Mayfair’s Wagyu Grifters Watch Their Backs as the Real Deal Arrives From Tokyo

A Tokyo steakhouse will turn up the heat on any would-be Mayfair wagyu grifters by bringing genuine Kobe beef to London this May. Aragawa, first founded in Kobe in 1956, is renowned for its Tajima beef, reared in the Hyogo prefecture of which Kobe is the capital, and will open at 38 Clarges Street this May, according to the Telegraph.

Its menu is aptly concise, centred around the beef, seasoned with salt and pepper; grilled over binchotan charcoal; and served with mustard. A rotating cast of similarly effortless starters and sides, focussed on money ingredients like abalone, scallops, and sea urchin, changes monthly. But it’s the unadorned location, down a “dark hallway” in a Tokyo office, that could make Aragawa such a striking arrival in an area where glamour is literally expected to be part of the furniture.

Jiro Yamada founded the Kobe restaurant, with the Tokyo site run by his son, Mitsuya Yamada; Jiro died in 2011.

It’s TikTok on the clock for Korean corndogs

Bunsik, whose Charing Cross Road restaurant surged in popularity on the app, will open as second in Embankment.

Prince Andrew is sweating ... On Pizza Express diners remembering him

A lawyer for Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking, has said that Prince Andrew must provide evidence of his widely publicised Pizza Express alibi if the case against him continues to court. Seeing a royal at a high street chain restaurant isn’t the kind of thing one forgets in a hurry.

If Gino D’Acampo’s pasta bar had money, it would have been open

The Italian celebrity chef’s trio of restaurants in the City has run up debts of over £5 million and gone into liquidation, while still owing £37,000 in wages to staff.