The menu at the Japanese restaurant in Ålesund consists of sushi, grill and fusion. Photo: Marius Beck Dahle.
Restaurant of the Month, Norway
Culinary passion over profit As the only Japanese sushi restaurant in the Norwegian fishing town of Ålesund, Zuuma is located 25 metres from the seafront, providing restaurant-goers with the ultimate connection to the water as they tuck into the fresh fish.
of the top sushi chefs in Norway, where he has acquired certificates for both attending and passing culinary exams.
By Line Elise Svanevik
Local where possible
First established in May 2015, Zuuma is owned by CEO Vincent Caballes, head chef Andreas Ottosen and Oslo-based adviser Petter Thoresen. “We were the first Japanese restaurant in the area,” explains Caballes. “We serve sushi, grill and fusion, and our menu consists of two parts: a warm one, which is grill, and a cold one, which is sushi.” Caballes explains that the restaurant sells about 70 per cent sushi versus 30 84 | Issue 102 | July 2017
per cent grill, and that the chefs are both incredibly experienced and passionate. “Our head chef used to work at Michelinstarred Bagatelle in Oslo, and we also had one chef who worked at Fauna and another from Nobu – one of the world’s most highly regarded Japanese restaurants,” he says.
With the sea on its doorstep, it is only natural for Zuuma to source the majority of its fish locally, which is something they strongly believe in. “Tuna is the only thing that is hard to get locally as they only catch it around this area once in a blue moon, but they’ve recently started getting more of it in our local county, Møre og Romsdal,” says Caballes.
Although Caballes has a background in business, he has been making sushi for the past five years and trained with some
“We recently got 187 kilogrammes of local tuna for the restaurant, but that went in less than three weeks. However, our