WORTH THE BAIT?
NYC’s splashiest new restaurant has patrons reel in their own dinner — but there are a few catches
BEING a waiter in New York City is tough. But at least in most restaurants, the food stays still.
At the Japanese restaurant Zauo, opening Monday, servers help their customers catch their own dinner. Using a fishing rod, patrons catch live fish from an indoor tank, then send it to the kitchen to be prepared.
The concept has some pretty unique staffing requirements: Fish attendants, as the servers are called, were hired for their experience, patience and — perhaps most importantly — their willingness to handle slippery, slimy fish.
“There wasn’t one person who didn’t freak out when they had to touch the fish,” the restaurant’s manager, Rui Higuchi, tells The Post. He’s spent the past month teaching his staff to fish, so they can help struggling guests.
When diners arrive at the nautical, three-story Chelsea restaurant, they first have to pick a tank. If they’re in the mood for rainbow trout, striped bass or salmon trout, they head to one of two pools. Customers then attach bait to a small rod and cast their line.
Customers can skip the gimmick, but they’ll have to pay extra. A striped bass, for instance, is $55 normally, but $45 if the patron reels it in themselves.
But the savings come with a catch: You have to eat what you hook. And if that’s the foot-and-ahalf-long salmon trout, you’ll owe a whopping $110 — more than double the price of the smaller rainbow trout ($38) and striped bass ($48) swimming in the same tank.
Whatever you snare, “there is no catch and release,” Higuchi says. “You don’t want to weaken the fish by putting it back in the tank.”
When the customer makes a catch, an attendant swoops in with a net, and then detaches the fish from the hook before sending it off to be prepared in one of four ways: sashimi-style, grilled, simmered or tempura-fried.
The fishing process takes some skill — and experience doesn’t make it much easier, attendants say.
“I’ve been squid fishing in the ocean before, but I haven’t ever had to touch the fish to get the hook out,” says fish attendant Sandy Peng, 24. “I definitely panicked a little bit at first.”
If you lean squeamish, an upstairs tank offers a less visceral experience. Its fluke, flounder, rockfish, lobster, abalone and prawns don’t move around too much, so diners can simply scoop them up using a special hook.
“Upstairs is all about aim,” says bartender and fish attendant Patrice Taylor, 26. “Down here,” she says, pointing to the vast tank of trout and bass, “is a waiting game.”
Zauo has 13 locations in Japan, but this is their first US outpost. Takuya Takahashi, whose dad opened the original Zauo in 1993, was present for training this past month. He says the hardest part of the job isn’t fishing — it’s keeping morale high in the dining room.
“The biggest part of the job is to have energy to cheer on the customers,” Takahashi, president of the restaurant’s New York City branch, tells The Post through an interpreter. “But I don’t think that will be a problem here. New Yorkers seem to be more cheerful than customers in Japan.”
That goes for the staff, too. Even after catching some 100 fish during training, the attendants still beam with pride when they land a big one.
“We’ll be just as excited as the customers,” Higuchi says.
Zauo, 152 W. 24th St.; Zauo.com/En