'BOBA’
calpico & soy milk - water chestnuts encapsulated with rose tapioca

2009 New Years Dinner
(photographed by Adrian Sangalang)

TRUFFLED ‘XIAO LONG BAO’ - SHANGHAI DUMPLING
white truffle butter - licorice greens - chicken soup

Xiao Long Bao are like savory Gushers filled with pork soup—they are fucking amazing. It’s hard to find a place that makes them well, but if you do, you’ll be glad you did. These particular dumplings were filled with pork sausage, chicken soup, and white truffle butter.

2009 New Years Dinner
(photographed by Adrian Sangalang)

CHAI NOG & MARSHMALLOW FLAMBE
goldschlager - cardamom pastries

An Indian spiced Christmas staple. The mashmallow was doused with Goldschlager, lit, and extinguished in the nog table-side.

2009 New Years Dinner
(photographed by Adrian Sangalang)

CAULIFLOWER BISQUE
ras el hanout scallop - curried tempura crumbs - hearts on fire

2009 New Years Dinner
(photographed by Adrian Sangalang)

FROZEN SALAD
chinese donut croutons - fried onion dressing

2009 New Years Dinner
(photographed by Adrian Sangalang)

KENTUCKY FRIED DUCK & WAFFLES
fried peking duck - tabasco caviar - apple noodles - herb salad - scallion waffle

I deboned a whole peking duck, breaded it, and then fried it a la Kentucky fried chicken. This was before my discovery of meat glue, so the wrap isn’t as tight as I’d want it to be. The scallion waffle was an American twist on the traditional Chinese chive pancake.

2009 New Years Dinner
(photographed by Adrian Sangalang)

KOBE TRIFECTA
xo steak tartar with taro chip - beef tataki roll - steak ‘frites’ with dashi gravy & wasabi peas

This was my main course for a fancy dinner party I threw a couple years ago.

2009 New Years Dinner
(photographed by Adrian Sangalang)

KOMBU-CURED VEGETABLE NIGIRI
bok choy - piquillo peppers - cucumber - carrots

NIGIRI
not just for fish

We recently discovered that raw vegetables could be cured between sheets of kombu…

…and then we went crazy with it.

COMPRESSED MELON NIGIRI
honeydew - watermelon - canteloupe - pistachio fluid gel - saba - vanilla olive oil

SABLEFISH
asti marinated fennel & grapes - champagne gel - triple cooked potatoes - english pea foam

Some elements on this dish were pulled straight from Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck cookbook. The triple cooked potatoes were very good, but I’m not sure if they’re worth the labor. First you need to cut them to the perfect size, boil them in salted water until they’re soft and the starches begin to break down, then pull out the excess moisture in a vacuum (you need to do this three times), then fry them, pull out the moisture again (three more times), and then fry them right before serving. The result is an amazing potato that’s almost like a tater tot—beautifully golden and crisp.

DECONSTRUCTED TAMALE
avocado paint - chile colorado

Tyler, one of our cooks, conceived and executed this dish. He braised some masa balls with the jus of the chile colorado and served it with some lettuce and tomatoes a la taco bell. I was really against the salad cause I thought it would look ridiculous, but obviously, he made it work, and well.

TROPICAL FRUIT CEVICHE
with vietnamese plum & chili salt

This dish came about when we found out someone at our Chef’s Table had some specific dietary restrictions. It’s just a regular fruit salad with microherbs, cucumbers, orange juice, and a dusting of vietnamese plum & chili salt. We got it from one of our colleagues who’d smuggled it over from Vietnam.

WILD MUSHROOM CAPPUCINO
white truffle foam - porcini powder

I really wanted to give this dish a whimsical touch. We frothed some truffled milk and spooned it on top and sprinkled it with a little mushroom powder. The effect resulted in a cappuccino-like cup of soup.

WILD SHRIMP LOUIE
house-pickled baby beets - medium boiled egg

I love taking classics and bringing out the best of every component, letting the crucial ingredients shine, omitting unnecessary ones, and replacing them with something complementary without compromising the original dish. This was the case of our louie.

We went from bay shrimp to really large wild shrimp, swapped hard-boiled eggs for medium, iceberg lettuce for butter, and added some pickled beets that make the dish really stand out.

MOLECULAR CAPRESE
buffalo mozzarella sphere - tomato jello - basil spaghetti - balsamic caviar

This amuse was made up primarily of hydrocolloids. Although it’s far removed from a traditional caprese, the taste is unmistakable once all the components hit the palate.

SOUS-VIDE CHICKEN BREAST
fiddlehead ferns - wild mushrooms - miner’s lettuce

I like the presentation of this dish. It’s like something you’d find nested in a forest somewhere which is fitting because both the mushrooms and the miner’s lettuce were hand-picked and foraged from the wild.

JAMON IBERICO & TANGELO SALAD
fresh mozzarella - saba - lemon oil

If this salad looks familiar at all, it’s because you might have seen it before in Jamie Oliver’s cookbook as ‘Fifteen Christmas Salad’. The originally recipe called for speck, but we upgraded it with some jamon iberico, cause that’s how we roll.

Jamon iberico is a cured ham made from black Iberian pigs which are fed acorns as a part of their diet. They consume so many acorns that you can taste it in the ham and sometimes find acorn bits interlaced into the meat. It’s expensive though—$600 a pop. Have a chance to taste it and you’ll see why.

PAD THAI
ground peanuts - dried chili flakes

A good pad thai sauce consists of (by order of weight) fish sauce, tamarind water, palm sugar, ketchup, garlic, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, thai chilies, and white pepper. We managed to come up with a pretty good vegetarian recipe that basically subbed fish sauce with tamari. The sauce was also infused with kombu and dried chanterelle mushrooms to bring out some umami. 

MARIN SUN FARMS LAMB
root vegetable risotto - fava leaves

This reminds me of a naturistic landscape. The lamb sort of resembles a log, the risotto forms an island, and the sauce acts as a moat. The root vegetable risotto is made the same way as a traditional rice risotto, but the flavor is so much more interesting. We also used Activa, a ‘meat glue’ that binds proteins together which is how we achieved the perfect round shape on the lamb.