Momofuku Ko

I haven't returned to this blog for some time but now I must.  On March 28 I had lunch at Momofuku Ko in New York.

Google gave me directions to Ko.

Foodies who know a bit about David Chang's Ko understand how difficult it is to get a reservation here.   The restaurant seats 12 and in order to get a reservation, you must first register at the website and then get online at exactly 10 in the morning, Eastern Coast Time, exactly two weeks ahead when the site opens to grab one of the dozen backless seats.  It was a one week out requirement two years ago when I missed my seat by 1 minute.  This year I was on at 6:58 a.m. my time and just kept clicking in.  I was lucky enough to grab the last available seat.  (I wound up sitting next to a young woman from who'd done the same thing in her London workplace at 2 in the afternoon that same Friday.)

by Krista Garcia

by Krista Garcia

Photography isn't permitted at Ko, though it was back in 2008 when Krista Garcia at Goodies First  snapped pictures of her meal.  These shots from Julie Zeveloff's 2013 column at Business Insider will give you an idea of what the plates at Ko look like.

I didn't have the wine pairings with the meal because I thought I might get too tipsy.  I had a glass of Spanish sparkling white, a glass of sparkling Pinot Grigio rose and finished the meal with the very medicinal amaro, Fernet Branca.

I took notes during the meal.  This menu was $175 without the wine and amaro.  With alcohol and tip I wound up spending a little over $280.

Here is the menu I enjoyed with a few minor editorial comments.

1. A tiny saki cup of fermented apple and carrot juice, looking a very pretty orange in the black cup.
2. Fried duck rillette on mustard with pickled ramps.
3.  Kumamato oyster with mixed spices in apple vinegar.  (A very sweet and meaty bivalve.)
4. A small straw made of onion cracker stuffed with soft potato souffle.
5. Snapper tartar with a sauce, topped with shredded turnips and onion.
6. Raw hamachi (Pacific yellowtail) with spicy buttermilk sauce with chives.  (The hunk of fish was fresh and perfectly matched to the spices in the buttermilk.  ****)
7. Pickled and cured tataki of Spanish mackerel.  (Tataki is a Japanese style of preparation with the fish lightly seared on each side then marinated in vinegar, sliced thin and seasoned with ginger.  The skin on my slice was nicely charred.    It was topped with teeny rice balls.  I watched as the fish was seared by a chef wielding a cook's torch.)
8. Salad of sunchokes, strawberry, and anchovy.  (Very pretty to look at but rather bland.)
9. Slow cooked smoked trout with pickled beets, smoked beet puree, all topped with "everything bagel" spice.  (This was terrific to look at and eat. The beet slices were cut into almost see-through slices cut into floral shapes.) The sauce was bright red.  The trout amazingly flavorful.  Wow.  **** )
10. Diver scallops and button mushroom with slices of snow pears in a mushroom broth. ( The sweet and sea combination was new to me.  The see-through pear slices had a lovely chrysanthemum pattern. **** )
11. Green potato soup over grilled cuttlefish chopped up with charred cooked rice.  (The rice was very crunchy and chopped into the cuttlefish.  The green of the soup was pretty.  The cuttlefish is related to the squid and octopus.  I've never eaten it before.  Tasty.  But the super burnt crunchiness of the rice wasn't completely to my taste.)
12. Venison tartar topped with a soft boiled quail egg and red onion marmalade.   (I could tell the venison was farmed -- its taste was wasn't wild.)
13. Puffed egg with kelp bits.  (This was by far the oddest thing I ate.  The egg is mixed with methylcellulose then sprayed into boiling broth.  It looks like a puffy round ball and has a very strange texture.  Ko's founder, David Chang, was featured on the PBS show "The Mind of a Chef" and you can watch him making this amazing dish on a video from that show.
14. Deconstructed lobster roll -- mini-brioche and lobster pieces broken into a thick lobster sauce.  (I watched the chef squeeze a potful of lobster shell, meat, and spices through cheesecloth to make the sauce.  **** )
15. Semolina pellizzoni pasta (a thick spaghetti) with duck meatballs.
16. Halibut with sea urchin and granny smith apple sauce topped with charred Brussels sprout leaves.  (Another lovely pairing of fish and fruit. **** )
17. Foie gras shaved from a frozen roll over lychees and pine nut brittle.  (The sweets were hidden by the shaved liver, bright surprises beneath the brown, fat covering.  **** )
18. Marinated pork slab with roasted cabbage and red onions.  (Lots of fat on the pork.  The meat was very good. I couldn't eat the fatty bits as I was becoming very full.) 
19. Dessert 1:  Huckleberry and espresso sauce over a chocolate and black-truffle ice-cream.
20. Dessert 2:  Calamondin sorbet (very orange) with drops of goat cheese on a small round piece of cake.  (I loved the mix of flavors here -- the sharp citrus with the rich goat cheese and sweet cake. **** )
21. Dessert 3:  A rice cream cone -- a small cone made of rice flour filled with rice cream.
22. Dessert 4:  cookie of chocolate ganache stuffed with meringue.  
23. All wrapped up with an espresso with a small brown sugar cube.

$85 Ariana Wine Dinner

Ariana Restaurant in Bend, Oregon

I went to the Hamacher Ponzi Elk Cove Winemakers Dinner last night at Ariana. It was wonderful. The young chefs (graduates of COCC's culinary program) had sampled the wines and created wonderful pairings. As a single diner I was lucky enough to sit with the winemakers, three delightful people who were not only fine creators but also good conversationalists.

Every pairing was perfect.

First Course: 2008 Elk cove Pinot Gris. This bright white was served with a White Gazpacho (made with cucumber, garlic, and olive oil) with slices of Marcona Almonds and small balls of Crenshaw melon.

Second Course: 2008 Ponzi Arneis Luisa Ponzi told a story about her Dad going to Italy while she was being educated in France. He came back with a bunch of odd Italian varietals including this one. She said it's very difficult, with the vines bearing fruit at different times and different rates. Nevertheless, this was a super white, with lots of figgy nose. It was served with my favorite food of the evening, a thin slice of Olive Oil Marinated Swordfish (very warm) toped with a terrific Fresh Summer Herb Gremolata (salad -- with currants).

Third Course: 2005 Hamacher Chardonnay. Usually, I hate Chardonnay but this beauty didn't have that heavy thickness so many do. It went perfectly with the Handmade tagliatelle paste with white truffle and sweet summer corn. The pasta smelled terrific and tasted same.

Fourth Course: 2007 Elk Cove Pinot Noir. A sharp and intelligent wine that perfectly accompanied my second favorite dish of the night, the spice rubbed breast of duck with root vegetable puree and slow roasted heirloom cherry tomatoes with 20 yr balsamic. The tiny tomatoes were a sudden burst of absolute deliciousness on my tongue.

Fifth course -- 2006 Hamacher Pinot Noir. A more complex Pinot that did a good job cutting into the verrrry fat hunk of 20 hour roasted pork belly with wilted local chard. This was way more fat than I'm used to eating, but I ate every bite.

Sixth course: 2005 Ponzi Pinot Noir Reserve. My favorite wine of the evening. A big, deep, pinot that balanced off my least favorite dish of the evening, two somewhat undercooked slices of Wayugu beef roasted with Pincess la Ratta Potatoes and steak sauce.

We took two in house made candies home with us, one a truffle (I gave this to my spouse who doesn't like fancy dinners and had stayed home) and the other a very chewy caramel that I enjoyed with a glass of milk.

It was a wonderful dinner served with intelligence and grace and presided over by Nancy, the voice of Ariana.

Alanis Style Ironic

http://www.flickr.com/photos/epicureanslug/sets/72157607469784051/
Like, it's so ironic that my friend who has inspired me to become more interested in fancy food wouldn't spend the money on the Herb Farm. But I digress. I really should get my shit (or my slug poop, don'tcha know) together and post my impressions of the Herb Farm. But you see I didn't take notes. I actually had gentle, funny, convivial dinner companions who were just as interested in the food itself as I. They were an international group. A gay couple celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary -- they were both ITS guys, if I remember correctly. A heterosexual couple with an Israeli female partner partnered by a handsome man with a beard. They were so cosmopolitan and gemütlich. And there was this intense woman who looked about twenty but said she was older who has a food blog and somewhere I have notes about where that blog was located but I've forgotten in the overall wonderfulness of my memories of that evening. And I just haven't been able to find a way of saying it the way I want to.

The $250 Dinner - Herb Farm

Coming soon - my discussion of this question: Was the $250 dinner at the Herb Farm worth the money?

Until I get my slimy behind in gear to write, here are the photographs http://www.flickr.com/photos/epicureanslug/sets/72157607469784051/

Zortziko

Please see photographs of my dinner at http://www.flickr.com/photos/epicureanslug/sets/72157607450265610/

Zortziko is my inspiration for starting this blog. I took myself out for a meal there when I was on a trip to Bilbao. I traveled with a group of students, taking advantage of the cheap cost but I didn't have an official relationship to them. They're all adult students anyway.

So. ZORTZIKO. I made a reservation for one person and showed up at 9 o'clock -- early by Bilbao standards. Right when it opened. The night was a bit stormy, so I had an umbrella. It was just three blocks from the tube stop.

I told them I spoke no Spanish and apologized. They brought the Engish menu. I asked if I could take a picture of my plates as long as I didn't take a picture of other diners and was given the O.K.

I ordered the spectacular tastes-of-the-day or as it was called on the souvenier menu, the "Sample Menu."

So, rather than putting you through a moment by moment memory (and then she brought the silver for the fish dish, and then she brought the silver for the meat dish, and then she brought. . . .) I will just say that after each plate the remains of the dish were taken away with the silver and a new place setting was brought for each dish.

Here is Daniel Garcia's webpage (containing the Zortziko info http://www.zortziko.es/zortziko/zortziko.php )

Anyway, even though I was a woman alone they treated with with utmost respect and service. I received each part of the dinner in a timely manner. (The only one I actually asked for was the cake at the end -- perhaps they assumed I'd eat it after the coffee -- but I wanted it American style so I asked for it with my coffee. Well, I felt a bit guilty about asking for it so I tipped in the American style -- 20% rather than what the tourbooks told me was cutomary -- 10%. Perhaps they thought I was an idiot.

Oh, well. I am kind of a doofus. See my profile.

Anyway, I've posted pictures in the Zortziko Album. You can look at the various parts of the menu. The flavors of each dish were very intense. I was drinking a white sparkling to begin (they had no prosecco -- were serving a Spanish sparkling white.) I didn't want a bottle of anything because it was just me.

My favorites

First choice gotta be that intense glass of liquified baby squid in its own ink with seaweeds and yellow pepper....wow. That little shot glass of the most intensely squiddy dark sea dark deep flavor. Wow. And at the very bottom this tiny cluster of tentacles...crunchy.
Other parts of the meal had that intense set of differences of texture -- crunchy and soft. If you look at the pictures you'll see that I ate the three bites of crunchy-with-a-liquid center chestnut thingee. Wow. Was that an example of what they call food chemistry?

At the other end of the meal in the desserts I also favored the iced apple drink with cream cheese and quince -- the mix of fatty thick texture with the sharp bite of the quince and the cold apple...THAT is the dance on the tongue -- the soothing bland kiss of the cream cheese followed by the sharp remonstrance of the acid in the apple and that fruit member of the rose family.

The lobster with the crispy pasta and the bock choi was really terrific as well -- the sharp flavor of the cabbage combined with that sweet fat fish kiss of the lobster.

All in all, just and absolutely terrific meal, served with energy and efficiency by the waitstaff.

I left Zortziko at around 11:30 at night, a bit too embarrassed in leaving (they got my coat, they shook my hand) to ask where the ladies room was. But I expected to be back to the hotel in ten minutes by underground. When I hit the street I saw there were not many people on the old city streets. Then I saw the submay near El Corte Ingles was closed! I'd forgotten to check the times. Ack! I thought, "I could take a taxi or walk." I knew it wasn't that far from Zortziko to the Barcolo Avenida where our tour group was staying.

It turned out to be about 25 minutes and a long walk up a few hundred stairs. I also just don't trust cabs in places where I can't speak the language -- no offense to Bilbanians in particular. That goes for Oslo and Firenze as well. So I wound up walking to the hotel -- in REALLY heavy rain fall and wind, up all those stairs, pretending to talk on a cellphone (my current self-protective performance). Wild, wet, wacky ending to a wonderful evening -- but perhaps justified, since I paid 140 Euroes for dinner, wine and tip. Does someone who doesn't require punishment spend that much on a mere dinner? But to me, the experience was worth the money.

And it was good to go by myself so I could spend every euro paying attention to the food instead of a companion.

Just call me, "The kitty who eats by herself."

Purpose of the Blog

Greetings

The purpose of this blog is to share some of my gustatory experiences with anyone with an interest.