Danny ChaiI guess I should describe the dinner.
It was incredible. Cumulatively, probably the best meal I’ve had in my entire life.
It was a pretty nice place. Not too loud also which was nice. The thing about the tasting menus is that after every single course, they gave you ample time to digest before bringing out the next course, cleaned the table, and brought out a whole new set of silverware each time. They also explained what each dish was as they brought it out. The service was pretty impressive. And dinner took 3+ hours.
First dish was an appetizer, this tomato thing. Consomme? No clue. But it had “basil infusion.” I love the descriptions upscale places use for food. What the heck is an infusion? No idea. But it was really good in its simplicity. Just, a perfectly light, refreshing appetizer.
There was another appetizer, a shrimp apertif with corn relish. Also very good. I dunno, it wasn’t complicated or anything, just good, the shrimp was plump and tasted great and the relish was very very tasty. I’m obviously not a food critic so I can only use words like “tasty” and “good”, but yeah, everything was tasty and good. Wish I could be more descriptive.
The rest of the things you can see the descriptions and pictures on the page. The custard was really good. The caviar wasn’t just thrown in – even I could see how it went well with the dish, adding a bit of necessary saltiness. And as they say on Iron Chef, there was no trace of fishy smell.
The bisque I absolutely loved. Just, a wonderful taste. The best part of it for me was the scallops. These were, without question, the most tasty, flavorful scallops I’ve had in my entire life. They were that good. I have no idea how he prepared them but they were incredible. Jieun didn’t like this dish as much. She didn’t like the aftertaste – maybe it was the truffles? I’m not sure because I have no idea what truffles taste like. But they were in there.
Incidentally, this is the dish that made Kanoh vote for him. He thought it was better than the Iron Chef’s soup.
The salad was good. The avocado was more subtle than I thought, just a tiny sliver at the bottom. Like all the dishes, the sauce was really good. Here the tomato concasse. Just really really good.
The ravioli was my favorite dish. Everything about it was great, the stuffing and the corn sauce, all really good. Just, the flavor of this was amazing. Jieun really liked the sweetbread.
It’s weird but I liked the poached lobster tail least. Not sure why. Part of it was, my tongue was tired of lobster, like that one judge said. It was true. It was a little much. Also, this was my first taste of foie gras. I don’t know, I think it’s an acquired taste. I shouldn’t have described what foie gras is to Jieun either. We just both kept thinking, “this is the enlarged liver of a force-fed goose/duck.” But like all the dishes, the sauce was incredible.
The sorbet was good. The peach melba was pretty amazing. Jieun absolutely loved this dessert. Very good.
Uh that’s it. That was a pretty poor description of the dinner but yeah, I’m not very good at describing food. It was a great meal.
What was awesome was taking a picture with the chef. We were told that he’s very shy so he’d meet us at the front door. He’s apparently a really nice guy. And, he was really nice to us. I dunno, maybe I’m a loser but I was all nervous to meet him, but he was the humblest, nicest guy. Just, not cool or pretentious, and he seemed more honored that we wanted to take a picture with him than we were in meeting him. And he wanted to make sure dinner was good and everything. I don’t know, he just came across as an incredibly kind, humble, good guy. The anti-Bobby Flay. My impression of him skyrocketed after that. Now I’m an even bigger fan. He really seemed like a great guy. I was very impressed.
And that was dinner.