Aces Foodcraft

Alex Craciun's co-owner and wife, Aleksandra Jazevica, is a director of Primeur, the high-end supplier that sells produce to some of London's best kitchens, so this restaurant buys what those kitchens turn down. In his words: "We got 20 amazing pineapples the other day at a great price because they weren't quite the right shape for what another restaurant wanted to do with them. Many top kitchens still insist on everything being the same. I like taking that sort of thing because it forces creativity. We benefit from other restaurants being fussy." ref

Why go

Craciun launched Sosharu for Jason Atherton in 2016, then vanished from London when that site closed, and spent eight years consulting and opening restaurants in the Middle East, Bali, Singapore, Spain, Italy and Romania. He also spent a year working in Japan, staging in Tokyo and Kyoto, and he is tired of what that got him labeled: "Combining fish and rice does not make you a Japanese restaurant. We are not Roka or Zuma, and nor do we want to be" (Restaurant magazine, January 2026). The menu says the same thing with course titles like "A Chinese man in France" and "Japanese man in the Basque country." The kitchen sits in the middle of a small room with nine counter seats wrapped around it and a refrigerated glass cabinet above holding the fish the chefs will butcher tomorrow. Craciun and Jazevica own it outright and spent a decade saving for it, which is why the fit-out is unfinished and why he told Joe Lutrario, "We don't want anyone telling us to put prices up or down."

Order this / avoid

• Order: the tasting menu, nine courses for GBP 95 in January 2026. Craciun's hero dish is a pressed sushi built in a custom mould, layered with fish, meat, vegetables and sauces, the rice seasoned with coconut fat, orange reduction and mirin, then cut to nigiri size. He calls it "like sushi on steroids." ref Also the Temaco, a taco crossed with a temaki, crisp shell filled with bluefin tuna, sushi rice, avocado and wasabi, with a homemade fermented chili sauce on the side; he first served it at Sosharu and brought it back. Start with the Aces Martini, the only cocktail on the list, GBP 12 of Helix7 vodka, dry vermouth and salted umeshu.
• Avoid: the tasting menu if anyone at the table has a dietary requirement. The restaurant's own menus page rules out pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, no-egg, no-dairy and gluten-free diets on it, along with coeliac disease and severe allergies, on cross-contamination grounds. Also do not plan a tasting-menu lunch: "We will never offer a tasting menu at lunch. Lunch is very difficult in London." ref

What locals & experts say

• Gavin Hanly, Hot Dinners (15 January 2026): "an extremely impressive parade of unique dishes that are quite unlike anything else in London right now. It's a real triumph." On the price, "for the level of food we had, that's an absolute steal anywhere in London, let alone right in the middle of town." He also noted a couple at the counter on their third visit in four weeks. ref
• Joe Lutrario, Restaurant magazine (15 January 2026): opened "with little fanfare at the very end of last year," it "deserves to be marked down as one of 2025's most intriguing restaurant openings." ref
• MICHELIN Guide (2026): listed in Greater London with its cuisine recorded as "Creative" and the top price band. No star and no Bib Gourmand at the date checked. ref

Good to know

• Where: 8 Pearson Square, in the pedestrianized Fitzroy Place, about five minutes from Goodge Street station and directly opposite Motorino.
• Booking: essential, through the restaurant's own SevenRooms page. Nine counter seats and a few tables, so the counter goes first and pairs get the best of it.
• Timing: a la carte by day, tasting menu in the evening. Craciun planned a short lunch menu of five or so dishes that one or two chefs can run while the rest of the brigade preps for dinner.
• The menu turns over: roughly 70% of the tasting menu is meant to change every month or so, so a dish you read about may be gone.
• Groups: the room is small and the kitchen is in the middle of it. Fine for four, wrong for eight.
• Drinks: wine-led, bottles from GBP 39, a short sake list, German sparkling and Swiss sparkling teas for the low and no crowd, and exactly one cocktail.
• Dietary: nothing is accommodated on the tasting menu, coeliacs and severe allergies included, per the venue's own written statement. Minor adjustments need arranging before you book (ref).
• Hygiene: no FSA record exists yet. Searches of the register's open API by name and by the W1T 3BF postcode returned nothing on 30 July 2026, which fits a December 2025 opening in Westminster that has not had its first inspection.
• One nice touch: the back of the menu lists the London restaurants and bars the team is recommending that month, and they update it.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "nov 2025 opening - highly innovative and new tasting menu that's good value from chef of former sosharu" REAL. The opening actually landed in December 2025 rather than November, and the sosharu link is right: Craciun opened it for Jason Atherton in 2016. The value read holds up, GBP 95 for nine courses.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — Worth the detour, and cheap for what it is. Nine courses at GBP 95 from a chef who ran Jason Atherton's Sosharu, cooked a year in Japan and then spent eight years opening restaurants across Asia, the Gulf and southern Europe before building his own room with a kitchen in the middle of it. The invention is real and specific: a pressed sushi layered in a custom mould with rice seasoned in coconut fat and orange reduction, a mushroom-and-truffle noodle standing in for ramen, a taco-temaki hybrid carried over from Sosharu. Hot Dinners called the result 'quite unlike anything else in London right now'. It stops short of must-visit because no award has landed yet, the MICHELIN listing carries no distinction, and roughly 70% of the menu changes monthly so there is no career dish to travel for.