Catch what you can: New York branch of Japanese restaurant Zuao lets customers fish for their own supper
At this New York restaurant, you don’t sing for your supper — you fish for it.
The Zauo restaurant in Manhattan allows diners to pick up a rod and catch their own fish.
There are three tanks stocked with fish ranging from €33 for rainbow trout to €148 for lobster imported from Japan.
Waiters then celebrate each catch by beating traditional taiko drums while customers stop for a quick selfie with their fish.
Customers then choose how they want the catch to be cooked — grilled, deep-fried tempura-style, or simmered in soy sauce.
One customer, Donovan Chase, caught a “tasty” striped bass.
The student, from Albuquerque in New Mexico, said: “It was a lot of fun. I go fishing a lot when I'm back home but I never catch anything. So it's nice to actually get a fish when I go fishing.”
But it was not always smooth sailing for the business, as the €2.6 million project to build the 134-seat restaurant was plagued by delays.
Company president Takuya Takahashi said: “Beforehand, I had heard from a lot of other restaurant owners that construction won't go as you had planned and that things won't go according to schedule, so I had thought I had accounted for that, but it was more than I had even expected”.
The New York branch is the first of Zuao restaurant in North America. The company already has more than a dozen branches in Japan.
