At Luna and Juno, Leonard Tanyag Puts a Playful, Lunar Spin on Traditional Omakase
Observer · · g2641168
At Luna in Shoreditch and Juno in Notting Hill, Leonard Tanyag serves everything from smoked toro to sweet potato and caviar tacos, making conversation as much a part of the experience as the food.
It’s the day before the solar eclipse in August, and it seems like all of London is talking about the moon. Plans to view the rare celestial event are in motion. Eclipse glasses have completely sold out. But it’s by pure happenstance that I’m spending the eclipse eve at Luna Omakase , a fine-dining experience inspired by the moon and its cycle. The restaurant, located inside Shoreditch hotspot Los Mochis , is the brainchild of chef Leonard Tanyag, who grew up in Yamanashi, Japan, and set out to create a surprise tasting menu with a touch of modern whimsy.
“I’ve been to a lot of omakase [meals] in the U.S., Australia and Mexico,” Tanyag tells Observer, speaking from his other omakase counter, Juno Omakase , inside the Notting Hill Los Mochis . The traditional version, which originates in Japan, tends to be very formal, with a chef presenting dishes in succession without a menu.
“I want to do it in a different direction,” Tanyag says. “My restaurants are very intimate, and the execution and the stories are completely different than what you might expect.”
Juno debuted in January 2024, showcasing Mexican-inspired Japanese dishes. With only six seats, it is London’s smallest omakase counter. Luna followed in March 2025, featuring 12 counter seats representing the 12 phases of the moon. Although Juno was well-received, Tanyag didn’t want to simply replicate it when he had the opportunity to create a larger counter at the new Los Mochis location.
“I started to study about the moon and how it influences our ingredients, nature and us as humans,” he says. “I became very interested. To me, it felt like a way to offer a different experience and to bring my guests some knowledge. I explain to all my guests: Sometimes you feel tired, even when you’re very healthy. You feel tired and your energy low. That’s because of the influence of the moon.”
The tasting menu at Luna, which costs £230 per person, changes based on the lunar cycle, as well as seasonally. Sometimes the dishes and ingredients are heavier and richer; other times they’re lighter and less meaty. A fuller moon means more seafood and shellfish, while a new moon brings vegetarian dishes and a sense of detox. I dined closer to the full moon, with a menu that included Wagyu sando, salmon, crab and toro.
Not everything at Luna is about the moon in an obvious way, although the decor and crockery are on theme. Many of the dishes are influenced by Tanyag’s background, both from growing up in Japan and from traveling around the world. His family moved to Yamanashi from the Philippines when he was seven. His mother and grandmother were both chefs, although his mom focused more on Spanish cuisine than on more traditional Japanese food. Tanyag got his first kitchen job at 16, working at Sushi Itamae in Yamanashi. By the time he turned 21, he decided to leave Japan and get experience in kitchens outside the country.
“Every time I’ve traveled, I’ve gotten some inspiration from digging into other cultures and learning about traditional ingredients,” Tanyag says. “Then I can share it with my guests to create memories for them as well.”
Tanyag moved to Australia, where he got a job at Sake at the Rocks in Sydney. He later moved around and worked in Singapore, Lebanon and Dubai. In Dubai, he helmed the now-closed contemporary Japanese restaurant Okku , where he met Thesleff Group founder Markus Thesleff . It was Thesleff who encouraged Tanyag to relocate to London in 2020 to help open Los Mochis, a more casual restaurant that fuses Japanese and Mexican cuisines.
“I told him, ‘Yes, but I’m not really a Mexican chef,’” Tanyag recalls. “But no one in London was combining these two cuisines. And these two cuisines are completely different, but their traditions are similar. They both use fermentation. They both cook with beans. They both use a lot of seafood. Mexican food has a bold, spicy flavor, and Japanese is more clean and healthy. But if you combine them, they balance each other.”
Since the first Los Mochis opened in the spring of 2021, Tanyag’s role has expanded to encompass multiple restaurants, both within Los Mochis and in the group’s new openings. He’s regularly behind the counters at Juno and Luna—he will even change his work schedule if a repeat customer asks nicely—and he oversees Los Mochis, MA/NA and Bad Boy Burritos as the culinary director. He credits his different teams for keeping everything running smoothly.
“I tell them all the experiences I’ve had,” he says. “I want to make sure that we are on the same page and going in the same direction. And I want them to succeed. So even when I’m not in the restaurant, you feel that I’m in the restaurant.”
Tanyag is undeniably charismatic. He’s a natural performer, coming alive behind the omakase counter with stories and jokes and questions for guests. At one point during the omakase, he goes around the room and makes everyone say their favorite dessert. As he serves a piece of seared sea trout nigiri, topped with sea trout roe, he quips that the dish represents “the full life of the fish, from birth to death.”
“One of the main reasons to open this omakase was to connect people,” he says. “Let’s say we have five different groups coming inside who don’t know each other. So I’m trying to connect them first to myself. And once I’ve connected with them, I’m trying to connect them to each other.”
For Tanyag, dining at Luna isn’t just about tasting the dishes. It’s also about the experience of consuming them. He instructs guests to eat nigiri upside down, the fish placed directly on your tongue instead of the rice—an obvious method once you try it. “Our tongue is very sensitive, and whatever chefs put on top of their nigiri should hit first,” he says. “That way, you get exactly the flavor the chef wants on the dish.”
Before eating a smoked toro dish, Tanyag encourages everyone to close their eyes. As the bluefin tuna hits my mouth, it tastes almost exactly like Spanish jamón—a complete and, frankly, strange surprise. It’s even more unexpected when the chef serves a sweet potato and caviar taco topped with agave worm salt, which Tanyag makes from worms sourced in Oaxaca. The rich, indulgent bite could easily be mistaken for cheddar cheese, but in a good way. Other dishes have a personal story for Tanyag, like a creative iteration of onigiri he has dubbed “My Childhood Snack.”
“Most people think of onigiri as a triangle shape, pressed by hand with nori and rice,” the chef explains. “ But I made a twist to make it a little bit more elevated. I make the rice round, and I grill it, and I add hamachi, my favorite fish. I want my guests to eat it in one bite because of the layers—you get some smokiness, spiciness, sourness. It was my childhood snack, and I always ate it in one bite. The dish tells that story on your palate.”
Another dish, a Japanese A5 Wagyu sando, represents a special treat Tanyag would get inside his lunchbox as a kid. If he performed well at school, his mom would buy wagyu and make him a crustless sandwich. If he didn’t, the sandwich was made with Spam. “I didn’t get a star every day at school, and I often ended up with Spam,” he admits. “But my guests always get the wagyu.”
Both omakase experiences, like Los Mochis, are gluten-free and nut-free. While Tanyag appreciates how inclusive this makes the restaurants, he admits that it’s been a challenge to create Japanese dishes and sauces around these limitations. Soy sauce, for instance, is typically not gluten-free. Tanyag also had to create his own version of barbecue sauce for the unagi handroll at Luna.
“It was a lot of experimenting in the beginning,” Tanyag says. “We had to make sure that the tempura and the miso soup had the same flavor as gluten products, but without gluten. We get two types of tamari from Japan, which are gluten-free. But it’s made me more creative. And the positive feedback from the guests has been worth it. We want everybody sitting in our restaurant not worrying about anything but enjoying their meal.”
Soon, Tanyag will bring both Los Mochis and his omakase concepts to the United States. First, Los Mochis will make its U.S. debut in the fall of 2027 at Phillips Point in West Palm Beach. Its second location will follow in Los Angeles’ forthcoming One Beverly Hills development; that restaurant is expected to debut in early 2028. Tanyag calls it a “once in a million opportunity” to take the concept international and wants to ensure he finds the best possible suppliers in each city so the experiences mirror those in London. “I’m going to test everything to ensure they are similar,” he says.
The U.S. outposts of Los Mochis will feature hidden omakase counters, just like those in Notting Hill and Shoreditch. The West Palm Beach counter will feature 12 seats, like Luna’s, but Tanyag isn’t yet sure which concept will head overseas. “We haven’t decided,” Tanyag admits. “Markus keeps asking me. But I want to make sure we make that decision carefully.”
Many omakase restaurants I’ve visited have been refined, upscale and, admittedly, somewhat uptight. Because the Japanese cuisine style is so traditional and requires so many years of training for chefs, it tends to be a similarly traditional experience. The music, if any, is hushed. The dishes are precise. But at Luna and Juno, Tanyag is offering a different take on a long-held dining tradition. He describes his dishes as “crazy,” which I construe as a positive thing, not a criticism.
“All of my dishes have a lot of elements, and when you place one in your mouth, it’s a burst of flavor and balance,” the chef says. “When I do training with my team, they sometimes say, ‘Chef, that is a lot of ingredients. They’re going to clash.’ But as long as you know the products, there will be that balance. I want the first question people ask when they eat the dish [to be] ‘How did you make that?’ And then I want to leave them with a memory.”