You walk into an art museum, a gallery, a concert, a comedy show, a play, and you turn your brain off. You give up the nuisance of choice and submit your senses totally to the experience in front of and around you. When you participate in Zama’s chef–tasting menu, you do the same thing. It's less of a meal and more of an experience. It's an art form.
I'm greeted by the sleek and dimly lit restaurant, a long thin space headed by an impressive and lively sushi bar. I snap out of my reverie when I hear Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” humming from above. The waiter places the $65 tasting menu on my table for inspection. Trying to truly give up the reins of my meal, I glance down and tell my waiter I'm in. That’s when the real experience begins.
Each of the seven courses, plus dessert, is brought out about every five minutes. The meal starts with a kaiso salad—seaweed topped with shrimp, bonito flakes, and a refreshing vinaigrette. For a considerably small portion, it's filled with flavor. The vinaigrette enhances the flavor of the seaweed, complemented by the salty crunch of the bonito flakes.
Second is the tuna usuzukuri: a beautiful presentation of thinly sliced big–eye tuna truffle, ponzu, and soy–marinated wasabi stems. Despite the heavy nature of truffle, the melt–in–your–mouth tuna is simultaneously rich and refreshing. The uncut, carpaccio–style sheet of fish is certainly beautiful, but an awkward thing to eat.
The third dish, a rock shrimp tempura wrap, is disappointing in presentation—two floppy pieces of bibb lettuce flanked between a small portion of tempura shrimp and veggies—and in taste. The tempura is so heavily breaded that the cauliflower and shrimp pieces are indecipherable. However, the meal continues smoothly when the sashimi sampler arrives: a trio of hamachi ponzu, yuzu miso salmon, and kampachi tataki (two pieces each). The hamachi ponzu, garnished with jalapeño, is my favorite part of the meal—so dynamic in flavor as the sweetness of the fish is cut by the spice of the jalapeño. I'm also impressed by the intentional nature of the salmon. It has a strong yuzu flavor, a thick cut of fish that feels almost like fatty tuna on the palate; you immediately get the yuzu, but as that taste disperses, and just the salmon is left on your tongue, the flavor neutralizes.
The fifth course is the tender hamachi tataki—seared yellowtail over three pieces of tempura avocado maki, with a divine red yuzu pepper sauce. The sauce, the roll, and the warm yellowtail (hit with a blowtorch) provide the perfect medium between rich, smoky, and sweet flavors—a delicious piece, with an even more gorgeous presentation. Course six presents five pieces of nigiri from standard o–toro, king yellow tail, and salmon toro, to more adventurous baby pink snapper and branzino belly. The quality is excellent, the fish having no punchy flavor, nor the fishy aftertaste all too common in the states. Having experienced omakase before, I know to clear my palate after each piece with pickled ginger, which is as fresh and high quality as the fish.
The final course is a very outwardly unimpressive soy paper hand roll. Internally though, it's filled with flavor. The spicy shrimp tempura is paired with eel and an accompanying eel sauce that leaves me confused as to why they aren’t served together more frequently. The complementary flavors laid upon the warm rice are the perfect cap to a fantastic meal. I'm overwhelmingly full when they bring out the dessert: black sesame and coconut mochi. Again, it's an impressive pairing of flavors, with the decadent umami of black sesame lifted by the light and sweet coconut.
For $65, I'm astounded by the impressive quality, portion, and presentation of this meal. Not only do I walk out completely satiated, but I feel like I had experienced more than a meal; I experienced an atmosphere. Tasting menus allow you to turn your brain off and lean into your senses during the dining experience, and a wonderful experience it was. The $65 tasting menu at Zama was one of the best culinary decisions I've made—and it’s the only one I had to make that night.
TL;DR: If you're at all indecisive, let the culinary artists at Zama do the heavy lifting for you.
Location: 128 S 19th St.
Hours: Sunday through Thursday 5 p.m.–9 p.m; Friday and Saturday 5 p.m.–10 p.m. Open for lunch Monday through Friday 12 p.m.–2:30 p.m.
Price: $$$
