Nama is a restaurant at Aman Zoe dedicated to Japanese cuisine. Nama, meaning ‘raw’ the menu has been designed for sharing with your guests, ‘Washoku’ to bring balance and harmony of flavours. I do not claim to be a Japanese master in the slightest, and if any native Japanese were to critique the food here, I am sure they have some exacting standards to uphold and a lot to say! The standard in Japan is on another level, so because I am not eating this there, I can only describe Nama as I see it. Afterall we are In Greece for this story.
We started off with some edamame, a good flaking of salt on the top and served warm, enabling you to pop the beans easily and eat them with ease. Following with a spinach and truffle salad- Baby spinach with parmesan, yuzu lemon dressing topped with fresh black truffle. We can see there is some fusion going on at this point. And at a hotel like this, it is to be expected. I love a Miso soup so that was coming next. The spring onion was chopped very finely showing good knife skills, with tiny cubes of tofu in the bottom of the bowl, wakame is typical, it was a dainty size.
What came next surprised me- Prawn tempura with a spicy sesame aioli. The batter on this was quite incredible. The prawn was served at a satisfying temperature, hot, and never overcooked, just right. The batter, as you took your first bite dissolved and disappeared like magic, but keeping that crispy exterior, one of the lightest I have tried in Europe. It was prepared skilfully.
I took a selection of sushi to try but the rolling was not uniform and harmonious, looking the same as one another. Some of the rice fell off before I even got my chopsticks in there. You could see this as a ‘fun’ offering if you don’t care that much that the sushi master didn’t make your sushi, right in front of your very eyes. We are not in Japan…
For the main course of salmon, it had a crispy skin and was cooked suitably. The chickpeas added relevance to the plate. I wasn’t crazy about the side of vegetables. I found the presentation messy.
For dessert, Nashi (Pear crème brulee) This was an uncommon combination for a crème brulee, with a miso- milk chocolate cremeux. (Everybody seems to make a cremeux for everything these days). I didn’t finish it all, but I appreciated what I did eat.
Nama is inside a luxury hotel and of course this is placed here to bring change and variation for its hotel guests. It always begs the question, should there be a ‘Japanese’ restaurant in a place like this, or should it focus on local, Greek delicacies? This is all subjective, and it depends on you. The Peloponnese is distinctive; it is really an exceptional place. So why not show it off to its maximum? The restaurant here is not terrible, so for that we can say it is ok to return if you have had enough of all the Souvlaki. (For me that’s never going to happen!)
