The New Willow Street Izakaya Has Excellent Robata, a Deliberate Sound Policy, and Enough Style to Justify Both
Mitsu opened on Willow Street at the Aethos Hotel in April 2026, bringing to the space that previously housed Nobu Shoreditch the specific energy of an East Tokyo izakaya: robata smoke, Suntory whisky on draft, a DJ-led soundtrack of increasing intensity as the evening progresses, and a wagyu sando that people who have visited are describing with a reverence I find both understandable and slightly evangelical. The design by Astet Studio takes you through a corridor of LED arches into a double-height space with industrial textures, ceiling drapes, and a floating bar that makes sense once you are inside it in a way that is difficult to explain from outside. The effect is of having arrived somewhere that knows exactly what it is and has no interest in explaining itself to people who are still deciding.
I went on a Wednesday, which is the correct night for a new Shoreditch restaurant if you want to assess it without the weekend crowd’s contribution to the atmosphere. Wednesday at Mitsu was busy enough to feel alive and quiet enough to sit with the food for a moment without the social pressure of peak service, and what I found when I sat with the food was a kitchen operating with genuine confidence on a menu that has been thought about rather than assembled. The wagyu sandos are, as advertised, very good. The sea bass from the robata is the dish I am still thinking about. The T-bone is large and correctly done. The sashimi is serious. The whole menu operates with the consistency of a team that has agreed on what the food is and executed it without compromise.
The Sound Question
Mitsu has taken a position on the volume of its evening music that is worth knowing before you book for a conversation-heavy occasion. The position is that this is an izakaya with DJ programming and late-night energy, and the music at peak hours reflects that. Conversation at normal speaking volume is possible but requires proximity and intention. This is not a design flaw; it is the design. The venue is doing what it said it would do in its own communications, which is create an East Tokyo experience, and East Tokyo izakayas are not primarily quiet places. If you are going for a meal where the food is the point and the conversation can be managed around the music, Mitsu is excellent. If you need quiet, book somewhere that offers it. Hot Dinners describes the experience accurately. The music is part of it and the food is worth navigating around it.
Shoreditch Receives It Well
The neighbourhood’s response to Mitsu’s opening has been what you would expect from a part of London that has been enthusiastically metabolising Japanese food across formats and price points for two decades: interested, relatively informed, and willing to form strong opinions quickly. The queue on the weekend following opening confirms that the interest translated into attendance, which is the necessary first condition for a restaurant’s success. Whether it translates into the repeat visit rate that sustains a restaurant over time is the question that the following months will answer. The initial evidence – the food is genuinely good, the space works, the concept is executed with conviction – suggests that it will. Shoreditch is full of restaurants that opened with promise. The ones that last are the ones that deliver on it consistently, and Mitsu’s opening weeks are promising on this measure.
London’s capacity to absorb new influences and make them its own has always been one of the city’s defining characteristics, and Shoreditch’s version of this capacity is particularly acute because the neighbourhood has been doing it intensively for two decades and has developed the social and cultural infrastructure to receive new things without being overwhelmed by them. The robata grill at Mitsu sits in a neighbourhood that has already metabolised Japanese cooking across multiple formats and price points, and the new arrival is being received as the latest addition to a conversation that has been going on for years rather than as an exotic intrusion. This is what a mature creative food neighbourhood looks like, and Shoreditch, for all its contradictions, is that.
The Shoreditch food scene rewards repeat visits more than single assessments, because the neighbourhood’s best places reveal themselves through consistency over time rather than through a single excellent performance. A kitchen that is doing the right things will be doing them next month and the month after, and the visitor who returns to test this prediction is the visitor who gets the most out of what Shoreditch currently offers at the level at which Mitsu is operating. This is the argument for booking again before the first visit is over, which is a reliable indicator that the food has worked.
The neighbourhood’s restaurant landscape in spring 2026 is among the strongest it has been: Mitsu, Hoppers, Cycene, One Club Row, and the range of smaller and less reviewed places that constitute the daily food life of the people who actually live here. The combination of internationally recognised quality and everyday neighbourhood eating is what makes Shoreditch a genuinely interesting food destination rather than merely a well-branded one, and that combination is worth understanding before you decide which part of it to prioritise.
More from The Onion. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
