Shack-Fuyu is a Japanese restaurant in Soho dishing up western inspired food. The thought of that made us reserve a table, we both love Japanese cuisine and a western twist intrigued us. Shack-fuyu is part of the Bone Daddies family which has one of our all time favourites Flesh & Buns (Covent Garden & Fitzrovia). Fair to say we had high hopes and with our hungry post gym appetite we were ready to eat! 

We came across Shack-Fuyu from walking past several times and it always looked busy, we looked at the menu and hurray, we liked it. This has become super easy recently as I, Shiima, eat a lot more variety than I used to. The restaurant was not super busy but the majority of tables were taken and bar seating was fairly empty. As our evening continued it did pick up. The service from our waitress was really good and she was very informative, giving as much detail as possible about each dish. 

The menu is an izakaya style which means sharing, something like tapas. We gave her a heads up that we will be ordering a lot! We had the iberico pork cheek skewers, baby chicken yakitori and seared salmon sashimi. From the bao buns, we had the Veggie (aubergine) and the crispy duck and from the fried we had the Korean fried chicken wings. For our “mains”, I ordered the sukiyaki style wagyu picanha and Amen had the iberico pork pluma. 

The Food 

Amen had the iberico pork cheek skewers and the salmon sashimi solo. He thought the pork skewers were really good with a lot of flavour and the pork was succulent. This was actually a recommendation from our waitress. He loved the sashimi aswell, didn’t expect to come with a wet base but that’s what made him love it – that and because he loves seared salmon sashimi. 

The baby chicken yakitori was too bland for me, it did come with a sesame sauce but I didn’t like it so I used the sauce from the Korean wings. The chicken itself was soft and succulent but just bland. I prefer my chicken yakitori cooked with the sauce rather than having to dip on the side. 

Bao Buns 

The veggie aubergine bao was really delicious, it had so much flavour to it and it tasted as if it was meat. The only thing is that the dressing and greens it came with was way too much. The aubergine was amazing it didn’t need all of that. 

The duck bao I didn’t even have because I didn’t like the look of it. So I used the bun with my main and Amen had the duck. He actually hated it and he loves duck. It didn’t look appetising and amen said it was fried too much and lacked flavour. 

The Korean wings is our all time favourite as it’s the same as the flesh & buns. It’s featured in our top chicken dishes of the year! The Korean wings is full of so much flavour, sticky, sweet and spicy at the time and succulent chicken that just falls off the bone. There’s no bad thing about this apart from that there was only 3. Shack-fuyu’s presentation of the dish is much different to flesh & buns and it’s better, looks more elegant. 

Mains – Larger plates. 

My sukiyaki style wagyu picanha came different to what I had expected. It comes on a hot stone, raw, and with an egg yolk in ponzu sauce that you mix together. The sliced beef cooks on the hot stone and you dip in the egg yolk ponzu sauce mixture. I gave it a really good go, ate a significant amount as I would never have had this before. The beef itself was nice, not too fatty and quite succulent. I used the bun from the duck bao, and made my own beef bao with chilli paste. Delicious. 

Amen thought his iberico pork pluma was amazing with a tonne of flavour especially with the sauce it came with. Simply amazing.

We didn’t have a dessert but everyone seemed to be ordering the kinako French toast. Safe to say were full at this point and we were going to watch The Avengers Endgame movie, which means a lot of popcorn for a long movie. 

Verdict 

We had a good time at Shack-Fuyu, we enjoyed the food apart from a couple but there’s a lot more dishes on the menu that we would love to try out. It’s not better than flesh & buns but it’s good. The restaurant can get really busy as we’ve seen it happen before so we recommend to book to avoid waiting. We recommend for casual dates, groups and casual dining. 

Cuisine: Japanese
Dress Code: Casual
Amen’s Star Dish: Iberico Pork Pluma
Shiima’s star dish: Korean Fried Wings
Price: £30-£40pp
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

SHACK-FUYU
14A OLD COMPTON STREET
LONDON
W1D 4TJ
0207 734 7492