Japanese Culture in New York - Chopsticks NY

: Megu’s service director works globally and drinks locally.

CONVERSATION WITH Sake Brewer

New York Magazine memorably says of Japanese eatery, Megu, “The menu is baffling, the portions are small, the prices are astronomical and the result is fantastic.” That’s Megu all over: impressive and contradictory. It’s a massive, expense account eatery that’s built around a 600-pound temple bell and it’s located in Tribeca, over 5,000 miles from Japan, but the sommelier believes in pairing regional Japanese sakes with regional Japanese foods. Masatoshi Omichi, Megu’s Service Director for the last two years, talks about what his guests like to drink, how he pairs sake and the importance of umami, the mysterious sixth flavor much desired by chefs and gourmands alike.

How much sake does Megu sell, and who’s buying it?
I would say that about 70% of our guests order wine with their dinner and about 30% order sake. Interestingly, most of our sake drinkers are Westerners and many of them have some experience with sake. We also have customers who are very interested in sake when they order it, they ask about its origins, where it’s made, what kind of rice is it made with and a lot of them ask about aging. They wonder why there’s no vintage for sake. Most of their ideas about sake are informed by wine.

Do you have any clients who refuse to even try sake?
Yes, but in that situation, I let the person do a blind tasting. I have an aged sake which is very similar to madeira and at the end of one dinner when the guests were having a chocolate dessert I gave them a little 2 ounce glass of this aged sake, then I asked them how it was. It turns out that they really liked it, and they were very surprised to find out it was sake.

How do you pair sake with food?
I have a website where I promote aged sakes, which are brown, almost red, and they’re very nutty and aromatic with a buttery taste and they go great with red meat. Some classic sakes with higher acidity are very good with fatty meat, and pairing sake with seafood is easy since seafood is so popular in Japan, although it all depends on the fish and how it’s served. Sashimi, for example, has a natural sweetness so I’d pair it with something crisp.

Basically, the most important thing about pairing is that the sake is born in a specific region of Japan and every region of Japan also has a famous local food. The food and the drink are grown next to each other. So if you have sake from Northern Japan I always recommend that you find a food from Northern Japan to go with it. It’s easy to do this, even in the United States. I think Alaskan King Salmon is really great, much higher in quality than Japanese salmon, so when I serve Alaskan King Salmon I’ll pair it with a sake from the Hokkaido region which is famous for its salmon, and it creates a very interesting combination.

Is there one brewer you enjoy the most?
I hold Marumoto in very high regard. I went there to visit last year and they grow their rice in the summer right in front of the brewery and, in the winter, they make sake. Right now they’re applying for organic certification. They’re very committed to being organic and biodynamic.

How did you discover sake?
I actually didn’t know anything about sake when I lived in Japan, then I came to the United States about 15 years ago and everyone was drinking hot sake. There was one restaurant that I went to, Sakagura, that has 200 kinds of sake and they were the only people serving it cold. At first people would say, “Hey, it’s not hot so it’s not sake,” and we would tell them that that’s how people in Japan drink sake. That’s when I became interested in letting people know about Japanese culture through food and sake. I went back to Japan and studied for my Kikizakeshi Kosho Shikaku Nintei Shiken [an exam for a sake license known as a Kikizakeshi Kosho Shikaku, the equivalent of holding the title “Master Sommelier” in the West] and I traveled to all the sake breweries. Before that I knew nothing about sake. Zero.

Does anyone in Japan drink hot sake?
Yes, and I recommend it. If you go to the brewers, almost all of them will have you taste hot sake, in fact they consume more hot than cold. For them the best temperature for tasting sake is around 43 or 45 degrees Celsius. If it’s too hot, they cannot appreciate the flavor and aroma of sakes. Most producers don’t drink the premium sake so much. They have the broad type, the junmai style.

Why?
The Japanese know what umami is. And the junmai sakes are brewed for drawing the umami of rice, and so they get more umami than the ginjo sakes. In general, the junmai style sakes are fullbodied. Here in America, people prefer the clean more sophisticated sakes. But the sake producers are looking for umami.

–Megu–
62 Thomas St. (bet. W. Broadway & Church St.) New York, NY 10013
TEL: 212-964-7777
www.megunyc.com

–Megu Midtown–
845 UN Plaza (at 1st Ave.)
New York, NY 10017