The sake list at Zuma

This review was published in May 2002

Now here's a challenge. No sooner have you finished picking your way around the complications of Zuma's menu described by Fay Maschler than you have to decide whether to cut and run for the wine list or press on with the educative adventure with one of the 22 sakes on offer.

Even with the short descriptions on the list, five minutes spent trying to disembowel the distinctions between Kuromatsu Hakushika Ginjyo Nama and Tosazuru Daiginjo Tenpyo can leave you feeling like the weakest link.

Under such circumstances, Zuma needs an ace sommelier. Fortunately they've picked the best woman in town for the job: Nobuko Okamuro. Anyone who has eaten at The Greenhouse or Mju may recall a charming Japanese woman who speaks like Nora Barnacle (or, more accurately, Molly Bloom). Yes, Nobuko was born and raised in Dublin; she even contrives to make her eyes smile in legendary style, and is in every way an asset to the house.

So we drank sake. A number are available by the glass; we tried three suggested by Nobuko. Ozeki (£2 plus 25p service for 50ml) is the only one served hot, and it tastes like mulled fino sherry with a little added Marmite and a tiny hint of syrup, just as it should. It is a clean and rounded example of a Futsuu-shu: the basic sake category.

The other two glasses were from two of the superior categories. Kubota Senju (£3 plus 38p) is a Tokubetsu or "special": it was pleasant but anodyne. Altogether more showy was the Zuma Daiginjo (Daiginjo is the top category of sake, made from the most finely milled rice: £5.63): it was flowery and peachy, the taste equivalent of a spring blossom ceremony.

After that, we drank a bottle of what Nobuko said was her favourite, the Tossatzuru Ginrei Ginjo (£39.38 including service for a half-litre bottle). We found it superficially appealing, with a scented apricot-and-aniseed style, but after a while it seemed rather mawkish, hollow and flaccid.

Which brings me to the main problem for non-Japanese drinking chilled sake with food: you miss the fruit flavours of wine. You miss the boisterous acidity, the vinous sinew, the mineral dimension. Hot sake is less of a problem, partly because of its enticing fumosity, and partly because heating it seems to bring out a pleasantly meaty flavour in the drink which fades away into sweet floral notes when it's chilled.

But drinking sake hot is, apparently, rather vulgar, which is why Zuma serves only one in that way. Vulgarians that we are, we finished with another glass of the hot, which also has the virtue of being cheap. The top categories quickly become fearsomely expensive (and watch out for the widely varying bottle sizes, too).

Nobuko is working on a wine list, but it wasn't finished on the opening night. I'm glad to see that there are already five Alsace wines on it and a good showing from Germany and Austria.

With hedonistic hindsight, I think I would probably have preferred to have drunk a buxomly dry Gewurztraminer or a poised and mineral Riesling than chilly rice beer; maybe next time. (The Guricha green tea, by the way, was superb, and if you really wanted to save your shirt you could drink three cups of that and get out for under a tenner.)

Sake list scores 3 out of 5.

Eating out at Zuma
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