Ten seats, one sitting a night, and a window looking straight at Harrods. Alba, the Amalfi Coast restaurant on Brompton Road, opens an omakase counter on 21 September, run by a chef who spent eight years at Zuma.
Everyone sits down together at 7.30pm. There is no second service, no lunch, and only ten stools, which makes this one of the smaller rooms in London to be aiming this high.
The bit that makes it more than another counter
Along the Amalfi coast, and further south in Puglia and Sicily, fishermen have been cracking open sea urchins at the water’s edge and eating the roe raw for centuries, with nothing on it but lemon and a piece of bread. They call it ricci di mare. The Japanese call the same thing uni, treat it with the same reverence, and have never had cause to compare notes.
That is the whole argument for this counter, and it is a better one than most restaurant expansions manage: two coastlines that independently decided the finest thing you can do with a sea urchin is almost nothing at all. Alba was already a raw-seafood restaurant. This is the same idea in a second language.
Who is cooking
The concept is by Dmytro Pak, Alba’s creative chef, who spent the past year at UNI in Paris, a restaurant named after the ingredient. The counter itself is led each night by Japanese head chef Takuya Kaneko, who has twenty years behind him, eight of them at Zuma.
That is a serious pairing for ten seats, and Kaneko working a counter this small in Knightsbridge is the reason to pay attention rather than the Harrods view.
What you get
- Nine courses or an extended twelve, both chef-curated and built round whatever came in that morning
- Hokkaido uni, bluefin otoro, and Kristal and Beluga caviar
- Nigiri, sashimi and small raw courses, passed straight across the counter as they are made
- A separate Japanese à la carte menu served daily in the main dining room, if ten seats at 7.30pm is not going to happen
Walk-ins are taken for the à la carte. The counter is not something to leave to chance.
The London x London Take: the Harrods staging is doing a lot of work in the press release and it is the least interesting thing here. What matters is that a chef with eight years of Zuma behind him is standing four feet away from ten people, cutting fish that arrived that morning, once a night. That format either justifies itself in the first three courses or it does not, and Kaneko’s record suggests it will. Go early in the run while the kitchen is still showing off, take the nine rather than the twelve unless you genuinely want two and a half hours of it, and eat the uni without asking what it costs.
Need to know
- Where: Alba, 1st Floor, 70 Brompton Road, London SW3 1ER
- Omakase counter opens: Monday 21 September 2026
- Seating: ten seats, one sitting nightly at 7.30pm, dinner only
- Menus: nine-course or twelve-course omakase, plus a daily Japanese à la carte
- Restaurant hours: Monday to Thursday 12pm to 11.30pm, Friday and Saturday to midnight, Sunday to 10.30pm
- Nearest station: Knightsbridge
- Booking: alba-ldn.uk
Eating well nearby? Our guide to the best places to eat in London has the rest, and things to do in Knightsbridge covers what else is worth the trip.
