Sushi TONARI

A Church, a Market Hall, and a Counter for Raw Fish

London's sushi scene has reorganised itself considerably over the past decade. The city once sorted Japanese dining into two broad camps: high-end omakase rooms in the West End and accessible conveyor-belt formats everywhere else. That binary has since fractured, and a middle tier has emerged, comprising specialist counters that operate with technical seriousness but without the formality or price point of a dedicated tasting-menu room. Sushi TONARI belongs to this middle tier, and its location inside Mercato Mayfair gives it an architectural context that most venues in this category cannot claim.

The Container Matters: What the Space Tells You

Mercato Mayfair occupies the converted interior of St Mark's Church on North Audley Street, W1K, a Grade II listed building whose soaring nave and galleried upper levels now house a curated collection of food vendors and independent operators. The setting is significant not because it is decorative but because it shapes the experience structurally. A sushi counter inside a Victorian church conversion operates under entirely different spatial logic than one tucked into a Soho basement or a Knightsbridge hotel corridor. Natural light enters through the original windows at angles that change through service. The stone and timber of the original fabric absorb sound differently than the acoustic panels favoured by purpose-built dining rooms. These are not incidental details: they define what sitting at Sushi TONARI actually feels like.

Across London's premium dining tier, interior architecture has become an increasingly deliberate signal. Venues like Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library in Conduit Street have long understood that the physical container is part of the value proposition, not just the backdrop. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal uses a similarly considered spatial frame at the Mandarin Oriental. What distinguishes Sushi TONARI's position is that it achieves architectural weight not through bespoke interior design budgets but by operating within an existing landmark whose bones do the work.

North Audley Street and the Mayfair Context

North Audley Street sits at the western edge of Mayfair, connecting Grosvenor Square to Oxford Street with a character that is quieter and more residential than the neighbourhood's Mount Street or Berkeley Square axes. The area has historically drawn a mix of international visitors, local residents with serious disposable income, and office workers from the nearby embassies and financial firms. It is not a street with a strong restaurant identity in the way that Shepherd Market or Marylebone High Street carries one, which makes Mercato Mayfair's food hall model an interesting intervention: it concentrates dining options within a single address, giving the street a culinary gravity it would not otherwise have.

That context matters for Sushi TONARI specifically. A specialist sushi operator in a food hall format benefits from the hall's footfall without depending on destination-dining traffic the way a standalone site would. Guests who arrive at Mercato for a different vendor may encounter the counter and return specifically for it. This is a different commercial logic than the one governing, say, CORE by Clare Smyth in Notting Hill or The Ledbury in the same neighbourhood, both of which depend entirely on advance intent from their diners.

Japanese Counters in London: Where This Fits

London's appetite for omakase and specialist sushi formats has expanded considerably since the mid-2010s. The city now has enough high-end Japanese counters to constitute a genuine scene rather than a collection of isolated operators. At the top of the pricing structure sit multi-course omakase rooms that price against Tokyo's Ginza counters and require reservation windows of several months. Below that sits a category of venues that apply Japanese technique to more accessible formats, shorter menus, and walk-in or same-week booking. Sushi TONARI's presence within a food hall positions it closer to the latter group, where the emphasis falls on quality of product and preparation rather than ceremony and choreography.

Internationally, the comparison point is useful. Atomix in New York represents what a fully committed Korean fine-dining counter looks like when it operates at the top of its category with multiple awards behind it. Le Bernardin in New York demonstrates how a fish-focused kitchen can sustain a multi-decade reputation at the highest tier. These are different propositions from what a Mayfair food hall counter offers, but they establish the broader frame within which London's specialist Japanese venues are increasingly judged by internationally mobile diners who use both cities regularly.

Planning a Visit

Sushi TONARI is located within Mercato Mayfair at St Mark's, North Audley Street, London W1K 6ZA. The Mercato format means the site operates with the opening rhythm of the broader market hall rather than a conventional standalone restaurant, and the walk-in or casual-booking dynamic of a food hall counter differs from the advance-planning required at London's more formal Japanese rooms. For diners accustomed to booking Restaurant Gordon Ramsay weeks ahead, or scheduling a trip around a table at Waterside Inn in Bray, the relative accessibility of the format is a meaningful difference. The nearest Underground stations are Marble Arch on the Central line and Bond Street on the Central and Jubilee lines, both within a short walk of North Audley Street.

For readers planning broader itineraries across the UK, the EP Club guide covers Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons in Oxford, L'Enclume in Cartmel, Moor Hall in Aughton, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, Hand and Flowers in Marlow, hide and fox in Saltwood, Midsummer House in Cambridge, Opheem in Birmingham, and Restaurant Andrew Fairlie in Auchterarder. The full London restaurants guide covers the city's broader dining tier in detail.