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Restaurant Sat Bains: our £595 pairing menu is the ‘best value for money’
Two-Michelin-Starred Nottingham restaurant Sat Bains has launched a pairing menu for £595 per person — aptly named Off The Charts considering its high price tag — but head sommelier Andrei Gotcu tells Eloise Feilden that customers are getting the best bang for their buck.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but it is actually better value than just buying a bottle,” says Gotcu, who has been in post as the restaurant’s head sommelier for just two months.
Restaurant Sat Bains, which won its first Michelin star in 2003 and its second in 2011, launched Off The Charts four months ago. The restaurant, owned by chef Sat Bains and wife Amanda, offers wines from the likes of Egon Müller, Napa’s Colgin estate and Krug Champagne as part of the new package for guests.
“Sat wants to showcase beautiful wines but of course not everyone is able to pay £400 or £500 a bottle for a great wine,” Gotcu explains. “If you spend the same amount of money and can try six or seven of these unique rare gems, that will feel much more approachable and give you much more of an idea of what great wine is around the world.”
A bottle of 2002 Château d’Yquem featured on the Off The Charts menu retails for around £485 in UK retail. Similarly, the 2016 vintage of Trimbach Clos Ste Hune from Alsace which also featues on the menu retails for £295.
It’s hard to ignore the economic context into which Restaurant Sat Bains has launched its Off The Charts wine pairing — one in which restaurants are closing at a rate of five per day due to high inflation, rising interest rates and cash-strapped consumers.
Gotcu admits that for most patrons, Off The Charts will be a “once in a lifetime” experience. “It’s not something we sell very often,” he says.
Giving patrons the opportunity to “try things that would be very rare to find in the wild” is the restaurant’s key motivation. “We make very little money, if any, on the Off The Charts pairing,” he says. The challenge is therefore to “figure out a way to not lose money and still be able to showcase all of these incredible wines.”
Prices are high across the board. “I think everyone in the wine industry now is struggling with the amount of inflation and the taxes, especially here in the UK, that we have to pay, and keeping costs as low as possible.”
But he argues that from a consumer standpoint, Off The Charts is the best bang for your buck. “Like I said, this is the best value wine pairing we have for the consumer,” he says. “The price of one of those bottles is basically the cost of the whole wine pairing menu, but you get to try all of those bottles.”
Gotcu and his team are “much happier to charge that amount of money” for the pairing menu, as opposed to a single bottle.
Off The Charts is also a rare chance for the restaurant’s team of sommeliers to handle these wines too. “It gives us the opportunity to source bottles we believed to be almost inaccessible for us and still be able to share them with everyone,” he says.
Wines served for the pairing are kept a surprise for customers, unless they heavily insist on seeing the list beforehand. Gotcu wants to see the delight on people’s faces — “that magical moment when the wine arrives at the table and you see that you are starting with a bottle of Krug, for example, or with one of the best Rieslings in the world”.
“It’s like a kid receiving a present at Christmas,” he says.
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