Marlow Omakase: Dinings SW3 at The Oarsman, £85 Lunch

The Chelsea Japanese restaurant Dinings SW3 is returning to Marlow this month for two four-day residencies at The Oarsman, with twelve sittings across the two weekends and tickets sold in advance.

Executive chef Masaki Sugisaki and his team take over The Room Upstairs, the first-floor dining room at The Oarsman, 46 Spittal Street, on 17 to 20 September and again on 24 to 27 September. Both venues have published the dates and prices on their own sites. Marlow is about four miles south of High Wycombe.

Guests sit together at a single shared table and are served a multi-course omakase menu, which means the chef chooses the dishes rather than the diner. The Oarsman describes the cooking as rooted in Japanese technique with a subtle European influence. Dinings says many plates follow Sugisaki’s “gill-to-tail” approach to using a whole fish.

The sittings

Each weekend runs to the same pattern. Lunch is a 1pm arrival, dinner a 7pm arrival.

What it costs

• Lunch: £85 per person. A slightly shorter menu than the dinner sitting.
• Dinner: £115 per person.
• Every sitting opens with a welcome cocktail, included in the ticket.
• A short a la carte drinks list is available alongside the pairings.

Check the pairing price before you book, because the two sites do not say the same thing. The Oarsman lists a flat “Wine & Sake Pairing, £60” and “Non-Alcoholic Pairing, £40”. The Dinings SW3 booking page prices them by sitting instead:

• Lunch: £40 with alcohol, £20 without.
• Dinner: £60 with alcohol, £30 without.

The Dinings page is the one that takes the payment, and its checkout lists all four pairing options separately, so that is the version to plan around. Both sets of figures are quoted here exactly as each site publishes them; confirm yours at the point of booking.

Booking and the small print

Tickets are sold through the Dinings SW3 site, sitting by sitting, at £85 for each lunch date and £115 for each dinner date. Three conditions are worth reading before you pay:

• Dietary requirements must be flagged when you book. Dinings’ terms say the event cannot accommodate them otherwise. Vegetarian menus are available with advance notice.
• Cancel inside 48 hours and you are charged the full ticket price.
• Extra drinks bought on the night are cash only, according to The Oarsman.

Who is coming

Dinings SW3 opened in 2017 and is approaching its tenth anniversary. Its restaurant is at Walton House, Lennox Gardens Mews, on Walton Street in Chelsea, and it describes itself as izakaya-inspired, elegant but informal, with a menu that changes weekly.

Sugisaki grew up in Saitama, north of Tokyo, where his family ran a kaiseki restaurant. He trained in Japan and London and was part of the opening team at Nobu Berkeley Street before opening his own restaurant.

This is not the first outing in Marlow. The Oarsman’s own page describes the September dates as a return “following a successful residency earlier this year”.

What it means for you

This is a fixed-price ticketed event, not a normal restaurant booking, so the usual walk-in and table-for-two logic does not apply. You are buying a seat at a shared table for a set menu at a set time, and the 48-hour cancellation rule means a late change of plan costs the full amount.

The practical decisions are the sitting and the pairing. Lunch at £85 is the shorter menu and the cheaper pairing; dinner at £115 is the full one. Adding the alcoholic pairing takes a dinner ticket to £175 a head on the Dinings pricing, before any extra drinks.

If you are coming from High Wycombe, note that The Oarsman is on Spittal Street rather than Marlow High Street, and that its own summer hours have the kitchen serving lunch from noon Thursday to Saturday. Booking enquiries for the residency go through Dinings; enquiries about hiring The Room Upstairs go to the pub on 01628 617755.

More things to do across the area are listed in things to do in High Wycombe, and the next big Marlow fixture in the diary is the Marlow Half Marathon on 1 November.

Sources

• Dinings SW3 in residence at The Oarsman, The Oarsman, for the dates, the day-by-day sittings, the £85 and £115 prices, the flat pairing prices, the welcome cocktail, the vegetarian note and the cash-only line.
• Dinings SW3 x The Oarsman Marlow, Dinings SW3, for the ticketed sittings, the 1pm and 7pm arrival times, the per-sitting pairing prices, the terms on dietary requirements and cancellation, and the description of the menu.
• Dinings SW3, for the Chelsea address and the restaurant’s own description of itself.
• The Oarsman contact page, for the 46 Spittal Street address, the phone number and the summer opening hours.