Some restaurants luxuriate in a hushed soup of calm when you walk in.
Like sinking into a bog of beige and tastefully muted lighting, you surrender yourself to their good taste and presumably eye-watering prices.
You allow them to close around you, submerge you, sublimate you.
Kokin (古今, meaning 'past and present') hovers on the 7th floor of the Autograph Hotel in Stratford.
You may glide past the downstairs gaggle of brasseries and slide up in the golden-hued lift.
Out you ease into a cocoon overlooking the allotments and half-finished developments of East London’s hodgepodge skyline.
Chef Daisuke Shimoyama is a master of understated achievement.
He trained at the three-Michelin-star restaurant Nihonryori Ryugin in Tokyo, before casually flipping over to our latitude and leading the team at Umu (only one star this time, lazy man).
He then founded Hannah Japanese Restaurant (now Donabe), much beloved on the Southbank.
Everywhere he treads, accolades and stars flutter about his forthright feet.
But enough hero worship, let's move on to interior praise.
The Japandi cloud is punctured by objects of careful craftsmanship, plants lean in giving privacy, and thick chunks of marble the width of my arm dip around the borders of the limousine-length bar.
Thankfully (well not for him) my dinner date is a smoker, and we trip out onto a terrace the same size as the restaurant but with only four or five benches hidden in the ample foliage.
The burning one helpfully also works as a landscaper and marvelled at the difficulty of getting trees up to the 7th floor, the quality of the water features, slabbing, and careful planting.
He draws my eye to the railway sleepers half covered by flowers, a playful reference to the international station below that so far has never seen an international train.
A lichen-like Matcha Martini is both on brand and refreshing and Summer Breeze not only fans our hair but fortifies us for the experience ahead.
The starter platter is hefted towards us, looking more like a set piece from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with sprigs and tiny little ramekins surely only built by elfin hands.
Oysters with apple smoked celeriac purée and Nabansu jelly give an odd lemony waft to the salty sea creature, and tofu cream with langoustine tartare also leans into the wobble in its own glass jar. Like a whiffy pool of silk-satin, it really pushes the boundaries of what soybeans can be or do.
Tuna (the signature fish) crops up in a demure skewer with an utterly lickable egg yolk curry sauce. Chawanmushi is a steamed egg custard, but that is an unfavourable explanation. It has miso depth but is light as air in another petite steaming pot with blobs of colour on its clay face.
Saba sushi is vinegar-marinated mackerel disks, reminding me of more northerly climbs, which is where Shimoyama breaks from his kaiseki (traditional Japanese multicourse meal) training.
We sit astounded by the range of flavour, texture, cultural references, and that’s just the starter.
Another cigarette break (not condoning smoking here, kids) and we are pulled back in by our understanding waitress for the sashimi, the perfect thing on a sweat-making day.
Now the fish-forward restaurant flexes its svelte muscles and flashes its sushi knife.
They source seasonal, sustainable bluefin tuna and use every inch of the surprisingly massive ocean traveller, breaking it down in-house.
They can even name their fisherman, Hajime Tanaka, who works off the Spanish and Portuguese coast.
Both the akami (lean) and otoro (fattest belly) melt into our outstretched tongues, yet with that muscular firmness and distinction that sets tuna apart from its frilly fishy friends.
Langoustines crossed over one another like little fingers prove a nice funk to pair with the slices of blue and pinky-purple flesh.
Kokin can do fire as well as ice.
Cherry and applewood are used to infuse the flames and smoke along with Binchotan charcoal, again somewhere in the labyrinth behind the scenes.
We are treated to a part of the fish I not only didn’t realise existed but have certainly never had.
Tuna collar (kama), or, in layman’s terms, neck (please don’t ask me where it starts or ends). Normally snapped up for sushi, this is what I can only describe as a square steak of fish cooked for eternity.
This signature dish belies description and category, but I'll give it a go. A homemade eight-year-aged ponzu sauce swishes around the base, and a large Y-shaped cartilage props it up. It's pork-like, with all the playful caresses of an Atlantic breeze, smoky yet nowhere near as sweet as, say, barbecue-grilled meat. It's citrus-kissed and so perfect that it just slides onto your fork and from there to your lips with the tenderest of thrusts. It's the only part of the fish I will eat henceforth.
Wagyu beef with creamy solid egg follows, but we are still discussing that fantastic fish, and it takes a lot for the king of cow, marbled and languishing in its own fat, to be put on the backburner.
Yakaze’s (Old Fashioned cocktails trapped in a forest fire) are served as the lights dim, the sun sets, and the conversation gets low and gloriously personal.
We are then treated to a bit of whimsy: sushi, made by me (or we in our case). Nori sheets, woodfire-smoked sushi rice, and three slabs of the now obsessed-over wild bluefin tuna with glowing ikura salmon roe beads to christen your creation.
If conversation was flagging (thankfully it wasn’t), this would reignite it as we grapple and chuckle at our ineptitude.
Lastly, wood-fired ice cream trots out, so simple with fermented blueberries and crumbs. After all the smoke and savoury glory, this palate cleanser is just what the doctor ordered. It waltzes well with my tulip glass of dessert wine and my date's steaming black mug of brown rice tea, which smells of popcorn but tastes a little like feet.
Having only been open for eight weeks, this restaurant is an event in itself - so romantic, so artfully curated in every sense that you may fall in love with whoever is across the table from you.
A warning though: I had spent the day out and about and although dressed for the occasion had on plastic sandals, producing an unfortunate squelching as I slid through the low-level, humming, sexy-people dance music.
Of course, the infinitely attentive and respectful staff never even batted an eyelid.
Learn from me though, put your best heels on, clunk on your baubles and move money over from your savings (you’ll need a fair wad), keep your eyes fluttering at your plus-one, waiting for that proposal and, in the process, fall deeply in love with Kokin.