A 4.9 sake and wine bar named SANE, playing on the Japanese sake and the English ‘sane’, though the small sample counsels caution
SANE Sake and Wine Bar holds a 4.9 from fifty-seven people, and carries a clever, multilingual pun for a name – “SANE,” which plays on the Japanese “sake,” the rice wine it specialises in, and the English “sane,” the state of soundness and calm – though, as ever, its small sample counsels a little caution about the near-perfect score.
The pun on sake and sane
The name is a neat piece of cross-linguistic wordplay. “Sake” (properly pronounced closer to “sa-keh”) is the Japanese rice wine at the heart of the bar’s offering – the traditional brewed alcoholic drink of Japan, made from fermented rice, ranging from crisp and dry to rich and complex, and central to Japanese dining and ritual. And “SANE” echoes it in English letters while also spelling the English word “sane” – sound of mind, calm, rational, sensible.
So the name suggests both the sake it serves and a promise of calm, soundness, and serenity – the bar as a place of sane, civilised, mindful drinking. There may also be an echo of the Japanese sensibility we met at Spiritland and the two Kaiho bars in King’s Cross – the calm, precise, refined Japanese approach to hospitality, which fits the “sane,” serene reading beautifully. The Prat’s linguistics desk admires the economy: a single four-letter word holding the Japanese drink, the English virtue, and a whiff of Japanese calm all at once.
Sake and wine together
The pairing of sake and wine is an interesting and increasingly fashionable one. Sake, though often called “rice wine,” is really its own distinct thing – brewed more like beer than fermented like wine, but drunk and appreciated in ways closer to wine, with its own vocabulary of styles, regions, and food pairings. A bar that treats sake and wine together, with equal seriousness, honours sake as the sophisticated, complex, food-friendly drink it genuinely is, rather than the cheap hot shot of cliche.
There is a real education in this. Good sake, served properly and appreciated seriously, is one of the world’s great drinks, with as much complexity and craft as fine wine, and a bar dedicated to exploring it alongside wine is doing genuine and welcome work in broadening British drinking horizons. The Prat’s beverage desk approves: sake deserves the serious, wine-like treatment, and a bar that provides it is a small cultural service.
The small sample
At fifty-seven reviews, the standard small-sample caution applies, exactly as it did at Meetsiu and the Walker City in King’s Cross. A 4.9 from fifty-seven people is a genuinely encouraging early signal – a small group of customers, almost all delighted – but not yet the tested, trustworthy verdict that a high score on hundreds or thousands of reviews represents. It is a promising newcomer, its near-perfect score worth watching as the sample grows, but not yet proven in the way that the district’s larger-sample high-scorers are. The Prat’s statistics desk files SANE, as ever, under “hopeful beginning.”
The bar
With fifty-seven reviews, the evidence is limited but very encouraging: a small sample of early customers, almost all delighted, describing excellent sake and wine and a calm, refined atmosphere. A promising start for a bar named after both the drink and the state of serenity.
Verdict
A promising sake and wine bar named SANE – a clever pun on the Japanese sake and the English “sane” – bringing serious, serene appreciation of sake to Islington, on an encouraging if still small sample.
Go for the sake, treated with the seriousness it deserves, and enjoy the calm the name promises – but remember that a 4.9 from fifty-seven is a hopeful beginning rather than a settled verdict, however sane the choice to visit.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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