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2011-03-14
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We were on standby for a week before getting a Saturday evening booking. It is a small place that can take no more than 30 guests at one sitting. The open kitchen gives a wonderful sense of the dedication of the team. Outdoor seating was wonderful but then we had good weather in March.This place is popular for good reasons. The food is excellent and the approach is delicious rather than strange. Chefs at this skill level could have done anything they want. Some would go molecular, which to me is
This place is popular for good reasons. The food is excellent and the approach is delicious rather than strange. Chefs at this skill level could have done anything they want. Some would go molecular, which to me is often playful and wonderful to experience but the main focus is not necessarily taste and texture. Here, chef Que Vinh Dang, born in New York, trained in New York City, and worked at many top restaurants, has chosen to place taste the first priority. For example, we had a most impressive soup and sandwich combination. The soup was a pawn bisque but had deep layers of taste, hinting of paprika and chili. The sandwich was a mini burger. The meat inside was a combination of oxtail and chorizo. Usually I dislike the use of oxtail in this sort of context - oxtail stuffed ravioli, or a small amount of braised oxtail to accomppany fish. None of those worked well. This mini burger worked wonderfully. Behind the beef was a distinct chorizo taste and texture. On reflection, this small burger simply was not a smaller version of a big burger, nor would the chorizo oxtail combination worked well in a bigger burger. The bun was brioche like, which would not have held up well as a larger burger. The combo worked well, as the chorizo was set against the faint spiciness of the soup.
There was only the set menu. This reflected the approach to cooking and execution, that it is better to have a dedicated team working on the same orchestration to produce a small number of really excellent dishes, rather than a cook to order approach. The menu price was $580, which is very modest for a Central district fine dining restaurant and a menu that includes many dishes. This was achieved by using modestly priced but still excellent ingredients, all elevated by the conception of the ideas behind the dishes. No truffles, caviar, wagyu beef nor Iberico pork here. Instead, one gets chorizo, oxtail, squid and squid ink, pork belly, apple and beer into the sorbet, and olive oil into the ice cream. All wonderful, with once exception. Although slow cooking of tougher cuts of meat generally yield a succulent dish, this is less effective with pork belly. The reason, I think, is that pork belly is just layers of fat and fairly lean meat, rather than collagen rich muscles.
Chef Que tells me he changes menu about once a month and will be doing innovative ideas around a Vietnamese theme next. I can't wait.
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