Kurobuta takes its inspiration from the Izakayas of Japan, where tapas-style plates are served to accompany drinks in a casual setting. Originally a pop up, Kurobuta has been such a hit with diners who fell for the unique chilled out ambience and exceptional Japanese food.
Kurobuta was founded by Scott Hallsworth in 2013, with a pop up in Kings road (Prince Harry & Megan Markles Favourite location), it went on to have locations in Harvey Nichols, Marble Arch and Fitzrovia.
THE STORY OF KUROBUTA
‘I’d been thinking about the concept for years, wanting to capture the excitement of Nobu from back in the day,’ says Scott. ‘There were plenty of Japanese restaurants at the top end, and lots at the lower end like Yo! Sushi, but no one was trying anything in the middle.’ He wanted to open something similar to the izakayas of Japan – informal bars which also serve plates of food. ‘If you want sushi in Japan you go to a sushi restaurant; if you want tempura you go to a tempura restaurant,’ he explains. ‘Izakayas serve a bit of everything usually, but they vary – you can find family businesses serving good food with a minimal, barebones interior, or you can go down a back alley and find yourself in a rock and roll bar with food coming out until three in the morning.’
Funding fell through for Scott’s first site, which was around the time his friend was living out of his car and Scott wasn’t too far behind. ‘We’d already told everyone we were opening a restaurant so we couldn’t lose the momentum,’ he says. ‘We decided to scrape all our cash together and open a pop-up to try and make some money – after all, everyone else seemed to be doing it. Our agent found a place on King’s Road in Chelsea which wasn’t really the area we were looking to open in, but we fell in love with the place when we saw it; dingy, shabby and with a tiny kitchen. We decked it out, worked twenty-four hours a day and by the second week of opening we were making a profit – it all blew up overnight and just went crazy. We only had thirty-eight seats – most of which we’d borrowed from another restaurant – and were doing 110 covers a night.’
This success was what led to a permanent site in Chelsea, a second restaurant in Marble Arch and then Harvey Nichols knocking on the door, but Scott still fondly remembers the chaos during those first few months. ‘After working at Nobu we were used to nice bespoke kitchens – in this one you could barely work,’ he says. ‘One of our guys even had to run down the street with a tray of pork belly buns so he could steam them at another restaurant. It was tough, but the sense of pride that came out of those guys after we made it happen was unbelievable.’