Mu, like most noteworthy restaurants, will polarise guests from the moment they walk in. Some will feel glee that it’s named after the album mu by jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, and that a small fee will be added to your bill to pay the pianist or singer who’ll begin at about 7.30pm. Others will say, “Why are you leading me into a graffiti-strewn building to eat Japanese-influenced food in a dark jazz club? Was Cafe Rouge fully booked?”
That latter group may well find mu quite the experience. As I perused the menu while Dawn Mist by Freddie Redd played over the sound system at the same time as pianist Yohan Kebede of Kokoroko was warming up for his night’s set, I thought of several friends for whom this would be a little pocket of heaven. It is a project by brothers Amit and Aneesh Patel, who also run Brilliant Corners in nearby Dalston and are behind the travelling club/sound system Giant Steps, but at mu the food is taken seriously, too.
It would be tempting at a venue such as this merely to bash out a menu of dull skewers, spring rolls and sliders, and hope that the audience is too lost in music to care. But no: mu is a very decent, experimental Japanese restaurant with a charcoal robatayaki grill that serves up the likes of nikiri-glazed tofu with daikon salad and hake tempura with wasabi and peas.
Both those dishes are good examples of mu’s reach towards high standards. The tofu comes in a generous, almost scorched block brushed heavily with a sweet soy more commonly used on fish, and alongside a pretty but substantial slaw of daikon and carrot in a rice-vinegar wafu dressing. This is not a flimsy vegetarian option; it is smoky, assertive and decidedly robust. The hake, meanwhile, is a large sharing portion of white fish in an exquisitely light batter, served with mushy peas that have a feisty wasabi undercurrent. It is the missing link between Ormskirk and Osaka. Someone, somewhere, has really thought about this stuff.
Forgive me for sounding surprised, but I have frequented many, many music venues over the decades, and not once have I woken up the next day extolling the postmodern playfulness of the chef’s vision. How it feels to eat here when the place is packed to the rafters for a roaring late Friday night jazz performance, I can only guess, because I went on a sedate, midweek evening when the large horseshoe bar was serving its cocktail menu of old classics to a few quietly spoken drinkers and a handful of the pianist’s fans. In these circumstances, mu felt much more like an actual restaurant, albeit a rather capacious and draughty one.
We made our way through the brief, but memorable menu, eating a very good, earthy tennis ball of beef tartare with strips of dark green nori to smear it on. Yellowtail sashimi with yuzu and pomegranate was fresh and appealing, while a slightly less fabulous aubergine, grilled until blackened but with squidgy innards seeping with white miso, still vanished quickly. That same powerful grill will sear you a Dexter striploin topped with caviar, or scallop skewers smeared with yuzu koscho, that magical chilli paste that lifts fish, noodles and even cakes to higher levels. A side of baby gem doused in miso and thickly carpeted with panko breadcrumbs made a mockery of that leaf as a salad item, transforming it into something rich, sweet and more like pudding. The only bum note was a dry, drab bowl of shoestring fries flecked with green that purported to be nori fries but were so nondescript and incompatible with the rest of dinner that it was as if they came from a different kitchen.
Mu serves one dessert only: creme brulee. My sworn policy is never to eat pudding at any restaurant that offers just one option, because they patently want to put you off the idea altogether; it’s a sugar-spun sort of Jedi mind trickery that lots of restaurants are doing right now, rather than employing a decent pastry chef. And custard wot has been blowtorched is no one’s idea of an interesting pudding; it’s what MasterChef contestants make for a speedy second course after frittering 90 minutes doing pork five ways.
I can, however, forgive mu for this. The food at this charming, bold, cool, music venue, which is really trying to give young talent and well-loved but niche artists a platform, is far grander and ornately executed than it needs to be. They are not busking through the menu. This is a kitchen playing confidently. I’m not the hugest jazz fan, but I know what I know about dinner, and I’m definitely ready for a second performance.
