Okonomiyaki and orange wine

Our experience of Japanese wine is so limited in the UK that it came as quite a surprise to find three wines I would never have expected in a small restaurant and natural wine bar called Pasania in Osaka - a pinot noir, a kerner and an orange koshu.

Koshu is the variety that most often makes it over here but is on the whole relatively unexciting, or has been in the past at any rate. Maybe I need to revisit it as this orange version - Coco Farm & Winery's F.O.S. (fermented on skins) - was luscious, as aromatic varieties so often are.

It went perfectly with the restaurant’s speciality, okonomiyaki - a delicious umami-rich pancake made with cabbage and in this case, pork, squid, shrimp and octopus. (If you're unfamiliar with it - and a Brit - imagine a cross between bubble and squeak and a tortilla.)

Pasania is one of the restaurants in Osaka that is listed on the Star Wine List website. You can find the others here.

By the way you need to make a reservation as they don’t have many seats or take walk-ins. There’s a full explanation on their website  but don’t be put off - it’s worth it, especially if you're a natural wine fan.

Mature Marlborough chardonnay with modern Japanese food

I don’t often go to wine lunches or dinners, preferring to experiment with a range of wines from more than one country and producer with the food I’m eating but I couldn’t resist the temptation of trying New Zealand producer Astrolabe’s wine with the food at Sake No Hana in London's St James's.

The restaurant describes its food as 'modern authentic Japanese'. Although the presentation is classic the flavours and saucing are bold which is maybe why the 2014 Astrolabe Province Marlborough chardonnay stood out as the surprise star of the meal.

It was outstandingly good with a dish of aubergine with roasted sesame miso sauce, a tataki of beef with sesame and egg mustard sauce, tuna with truffle and black cod with yuzu and pretty good with the tempura prawn and beef with shiitake mushrooms. The only dishes it didn't work quite so well with were a very simply prepared tuna tartare and the sushi which went better with their lighter pinot gris.

When I came to think about it afterwards I was struck by how many of the ingredients were umami-rich with miso, sesame and truffle playing a key part in the flavour of the dish - which was, of course, the element that made the chardonnay, which was barrel fermented and aged in French oak, shine.

The fact that it wasn’t the most recent vintage helped too - the wine had had almost 4 years in bottle. And was served cool rather than icy cold which tends to numb the flavours in a mature wine like this.

Astrolabe also suggests the more conventional food pairings of poultry, pork and light game, creamy seafood and pasta dishes, mushroom risotto and paella (though I’m not quite so sure about the latter!)

Hic! wine merchants still has the wine for a very reasonable £15.75 if you feel inspired to try it for yourself or £17.80 from Armit Wines.

I ate at Sake no Hana as a guest of Astrolabe.

Sukiyaki Wagyu and red burgundy

I’d have been hard pushed to explain exactly what sukiyaki was before I had it this week at Jason Atherton’s swish new restaurant Sosharu in Clerkenwell.

But it’s a real showstopper of a dish that arrives at the table sizzling away in a cast iron dish over a burner, borne in this case by an improbably good-looking chef who looks as if he’s stepped straight off an advertising shoot

The ingredients seem quite simple - glass noodles, shitake mushrooms, tofu and heavily marbled wagyu beef and at first you don’t think it’s going to pack much of a punch but then The Handsome One returns to your table to toss the ingredients together and there’s this great waft of a deeply savoury umami-rich sauce.

With nothing in my glass I was thinking wistfully of burgundy so was gratified when the sommelier produced a bottle of Domaine de Trapet’s 2012 Marsannay which struck exactly the right note. Not cheap at £15 a 125ml glass but a chance to try something really delicious. If I’d been drinking sake that woud have worked well too as, I suspect, would a dry amontillado sherry.

If you’re inspired to try this at home I found a similar-looking Wagyu sukiyaki recipe from chef Masaharu Morimoto on the Food Network website. And here’s an interesting post about the difference between sukiyaki and shabu shabu if you’re as confused as I was.

I ate at Sosharu as a guest of the restaurant.

Contemporary sushi and Sancerre rouge

The best meal on my whirlwind tour of the Centre Loire* last week - and there was stiff competition - was a Japanese meal prepared by sommelier Juli Nakata-Roumet, the Japanese wife of the local promotional body’s director of communication Benoit Roumet

It was fascinating on so many levels I’ll be writing more about it but I wanted to single out one pairing as my match of the week

Juli had prepared a fabulous range of maki rolls (including some made with goats cheese that were surprisingly delicious) that I expected to pair best with one of the many sauvignon blancs we were tasting but in fact it was a red Sancerre that carried the flavours best.

The key, obviously, is the acidity and delicacy of the pinot noir grape. Although it was quite a full-bodied example (a 2012 from Dominique Roger of Domaine du Carrou) it had a suppleness and grace that didn’t in any way overwhelm the sushi.

I remember years ago a Japanese sommelier telling me that pinot noir was a good match for sushi and I was never entirely convinced. Now I know that - in the case of creative sushi like this, at least - he was right.

See my other pairing suggestions for sushi here.

* which includes Sancerre, Pouilly Fumé, Quincy, Reuilly and Menetou-Salon, Coteaux de Giennois and Chateaumeillant