January/February 2004

Finding a wine to match snapper isn't so hard - something bright, light and white fits the bill. But WD-50's snapper is more turf than surf, as it's coated with crushed juniper berries, a spice usually reserved for game, and perches on a throne of chestnut puree. Red wine would take the fish out of the dish; white wine doesn't feel right, so where to go from here? To sake, says sommelier Scott Mayger. Mayger keeps a constant supply of sake in his cellar, and he isn't the only one. The Japanese rice-based brew is showing up in restaurants all over the country, from downtown bo”tes to high-end French destinations, and for good reason. Though sake has had its share of false starts in the US, the bottles imported today are better than ever, and sommeliers are finding that sake can go where no wine dares to go - and plenty of places wine's welcome, too. I found after talking to dozens of restaurant people from coast to coast that there's excitement brewing around sake, the sort that astronomers might feel at the discovery of a new universe.

not your dad's sake
  In the dining room at WD-50, Mayger pours a glass of a cool, clear sake called Sato no Homare, which has been chilled like white wine. "It has a hint of licorice and violets that picks up the juniper in the dish," he explains. Violets or not, this isn't anything like the hot sakes served in my neighborhood sushi joint. "Often I offer sake and people say, 'oh, sake, I remember drinking that...' They remember warm glasses of it and getting really trashed, like a margarita high," says Mayger. "But they always come around to chilled sakes." It's easy to see why. The Sato no Homare is cool and smooth, with a haunting herbal note and a satiny texture. It's one of the new generation of sakes, spawned by technological advances as well as Japan's urge to save its disappearing sake industry.
  High-end sakes like Sato no Homare don't show up in most mom-and-pop sushi joints, though. They've only existed for thirty years or so, and as sake importer Trevor Hammond points out, "Lots of first-generation Japanese in the US were the working class in Japan and came here to make a living. Most of them haven't really experienced sake of this caliber. You can imagine it might seem weird to them to sell expensive sake in their restaurants."
  Instead, premium sake is finding a place in restaurants like WD-50, where guests expect to be surprised and prices are high, and the chefs and sommeliers are pushing the edges of the culinary envelope. For Mayger, sake offers elements wine and beer don't, something that's useful with chef Wylie Dufresne's menu. "Sake has great acidity and texture and goes with a range of foods, including those, like Wiley's, that include a lot of Asian spices and unusual herbs," Mayger says.
  Asian influences often provide an opening for sake in Western restaurants. At Charlie Trotter's in Chicago, "There is always some Asian influence on our menu," sommelier Jason Smith says. "For instance, we always have yuzu [an Asian citrus fruit] in the house." Sake offers him a useful alternative when it comes to pairing, especially when the dish in question challenges wine. "Right now, we have this toasted rice soup on the menu," he says. "It was really hard to find a wine that went well with it, but with sake, it's incredible." It doesn't matter that Trotter's is widely considered an American restaurant: When yuzu becomes commonplace, sake is only natural.
  Sake doesn't need an Asian tie to work well, though. At Límon, a small, spunky Peruvian restaurant in San Francisco's Mission, the Asian ties are buried in history, yet sake sits proudly next to wines like Champalou Vouvray and Roederer Champagne. "We have ceviche," explains wine buyer Fernando Quinonez, "which was supposedly brought to Peru by Asian immigrants; they just used local ingredients." Where exactly ceviche came from is hotly debated in some circles, but the similarities between raw fish on vinegared rice and raw fish "cooked" in lime juice provide a bridge for sake into Límon's cuisine. "Beer is good with this food, but sake - mmm," Quinonez says. "It's great with lean dishes like our tuna tartare, things that need a clean, crisp drink." His opinion is borne out by the number of people sipping sake over tiradito, slices of raw halibut served with a spicy dipping sauce. Clean, cool sake doesn't feel like a reference to another culture in this context; it tastes like a great way to show off a fine piece of fish.
  When David Bouley began adding dishes like Japanese yellowtail with hon-shimeji mushrooms to the menu at Bouley in NY, sommelier Brad Hickey looked to sake for pairings, but the sake list soon took on its own life. Now sake appears next to dishes as diverse as steamed sea urchins to white peach soup with fromage blanc sorbet. "It clicked for me at Bouley," Hickey says. "David is travelling to Japan, Malaysia, Spain, all over, and he's bringing back ideas from these places; he's not pigeon-holing himself. So in the dining room, sake fits in perfectly."

pairing sake Café des Artistes might seem a less likely place to find sake than these cutting-edge venues. The 84-year-old NY institution is where you head for Dover sole in beurre noisette, not sashimi. Yet sommelier Chris Chiapperelli added sake to the drink offerings this fall. When asked how he plans to sell it, he says, "I don't know, but have you tasted these things?"
  It was sake's food-pairing possibilities that hooked Chiapperelli, as they do many sommeliers. "There are textural elements you don't find in most wines; the way the sugars and acids interact, they do something different than wine," says Chiapperelli. "There are some tricky dishes on our menu, like this grilled sardine dish. It's smoky, salty, fishy - it's really hard to find a wine that works well with it. Sake, though, is perfect. It's a unique product that gives me a bit of extension; it goes outside the flavors and textures of wine."
  A few blocks south at Citarella Restaurant, Peter Botti has just expanded his sake selections, and sake has spread from the sushi bar into the main dining room, where it plays off chef Brian Bistrong's ocean-centric menu. "It's not something that can be paired only with Asian cuisine," he says. "All of Brian's appetizers are light and delicate, like crab cakes or lobster salad. They go well with sakes." He adds, "It's not like we would drink Alsatian wine only with Alsatian cuisine, right?"
  Down at Toqueville in Union Square, chef Marco Moreira puts it a little differently. "My best-selling appetizer is salmon three ways: house-cured and smoked, caviar, and sashimi. I do a tartare of tuna; that could be in any French restaurant. Sea urchins: How many centuries have the French been eating sea urchins right out of the shell? This could be a Japanese-French-Italian restaurant. Why put a flag on the dish?" For Moreira, the provenance of the dish doesn't matter. High-quality sake stands on its own.
  However, sake doesn't go with everything. Larry Stone, MS, who's been pouring sake at San Francisco's Rubicon for four or five years now, notes, "Sake is radically different from wine. Wine is one of the most acidic things you can drink. Sake is only about two percent acidity, very low." That difference makes it harder to pair sake with some richer Western dishes; it simply doesn't have the edge to cut through the fat. "Sake also has a lower intensity of flavor," he adds. "There's a reason it grew up as it did with what the cuisine it did, the higher salt/soy content and softer flavors. Most of the cooking [Rubicon does] is Western-inspired, so it's hard to pour sakes with much of it." Pairing sake with a grilled steak, for example, would be a losing battle, the steak winning out by heft of flavor alone.
  Master Sommelier Jay James, who was inspired by Stone to try offering sake with oysters at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, adds that sake's alcohol level, which at 15 to 18 percent is higher than most wines, can be a challenge. "Without powerful fruit or some residual sugar, alcohol can stick out like a sore thumb," he says. "I never really found sake useful with spices like curry or cayenne; there's an alcohol collision." However, he adds, "When it's handled correctly, the impact is tremendous." The oyster starter with a glass of sake is a prime example. Since Stone started suggesting the pair on the menu at Rubicon, sake sales have shot upwards.
  While it pays to be thoughtful about sake's place at the table, it's not that hard to find places it fits in as well as wine. "In Munich, where I am from," says Elke Girresch, sommelier at Pluton's in Chicago, "Japanese restaurants give sake to you after dinner." Now, as sommelier for a Provençal restaurant that serves sake, she's had to figure out how it fits into the meal. "Sake plays with Provençal food in the herbs, aromas and saltiness. There are a lot of fish dishes, a lot of saffron and fresh flavors."
  It has an affinity for Italian flavors, too, says Frederick Twomey at NY's Bar Veloce, boasting that the best match for sake his restaurant offers is the Bruschetti Veloce, toasted ciabatta topped with buffalo mozzarella, anchovy and a mint-caper pesto. "Think of it," he says. "Buffalo mozzarella: It's kind of like tofu." Italians everywhere may toss up their hands at this statement, but Twomey has a point. The bland richness of the cheese echoes the almost milky richness of the sake, and the smooth satin texture of the drink tones the salty fishiness down.
  When Joseph Scalice thinks about pairing sake to chef Wayne Nish's eclectic food at March in Manhattan, he doesn't look for Asian parallels. "When I'm pairing things, I tend to think of how it could play in two ways: Does it underline, or does it act as a dynamic component?" he explains. "Wine often underlines subtle flavor combinations with its good acidity; the acidity helps lift the flavors of the food. Sake tends to become part of the flavor in the dish. For example, if we have Wayne's fricassee of vegetables with coconut milk paired with a sake, the sake is adding another flavor component." That may be a gentle flavor, as opposed to the blare of a sauvignon blanc, but it's unquestionably evident: ricey, earthy, fragrant and unique.

slow sake
  Back in the early eighties, Barry Wine was pouring chilled sake at The Quilted Giraffe, though his restaurant was a paean to local, regional ingredients. Good sake wasn't easy to find back then; he brought bottles back from Japan himself. Yet it was important to him to offer it. "I was interested in artisanal products, and sake was a discovery we made that we wanted to pass along."
  One of the stranger places sake's poured is at Memphis Minnie's Barbecue in San Francisco. "I think barbecue is one of our better artisan food traditions," says Bob Kantor, the owner. "Sake is an artisan Japanese tradition. I have huge respect for the people who make each of them." Like a culinary Noah, he's collected both at his Haight Street haven.
  There often seems to be a personal note to people's fondness for sake. At Bar Veloce, Twomey added sake to the offerings after a trip to Japan last April, even though the all-Italian theme doesn't make room for it. After a good, sake-drinking friend of his died suddenly, he says, "I brought his ashes to his hometown with his wife, and we traced his footsteps to his favorite sake bars. It was kind of a mission for me." What he found was more than just a fascinating beverage. It was part of Japanese culture, and as such, something Twomey doesn't even pretend to understand. "I try to approach it with something like reverent innocence. I want to offer it so that non-Japanese would begin to understand this world. We can barely even read the labels. If people ask about it, we'll say that we can't tell you how to pronounce it, but it tastes kinda like this..."

Sake, the alcoholic drink made from fermented rice and a special mold (koji), comes in myriad types. Its flavors can depend on the type of rice used, how much of the grain is polished away, the water source, the mold, technique, among other details. Here are just a few of the terms that might help in deciphering a label or a sake list. For more information, check out The Sake Handbook by John Gautner (Tuttle Pub., Boston/Tokyo; $12.95).

Honjozo: Sake fortified with a little extra alcohol.

Junmai: Pure sake, nothing more than rice milled to at least 70 percent, water and koji.

Junmai ginjo: Made with rice milled to at least 60 percent of its original size. If any alcohol has been added, the label will read simply "ginjo."

Junmai daiginjo: Rice milled to at least 50 percent. When alcohol has been added, it's simply daiginjo.

Junshu: "Rich type," according to the Central Brewer's Union.

Koshu: Intentionally aged sake.

Kunshu: "Fresh type," a fragrant sake, according to the Central Brewer's Union.

Kijoshu: Sweet sake.

Namazake: Unpasteurized sake.

Nigori: Sake bottled with the lees (kasu).

SMV/Sake Meter Value/Nihonshudo: A measure of residual sugar and alcohol to give an idea of the dryness of a sake. The scale ranges from -15 (very sweet) to +15 (bone dry). As it doesn't take into account acidity, it's not always helpful.

Soshu: "Light type," according to the Central Brewer's Union.

Toji: The head brewmaster, included on some newer bottles.