The most unexpected restaurant meal I had on a recent trip to New York was at a Hawaiian restaurant called Noreetuh. To be honest, I’d booked because I couldn’t resist the idea of a restaurant that served spam (as a sushi-like appetiser called musubi), but what I hadn’t expected was a serious wine list crammed with top German riesling.
And Noreetuh is not the only one: New York is in love with riesling to an extent that isn’t at all common in the UK, where it’s still – after all this time – associated with poor-quality German wines such as Liebfraumilch. It’s rare to find more than one at a supermarket tasting, eclipsed by a good dozen sauvignon blancs.
