The business of the business lunch is business: minds meld, mergers are mooted, managers managed, funds found and corporate clients coddled.
In the Abu Dhabi Global Market, the capital’s soon-to-be-occupied financial centre in Sowwah Square, just outside the Galleria Mall, sits Zuma, an unassuming bamboo-and-glass cube.
It's a short, mostly air-conditioned walk from Sowwah Towers to the restaurant, via the underbelly of the Galleria Mall. For visitors from further afield, there's a valet.
Beneath its surface Zuma has a stone, metal and glass heart. The restaurant is split into a main dining area and a lounge area with leather sofas. A private dining area, cordoned off by a carved wooden wall, is available, although the seclusion is only partial – there is no door.
The concept is sharing. This means you’ll have to dig in with your business partner. Make sure they wash their hands.
Zuma sells non-traditional Japanese food with creative splashes — but it’s not fusion. It houses an open grill.
Zuma’s lunch menu, the ebisu, offers four courses in 45 minutes for Dh140. A cheaper option is also available: the ebisu express, which sells miso soup and a main course, for Dh75.
Unobtrusive electronica played in the background, which my business partner and I sought to identify.
“Is this Radiohead?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
That settled that.
One catch: there’s no Wi-Fi. So compulsive checking of work emails may be impossible. This is a mixed blessing.
Zuma is also a popular evening venue — just like Emirates Palace’s Hakkasan restaurant. With a resident DJ and many quiet corners, the restaurant doubles as an excellent place to take a client with whom one wishes to develop a more trusting business relationship. Cigars, sadly, are banned.
Q&A
What was the starter?
As a warm-up, an obligatory miso soup. A mild, subtle broth. Then, our first dishes: soy and ginger beef on cress, served medium rare, and tuna tataki – strips of lightly seared tuna in a beautiful acid-sweet sauce with pickled strips of red onion. Edamame beans, which, embarrassingly, my partner didn’t know how to eat.
Any sides?
I have always hated iceberg lettuce. It reminds me of cheap sandwiches with damp bread, margarine and limp cucumber. Yet Zuma’s iceberg lettuce salad, topped with fried seaweed and doused in yuzo has the honour of being the first iceberg lettuce dish I have fallen in love with.
And the third course?
Prawn and black cod gyoza – delicious dumplings, with warm subtle flavours, as different combinations of fish, soft and melting, complement thin fried dough. A highlight was the maki roll with soft cheese and salmon, on tempura batter. Except instead of rice, the roll was built with cucumber: a textural treat.
The main?
Steak in sweet soy and rice – a meal that I once made! Zuma’s is better, but only because I don’t know where to get sweet soy from. Soft and cooked to perfection. And for my partner, black cod in hoba leaf.
And you had pudding, didn’t you?
Caramelised pear cubes with savoury biscuit, for my partner, and a chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream. Oh, and a yuzu “Hokkaido” cheesecake. I may have got carried away.
Five of the best Zuma dishes
1 Maki rolls with tempura batter
2 Tuna tataki with chilli daikon and ponzu sauce
3 Marinated black cod wrapped in hoba leaf
4 Prawn and black cod gyoza
5 Seared beef with soy, ginger, lime and coriander
Body: Source: compiled by The National
abouyamourn@thenational.ae
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