Last Updated on January 4, 2026
Fine dining with fire in Mayfair
How do you stand out from the masses when there are new restaurants opening daily in London? Our Restaurant of the Month, a new opening in Mayfair, HUMO (meaning ‘smoke’ in Spanish) simplifies cooking to its basic origins – the naked flame – whilst elevating the fine dining experience to its highest level of sophistication. HUMO’s core concept is that everything on the menu is prepared around a four-metre-long wood-fired grill, with no electricity or gas in the kitchen. Even the lemon tart dessert has skirted around the edge of the flame-filled centre of the restaurant, charcoal being pressed against the cream before it makes its final journey to the table.
The chef, Miller Prada, was born in Colombia and trained under third-generation sushi chef Endo Kazutoshi. In his latest endeavour, he has sought to bring together a wide range of ingredients and culinary inspirations from around the world, in particular from Colombia and Japan, all prepared in and around the fire. Further, dishes across the menu are cooked over different types of wood, each adding its own flavour profile.
Certainly, what one pays money for at Humo is more than just the food – which is excellent in its own right. One also buys into the experience as entertainment. With the whole menu being touched by fire, drama and excitement is part of the performance, and the creative project underway at HUMO is about taking fire-based cooking to its extreme. For those interested in cooking as a challenge of ingenuity, HUMO offers an inspiring example of creative, conceptual cooking.
The menu is divided into four sections, each named after the four stages of fire: Ignite; Smoke; Flame; and Embers. Based on a small plates concept, a pair of diners are recommended to order 8 dishes in total.
The interior design of the restaurant reflects the sophistication of its menu. Wood panelling lines the walls, whilst solid tables are opposite the open grill, with bar seating also available. The restaurant only seats 34 diners. The marble adorning the bar and washrooms downstairs adds to the considered luxury of the décor.
First, for cocktails, we enjoyed the City Forager – based on botanicals which could be foraged in central London in December. Made up of basil, mangetout, tonic, yuzushu and a gin blend, the cocktail was a bright green colour with a natural herby flavour. The Kemui Gold cocktail, made from burnt raspberry, oak smoke, gold dusting and dark rum blend, was inspired by NASA’s statement that space smells of raspberry and rum. In fitting with its galactic theme, the cocktail is adorned with gold dust which sparkles in the glass and adds a magical element to the drink. As it happens, the smell of space tastes delicious, with the deep notes of the rum combining with the sweet fruit flavours.
Following our cocktails, we were presented with two small pieces of deboned chicken wings as an appetizer. The chicken had been prepared in a sauce made from sansho pepper – typically only grown in Japan but which can now also be obtained from a farmer in East Sussex who recently succeeded in growing his own crop. The succulent chicken had a juicy, smoky flavour, and the sansho pepper was slightly numbing in the mouth. The single bite was mouth-watering and was the best piece of chicken I had eaten in some time.
Our appetites now truly whetted, we ordered from the Ignite section of the menu. The beginning stages of a fire, or the ‘spark that causes combustion’, dishes from the first part of the à la carte selection are served raw – inspired by sashimi. We enjoyed the Yellowtail – 7-day aged fish in a citrus sauce with Castillo coffee from the chef’s family farm in Colombia. The yellowtail, caught in the Mediterranean, was aged for a week downstairs in the restaurant. The fish was tender and hearty, with a salty soy-sauce-like sauce brightened by the citrus flavour. A creative addition, the coffee was noticeable but not overbearing, adding a subtle undertone.
The next section, Smoke, only featured vegetables prepared over the grill just after the wood has been lit and heated. We ordered the cauliflower cooked under ash with Rokko Miso, yuzu, clementine, nori and Spanish black winter truffles. Chef Prada is the only chef in Europe aside from his mentor using the Rokko Miso, sourced directly from Japan. Slow-cooked under embers, the cauliflower was rich and intense, the Spanish truffle generously grated on top as the dish was brought to the table.
The sansho pepper from the chicken appetiser dish made another appearance in this section in the garden salad, also comprised of smoked Cornish Agria potato, puntarella, mizuna, wild rocket, coriander and the Rokko Miso emulsion. Invigorating and vibrant, the punchy wild rocket still took second fiddle in the salad to the Cornish Agria potato, which was cut into crisp circles and added crunch, mixing deliciously with the miso emulsion.
The wine menu is as impressive as the food menu, taking the suitably creative approach of listing wines by climate, such as island or coastal, rather than country. The sommelier explained that whether a vine is located by the coast, in a valley, or on a mountainside has great impact on the flavour profile of the grape. At high altitude, the temperature drops significantly more at night than in the valley where higher temperatures remain constant. The high-altitude section of the wine list is further subdivided, starting at 500 metres, and increasing in increments up to 1499m. We ordered a carafe of American Recordings from Oregon, USA which was a pinot noir deprived of oxygen meaning that the grape started to ferment whilst still on the vine. Described to us as ‘Ribena for adults’, the wine matched the soft drink for its light red colour and was deliciously light and fruity with flavours of strawberry and rhubarb.
The Flame section of the menu contained dishes grilled in direct contact with three different types of wood – AB55 Whiskey barrels, HR2 Applewood and CM13 Silver Birch. We ordered the West Highlands langoustine served with fermented Kissabel apple and a flatbread made from an emulsion of the langoustine’s brain. The apples gave the plate a pink appearance and a pleasing sweet taste. Also from this section, we tried the Native Lobster. Sourced from Cornwall, the lobster was prepared with Limousin-aged Pouily-Fuissé and HUMO 9 spice mix. When grilled over cherry wood, the lobster was also fried in beef fat dripping, giving the luxurious and meaty texture an added intense, smoky char.
Now reaching the end of the superb menu, we made our selection from Ember – offering daily changing cuts of aged fish and meat. The 7-day aged Brixham turbot was prepared with a fish bone sauce, a wild mushroom skewer and Arlington White yolk sauce. Having just come into season, we enjoyed the sophisticated combination of the earthy mushrooms, with the fish which had notes of citrus. The 32-day-aged Cornish lamb with beetroot sauce, pink radicchio and Castelfranco also made a striking pink impression on the plate. The lamb was rare and delicate in flavour, bringing up the end of the menu in style.
For dessert, titled Cinders in the menu, we admired options such as the Babà, whiskey barrel infused ‘Grain of Paradise’ seed caramel with single-sourced Lancashire milk and barley koji ice cream, or La Andina, a ‘Cream Catalina’ inspired with Colombian grenadilla and timut berries. We settled on the exquisite Amalfi Lemon tart, with an almond base, oak ‘burnt’ Italian meringue (charcoal was pressed against the cream), fresh yuzu and Sake lees ice cream, made from sake excess. The coffee menu included the opportunity to spend £18 on washed-extended fermentation filtered coffee, but we opted instead for single-pour teas, such as the fragrant Sencha, sourced from the 200-year-old tea garden from one of the most revered tea masters in Japan. A delicious choux bun pastry was offered as the final instalment to a fascinating and greatly impressive culinary experience.
HUMO is the latest opening from entrepreneur Misha Zelman’s Creative restaurant Group, which runs the Japanese restaurant Endo at the Rotunda and Sumi in Notting Hill.
I can commend HUMO as a thrilling success in taking a rudimentary technique and scaling it up to the highest levels of fine dining. Spectacular, sophisticated and above all offering an exceptionally well-prepared and thoughtful menu, HUMO is unique and one of the best new culinary experiences London has to offer.
HUMO
12 St George St,
London W1S 2FB
02033273690
This is the latest in our Restaurant of the Month series, where we focus on a recent opening that we think you need to know about. Last month’s Bouchon Racine review had the rest of the team drooling. We’ve also just reviewed In Horto, a recently opened charming bistro in the Southwark Quarter, just around the corner from Borough Market.
Other restaurants on our wishlist include Hawthorn in Kew, co-owned by chef Joshua Hunter (ex-Kitchen W8 and La Trompette) and former Glasshouse front-of-house Patra Panas with some well-priced set menus. And, we’re excited about Socca from Claude Bosi with a menu of ‘fine-dining meets comfort food’, including some fabulous sounding sharing dishes. Or, if you are looking to make a splash, try Jacuzzi, a traditional Italian trattoria from the Big Mamma Group. It’s a themed Italian restaurant on Kensington High Street that was inspired by the architecture of fine Venetian villas, offers the theatre of dining in a lavish and decadent world.
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