Zuma excels in the clone zone

This review was published in June 2002

If I had to recommend an accessory for young women about town today, it would be their own oriental restaurant. They are becoming the Fendi baguette of the new millennium.

First we had Sumosan , run by a young Russian woman on Albemarle Street. This was followed quickly by Zuma, just off Knightsbridge - again the plaything of a fashionably dressed young woman with a seemingly limitless budget.

In other times such women would have opened trendy boutiques or founded PR companies; now they fritter away family money on Nobu -style restaurants. Of the two, Zuma is a more blatant knock-off of the Nobu concept. It has the air of a timber yard, while the various bars look like John Pawson's interpretation of Stonehenge.

I went for lunch on a Monday and the place was half empty. The half that was full was very Knightsbridge, including a bunch of ladies who were admiring one another's weight loss, entrepreneur Piers Adam and a man who was supposed to be the son of Jack Dellal. The people who appeared in that book about beautiful people in London would feel right at home here, swapping stories about how many pairs of Jimmy Choos they had bought.

Food is fine, it tries hard and sometimes succeeds, as in the dish of sliced turbot with truffle oil and salmon roe, and a beef dish that I did not recall ordering, but I think was served with a garlic, chilli and ginger dressing. The Dynamite Spider roll was good and lived up to its name. Other dishes, such as the seaweed salad, which tasted of very little, and the scallop and pepper skewers, which were served with a variety of condiments that imparted a flavour akin to Vesta curries, should be bypassed.

Black cod appeared under the headline 'Zuma dishes'. We all know that this is a Nobu dish - Mark Edwards' black cod is a work of genius. Much as other people may have painted the Last Supper, it is Leonardo da Vinci's that sticks in the mind, so it is with black cod. This offering was perfectly OK, but it was a cheap shot to stick it on the list as a Zuma dish.

I would not advise against going to Zuma, but it did make me wonder why people bother to open clones of other people's restaurants.

Fay Maschler at Zuma
The sake list at Zuma
Top Fives: Funky Japanese
Top Fives: Modern Japanese
RESTAURANT REVIEW: Nobu