Sexy Fish

Sexy Fish knows exactly what it is: a Berkeley Square room built to be looked at as much as eaten in, with the seafood good enough to justify the theatre around it. It would be easy to write this restaurant off on the name and the room alone — the kind of place that photographs well and coasts on it — and plenty of London dining rooms with a fraction of the visual ambition do exactly that.

What keeps Sexy Fish from being one of them is that the kitchen has clearly been given a real budget and a real brief, not just an interior designer’s afterthought. That distinction is the whole argument of this review, and it’s why the 4-star rating leans on the food rather than the room it arrives in.

The Room

A dramatic Damien Hirst-adjacent interior — mermaid sculptures suspended overhead, a coral-lit bar that changes colour through the evening, glasswork that catches the light from every angle — that photographs better than most restaurants even try to.

It’s loud in the way a room built for being seen is loud: a see-and-be-seen crowd, tables angled for visibility rather than intimacy, and a noise level that rewards arriving with people you already know well rather than trying to have a quiet first date. None of that is a criticism so much as a description of what this room is for.

If you want hushed and considered, Mayfair has other addresses for that. This one wants energy, and it delivers plenty.

What to Order

Robata-grilled fish is the dish to build the evening around — whatever’s come in that day, cooked simply over the grill rather than buried under sauce, which is a more disciplined choice than the flashy room might suggest. The sushi and sashimi selection is wide and genuinely well-executed rather than an afterthought bolted onto a seafood-grill concept, and it’s worth ordering a proper spread of both rather than picking one or the other.

If the full dinner spend feels steep for a first visit, the set lunch is the way to experience the room without the full commitment — same kitchen, same theatrical space, a fraction of the bill.

The Drinks List

A serious sake and Champagne list, priced to match the room rather than to be accessible, but genuinely well curated rather than just expensive for its own sake — the sake list in particular rewards asking the sommelier for a steer rather than picking blind.

What You Will Pay

Dinner à la carte runs £100–150+ per person, and a table ordering robata, sushi, and shared sides comfortably clears that on drinks alone; the set lunch is a comparative bargain at £24–£34 for two or three courses and is genuinely the smarter way to try the kitchen before committing to a full dinner.

A 14.5% discretionary service charge is added on top of whatever the bill comes to, which is worth factoring in before the final number arrives. Groups splitting a wide spread of small plates across the table should budget toward the higher end of that range, since the format naturally encourages ordering more dishes than a single main course each would cost.

The Verdict

Go for the set lunch if the spectacle is the draw more than the bill; go for dinner if it’s an occasion, and go in expecting noise and spectacle rather than a quiet evening — that’s not what this room is trying to be. Bring people who’ll enjoy being looked at as much as looking around themselves; a table that would rather not be noticed is fighting the room’s entire premise rather than settling into it.

What’s Being Said

The room gets the attention, but the robata grill is doing real work underneath it — this isn’t style with nothing behind it. Plenty of restaurants this visually ambitious use the design to distract from a kitchen that isn’t equally considered; Sexy Fish is one of the rarer cases where the food actually keeps pace with the room built around it.