It’s like Fight Club – with tuna

It arrives in a polystyrene icebox the size of a coffin: a 160kg bluefin tuna “that costs the same as a Mini”, according to Notting Hill Fish + Meat Shop owner Chris D’Sylva. Ethically farmed, headed, gutted and tailed, the lean-to-medium grade specimen has been transported here from a Ricardo Fuentes farm in Spain. Harvested on Monday, it reaches its destination on Wednesday evening, where it is wheeled off the truck and tipped onto what looks like an autopsy table in preparation for tonight’s lock-in – a tuna cutting and tasting experience that feels like something out of Fight Club.

Masked people stand around watching, like spectators at a street brawl, as the hefty fish is sliced into sushi. It’s a labour-intensive process, a full workout for cutter Dawid Bury, a former sushi chef from Endo at the Rotunda, in White City, as he takes his serrated blade to the carcass and his machete-sized yanagiba to the meat. We hear the clack and crack of bones being snapped.

With the carcass split open, onlookers are invited to don gloves and tease meat off the ribs with a spoon. These scrapings are turned into tuna rolls by tonight’s guest chef Chris Restrepo of Kurisu Omakase in Brixton. The prized cuts – the otoro (fatty belly), chutoro (semi-fatty meat) and most revered kamatoro (extra-fatty collar) – are sliced up to make sashimi and nigiri. Some of the tuna is seared with a blowtorch, some smoked under a cloche with apple and hickory wood chips. Most is simply brushed with soy, touched with fresh wasabi and topped with caviar and truffles.

A sliver of just-cut tuna is handed to me. The tang of iron is intense and thrilling. Next come clear globs of jelly, the equivalent of marrow from the spinal column, which we eat off the back of our hands; the quivering cubes taste mildly salty and dissolve on the tongue. All the while, plates of sushi go round, tuna mixed in with seabass, mackerel, turbot and salmon. Everyone clamours for more.

It’s only the second such event to open to the public, but already these tuna evenings have proved a massive success for Notting Hill Fish + Meat Shop, which has thrived over recent months by being able to pivot and diversify. When lockdown hit, D’Sylva turned what was a fishmonger into a premium supermarket, offering complimentary concessions to restaurant suppliers such as butchers HG Walter, Neal’s Yard Dairy and Hedone Bakery. He hired chefs who had been made redundant and partnered with Cornish fishermen with a guarantee to purchase their entire catch, which at one point landed him with 200kg of live lobster in a week.

Onlookers are invited to tease meat off the ribs with a spoon

The gamble has paid off. His west London customers have relished having access to so much chef’s-quality produce under one roof, as well as proximity to the expertise of Michelin-level chefs, such as how to cook côte de boeuf to perfection. It hasn’t been only for the food that they’ve queued up. Chefs Alex Dilling, Skye Gyngell and Ruthie Rogers have been keen to soak up “the super-positive vibe”, as D’Sylva puts it. The store has offered all the theatre of a restaurant kitchen with the energy of a market – it’s been a godsend during lockdown, with huge potential in the weeks ahead.

Thanks to a refurb in August, the new floor-to-ceiling refrigerators and spot-lit vitrines only enhance that sense of drama. As for the tuna nights, the installation of a custom-built table and 30-cover omakase counter may turn what was an underground event into something more polished (with a limit of 20 guests and temperature checks, among other Covid-19 safety measures). But D’Sylva knows not to strip the evening of all its visceral edge. “The impact of people seeing the tuna for the first time, the scale of it, and the experience of eating off the carcass, is so carnal and invigorating,” he says. “I know there is something unique here that is intrinsically part of our brand.” 

 @ajesh34