Wednesday September 8, 2010

Christian and I went to the Padres game last night and watched them win their second game after their 10 game losing streak and then went to the racetrack today…closing day. Booo. I am bummed that I didn’t take the time to go earlier this year, but I have been traveling so much and it just didn’t work out. We only stayed for 4 races and I made an entire 80 cents profit on my amazing betting skills. I usually do awful and Christian loves to make fun of my losses. I like to go to where they parade the horses around on the paddock before the race and see which ones are out of control and frothing at the mouth. Or I pick whichever name sounds appropriate. A horse whose name has anything to do with alcohol always gets my bet. We were going to stay til the end but decided that it was best to get on the road and head to LA…on the way up we got a last minute reservation at The Bazaar! SCORE!

The Bazaar by Jose Andres is inside the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills (decor by Phillipe Starck) and is pretty much the #1 restaurant in LA at the moment. It’s a little confusing in that they have a regular dining room and a tasting room. We were seated at the Rojo y Blanca section, with an option for regular tapas and modern tapas: aka molecular gastronomy! The SAAM seating is the 22 course tasting and is only available Thursday through Saturday. (Surprisingly cheaper than I thought, too…only $120!) I definitely need to come back and do the tasting. Like next week maybe. The good thing about tapas menus is that you can try a lot of things without committing to full dishes. Some of the items were only $5 or $10. Some people like a big entree…I love to sample a lot of things. I am notorious for only ordering off the appetizer menu sometimes when I eat at a new place.

 We each had a Tortilla de Patatas “new way”: potato foam, egg 63 (what is that you ask!? An egg cooked at 63 degrees celsius to match the texture of the foam. I have no idea what that even means.) and at the bottom of the cup (which is not a real egg btw) was amazing carmelized onion. The tiny little spoon began to frustrate me as I tried to get it in my mouth as fast as possible so I ended up shooting the damn thing. I highly doubt it was supposed to be consumed that way, but I also doubt that we were the first to do that.

Local Melon and Jamon Iberco with 25 year old Pedro Ximenez: sliced cantaloupe with Iberco ham. It was really delicious…the salty pig and the cool sweet contrast of the melon. Wow.

The Pedro Ximenez was sprinkled in with the melon and jamon…it’s basically a cooking sherry that they served in tiny little gelatin chunks. A nice surprise!

American Caviar Cone: a light filo (phyllo) dough cone with creme fraiche and caviar. TO DIE FOR.

Japanese Tacos: grilled eel, cucumber, shiso, wasabi and chicharron.

The eel was warm and the cucumber “tortilla” was cool. Pretty tasty. I could have eaten a dozen of these.

We shared a cheese plate of Idiazabal (sheep), Murcia al vino (goat) and Manchego ‘pasamontes’ (sheep). The bread was lightly toasted and served with a bruschetta like tomato spread.

Jamon overload!

Christian ordered the Hilly Cheesesteak: air bread, cheddar cheese and mushrooms. I didn’t even try to steal a bite because I was ordering shit that he would never eat and that wouldn’t be fair. He said it was light and fluffy upon first bite but then the cheese was just oozing everywhere. Do not ask me why he ordered the one without the meat at first.

It was so good that he ordered the real one Philly Cheesesteak: air bread, cheddar, mushrooms and Wagyu beef. I should have snagged a bite of that one, but I was getting full and my foie gras was on it’s way.

The winner of the night was the Foie Gras Floating Island Soup: it was so amazing! I took my time eating it… I wanted it to last forever. It was made with a corn nut base and had crushed corn nuts on top. Foamy, frothy and utterly delicious.

Foie Gras Cotton Candy: yes, a small cool chunk of pate surrounded by cotton candy!

Christian had to be a little brat and ask for an order of his own cotton candy.

For dessert you are transported into a different part of the restaurant…. The Patisserie! There is a huge assortment of small things like chocolate bonbons and lollipops as well as traditional dessert items.

We had the Lime Fizzy Rocks (think like that weird astronaut ice cream you had as a kid) and on the right was Passion Fruit Marshmallow and bonbons made of lemon ginger, star anise and earl grey. At this point I was too full to even properly enjoy dessert so I didn’t force it. I will be coming back very soon for the tasting. In fact, I might just stay in LA for a week and go there every night to tackle the entire menu.

They have a retail store here as well. It’s a strange eclectic collection of items for sale. Lingerie to jewelry to….

…trendy little gifts for people that like weird stuff. (Jennie)

Thank you Christian for another amazing meal… on your dime! Hahahaha I love being unemployed…everyone loves to buy me dinner!

Friday May 28, 2010

I attempted to go to Hot Doug’s for duck fat fries and hot dogs but luckily someone on Twitter informed me that they were closed for the weekend. D’oh! We were stuck in rush hour traffic on a Friday before a holiday weekend and turned around to hit Lou Malnati’s for some deep dish Chicago pizza instead. I was pretty bummed about Hot Doug’s but I guess it’s just another excuse to go back to Chicago in the future.

Enjoying a beer and pizza with a guy who I met through Twitter named Bobbie and his friend Harvey Walker.

Sausage deep dish pizza yummmm (thank you Mike for recommending this place to me!) Their pizza is awesome because under the sauce is literally an entire layer of thick delicious sausage, not just small pieces.

And here we go again…. dinner at Moto! My friend Derek was supposed to be in town on Wednesday to go with me to Alinea but had a last minute meeting out of town so we had made plans to hit Moto tonight. Should we do the Grand Tasting Menu: 20 courses with wine pairing? OF COURSE WE SHOULD! The executive chef and owner of Moto is Homaro Cantu and they recently shot a TV series about the place called Future Food… it was shot in the fall but is airing now on something I have never heard of called Planet Green. I will have to figure this out and check it out. Onto another fabulous night of molecular gastronomy!

My foo-foo cocktail made of watermelon and ginger ale and you can’t see the frozen watermelon chunks because I had already eaten them. The menu had the 10 course listed on one side and the 20 course listed on the other side. Also on this plate is spinach puree and artichoke.

The menus were made of flatbread…and…edible!

CO2 GRAPEFRUIT: whitesteel with grapefruit, tobiko roe and carmelized sunchoke perfumed with vanilla bean and soy milk. The sauce was excellent and the grapefruit was just the right zest and tartness. The fish? meh.

 BUBBLE TEA: chilled watermelon and ginger soup with thai basil, saffron and little scallop chunks that found their way up the giant straw with great force and speed. That means they were in the back of my throat upon first suck. Tasty little dish but still hard to grasp scallops with a chilled sweet soup.

RED BULL PAELLA: albacore, dehydrated jasmine rice (yes it looked like maggots), saffron paprika pepples and some sauce that they poured out of a Red Bull can for some strange reason. This dish was terrible. The fish was overcooked and dry and we actually sent it back to the kitchen without eating it. They did not replace it. Rude.

40MHZ PHEASANT: funnel cake pheasant, sauce made of stock and fat (mixed by sound waves because normally stock and fat do not mix. huh? try googling that one), and pheasant breast.

Looks like a candle, right?

CLAM BAKE: lobster, clams and scallops served with potato gnocchi, sauteed corn, shallots, tarragon….and that candle was the butter drizzled over the dish! This was delicious and looked remarkably like we were playing a game of Battleship. “G7! You sunk my battleship!”

YELLOW SNOW: a palate cleanser of green curry and lemon pudding over diced pineapple, with powdered meringue and a lemon zest sweet sauce.

CUBAN CIGAR: Cuban pork sandwich with a braised collard green as the tobacco leaf, with smoked red pepper coulis and the ashes were made of black and white sesame seeds and cumin. It’s very strange rolling something in an ashtray and then putting it into your mouth! Derek really liked it but it was a little on the dry side to me.

FORREST ROLL: This appears to be your normal sushi roll but it’s actually poached rabbit loin with mushroom paper, sesame risotto, all spice aioli, beet soaked radish and the green ball that is supposed to resemble the wasabi was dried English peas with brown butter. This might possibly have been my favorite of the savory dishes.

MIATAKE NUACMAN: pork belly carmelized with ginger and lemongrass, Chinese broccoli with miatake mushrooms and miatake mushroom puree. Ok, wait, this might have been my favorite savory dish of the night. Hi Derek.

DELI-STYLE PASTA: this was a little tiny Reuben sandwich lasagna. I am really missing the pasta part of the dish now that I look back at my notes and the photograph. The thing sticking up was a homemade potato chip I think, but yeah, no pasta on this plate.

SHABUCCINO: on the right in the coffee cup: fermented garlic and soy served over raw Kobe beef prime rib, Asian veggies, edamame, potato, carrots. On the left in the “creamer container” you have mushroom bisque with potato foam and the “sugar cube” which was made of white truffles. It was slightly salty and lucky for me I watched Derek fuck up and put all of the foam in his coffee cup which did not taste that good. I poured a small amount and enjoyed my delicious cup of shabuccino. (They even gave me 4 of the white truffle cubes to take home which are now smashed in the bottom on my purse in a little plastic bag.)

A palate cleanser made of lime foam topped with a lime and tequila drizzle. The little eyes and face are salt nuggets. (ugh with the sodium intake this week)

DUCK & MOLE: cannoli made of corn tortilla, duck confit, powdered jalapeno, sour cream and topped with candied pepitas. It’s very strange eating something that your mind tells you is one thing and tastes completely different once it’s on the buds. Excellent dish though!

CREPES THAT ARE CHEESE: raspberry puree, smoked gouda with Grand Marnier and apricot chutney, and blueberry puree.

PINA COLADA CEREAL: coconut milk with rum, liquid nitrogen, puffed rice flakes with dried pineapple.

RAINBOW SPRINKLES: cupcake made of foie gras mousse, pistachio icing and the sprinkles are lentils…the sauce on the plate is blueberry and sherry vinagrette and the thing at the bottom of the plate is seared foie gras.

PAD THAI ESQUE: orange mango cream, peanuts, coconut…the lime is made of sweet lime gel and the rind is sweetened cilantro and coconut milk. Strangely enough even though it is made of mostly sweet items it tasted just like pad thai!

And we have a winner! The LTP Award goes to “Pad Thai Esque”

BANANA SPLIT: custard with banana ice cream and 3 flavor syringes to add as much or as little to your dish as you like. Chocolate, caramel and maraschino cherry.

I swear to you if I could have an IV of caramel for the rest of my life I might just give up sex. Well, maybe in a few years once I pass my sexual prime.

ACME BOMBS: melted down graham cracker ice cream in a chocolate ball with a toasted marshmallow wick. Liquid S’Mores!

CHOCOLATE, TRUFFLES: white truffle mousse with beet mousse, folded together and rolled into a chocolate ball, rolled in coco nibs, topped with hazelnut and beet sorbet and orange sorbet. (It was sweet, and sadly I couldn’t really taste the white truffles at all.)

ROOT BEER FLOAT: root beer and packing foam. No really, the white thing is edible packing foam made of cornstarch. The waiter told us that during an episode of their show Future Foods they went to the post office to ship something fragile and they were using these peanuts made of vanilla, brown butter and liquid nitrogen. They began eating the peanuts in front of other people while being filmed. I have to see this show!

Derek and I had a great time but he was hungover and we were both in food comas so we said our goodbyes instead of hitting the town. I went back to the Hard Rock Hotel to see what kind of debauchery the gays were getting into and stayed up talking with Tommy and Howard and some others til we shut the bar down. I’m tired and full and have a pretty early flight tomorrow.