurants in London. There they said that “a meal at Yashin may not be cheap, but it’s an experience not to be missed.”
On one of the restaurant’s walls, there is a big neon sign saying “without soy sauce – but if you want to” because the chefs don’t believe in adding it to their sushi. Unlike most sushi places, no soy or wasabi is provided on the tables. Instead the chefs do absolutely all the flavouring themselves in the recipe and finish it off with a drizzle of truffle oil or a quick blast from a blowtorch (yes you did read that right). Clearly Yashin is a distinctive place to go with some of the best sushi in town.
However, the restaurant is not very accessible. When we called them to find out about their disabled access they didn’t seem to have ever considered the issue. “At Yashin Sushi?” they asked, perplexed, as if nobody in a wheelchair could ever want to spend £25 on a plate of sashimi. It seems that to enjoy the food, less able customers will have to put up with some problems. Chief among these is that there is no disabled toilet in the building. But being seated could equally be a problem.
There is one step to get inside and the restaurant is on two floors. The main restaurant is down a flight of stairs and there is no lift. The ground floor is more of a sushi bar with raised tables that might be difficult for less able people to be seated at. But they did say that they can move some seats around and make a bit more space if somebody is in a wheelchair comes.
We’re giving Yashin Sushi a provisional 1.5 BBS Ticks because at least it’s not inaccessible. The sushi sounds incredible and most other people say that the service they experienced was very good.
