FROZEN WHOPPER
malted milk ice-cream - shaved chocolate - funnel cake

A new edit of an old photo. Our pastry chef’s deconstructed whopper for our carnival theme.

ALMOND TUILE
lambic infused cherries - micro-fennel

This tuile was made by our Pastry Chef to accompany the foie gras creme brulee. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good picture of the brulee, so all we have is the tuile. Looks pretty though.

GARDENER’S PIE
wild mushrooms - lentils - parmesan crisp

Our vegetarian take on the shepherd’s pie.  The lentils are simmered with ground wild mushrooms, topped with creamy mashed potatoes, and sprinkled with bits of crispy parmesan.

BARBECUE PLATE
coffee-rubbed ribs - collard greens - pork & beans

Here it is all together. Only thing missing is a niblet of corn or slice of cornbread.

PORK & BEANS
navy beans - braised ham hocks - kelbasa sausages

If you made a ham-hock stock like I’d suggested, most of it will be going into this dish. Soak the beans overnight with water in a big pinch of salt. Strain the water and cook the beans with some aromatics (onions, garlic, bay leaves, thyme) and add the ham hock stock. Add just enough liquid so that once it’s cooked, the liquid barely covers the beans (about 3 parts liquid to 1 part uncooked beans). In a separate pan, render some bacon and brown diced sausages. Once your beans are about 90% done, add the meat. Fold in barbecue into the whole mix and then simmer until the beans are completely tender, but not breaking. Lastly, fold in the chunks of braised ham hock meat leftover from the stock. Finish with some lemon zest, and it’s perfect.

COLLARD GREENS
braised ham-hocks - bacon

1. cut collard greens into strips the size of your finger.

2. render diced bacon in dutch oven.

3. add chopped onions and garlic. sweat on low until translucent.

4. add touch of bbq spices. get em toasty.

5. add collard greens. season with ham hock stock, molasses, touch of apple cider vinegar. cover and simmer. stir occasionally until the greens are nice and tender.

6. drain the greens, keeping the liquid.

7. reduce liquid. finish with butter. fold greens back into the jus.

8. fold in chunks of braised ham hocks.

9. eat that shit.

10. die happy.

COFFEE-RUBBED PORK RIBS
with house-made barbecue jus

These ribs were rubbed with a coffee-spice rub consisting of ground coffee, garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, salt, brown sugar, cayenne, smoked paprika. You wanna cake this stuff on. I baked them at 185 F overnight on a sheet pan with pot of water placed on the rack underneath to bring a touch of moisture to the cooking environment. It should take anywhere from 6 to 8 hours. It won’t appear tender because the meat doesn’t fall right off the bone like a lot of Food Network enthusiasts insist should happen, but it is tender. The spices caked on from earlier create a very dry crust, or bark, keeping the immediate meat inside super moist and tender.

When I make barbecue food, I always have a pot of ham hock stock working. It goes with everything from the ribs to the collard greens. I use it here in the barbecue sauce which is essentially a spiced and reduced ham hock stock. First I toast the spices (same as the rub) with butter, add ketchup, mustard, worcestershire, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, and jalapenoes. Then I cook that for about 10 minutes before adding the stock and reducing. The resulting sauce is pretty loose, but extremely porky. Oh yeah, I also add a bit of fish sauce like I do to everything.

SCRAMBLED EGG SANDWICH
on hong kong style white bread

My friend’s family owns a very famous cafe in Hong Kong called the Australia Dairy Company. I saw pictures of the famous egg sandwich and was thoroughly unimpressed. How can scrambled eggs pressed between two slices of bread be so good? But the massive following proved that this sandwich was something special. So I thought, hey, I know how to cook some pretty good scrambled eggs—let’s give it a try.

First: the eggs. I’ve studied how to cook eggs by reading On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. Basically, the secret to really good scrambled eggs is seasoning them before hand (salt helps the proteins coagulate, so if you season them after they’re done cooking, they will over-coagulate) and cooking them low and slow; constantly moving the eggs with a spatula, creating ribbons, and then turning off the pan while the eggs are still runny and letting them finish by residual heat. It’s not necessary to use butter and cream, but I do cause it yields silkier eggs. I also add a dash of fish sauce and sugar. Not enough so that it’s overwhelmingly fishy or sweet, but those two secret components really enhance that eggyness. If everything is done right, the result will be the best scrambled eggs you’ve ever had—trust me.

Second: the bread. Wonderbread certainly wouldn’t do. You could easily crush it into the size of a golf ball with little effort, meaning the bread is not very dense at all. I figured the smartest thing to do was to buy white bread from a Hong Kong-style bakery. It’s almost twice as expensive as its cheap American cousin, but it holds its shape, it’s noticeably more flavorful, and it doesn’t get soggy easily.

Once I combined these two simple ingredients, I finally understood. It was some crazy David Blaine shit going on in my mouth. I might not ever have the opportunity to try the official sandwich from the Australia Dairy Company, but I do now appreciate their sandwich.

POTATO LINGUINE
buttered fingerlings - crispy fried garlic - parsley

My new favorite pasta combination. It sounds overly starchy on paper, but something about it works very well.

HOME-MADE CHICHARONES
pimenton - vinegar

Chicharones at home is easy. Remove the skin from the belly, leaving about 1/4 inch of fat. Put your pork skins into a non-stick pan and season with salt and a touch of vinegar to taste. Do not crowd the pan or else the skins will stick to each other later on in the cooking process. Add water just to cover, then add twice that amount of water (this is just a method of measurement to make you have enough water). Boil the skin until all water has evaporated and then turn the heat to low. At this point, the excess fat from the skin should have rendered out enough to cover the skins. If this is not the case, add a neutral oil so that the skins are submerged. Keep the heat on low and continue to render until the skin becomes crispy. Toss with additional salt if needed and your choice of seasoning (I like pimenton because it gives it a smokey characteristic). Drain on paper towels to cool.

LOBSTER DU MONDE
lobster coffee - spiced beignet - old bay powder

A nod to the famous coffee shop in New Orleans, Cafe du Monde. They’re famous for their chicory coffee and freshly fried beignets mounted with a shit ton of powdered sugar.

For our tribute, we toasted the lobster shells a little darker to give it a roasted coffee flavor. It worked surprisingly well. Paired with the beignet, it was amazing. I blew my own mind with this one.

EXOTIC SEA SALTS
served with whole suckling pig

We couldn’t really make the pig look all that sexy, given that it was whole, head-on, with it’s tongue dried-up and hanging out, so we focus our presentation on the salt plate. This is only half of the salt we offered; there were 6 total.

Salts : citron, lime, chili-plum, habanero, lava salt, maldon, filipino pink salt

WHOLE ROASTED SUCKLING PIG
with exotic sea salts

Okay…so what’s pictured is really just half a pig, but we had two separate groups we were preparing the pig for and each half was perfect for about 10, which was exactly the size of each group.

ULTIMATE STEAK PLATTER
foie gras - fingerling potatoes - smoked salt

Dry-aged beef. Butter. Foie gras. Potatoes. Tomatoes. Smoked Sea Salt. All my favorite pairings with steak on one platter.

TOMATO & CITRUS SALAD
microgreens - iceberg lettuce - citronette

POUND CAKE
with lemon zest

HOME-MADE RAMEN NOODLES
shio broth - braised pork cheeks - medium cooked egg

Ramen noodles are a very long and involving process. Unlike Italian pasta, the raw dough is extremely brittle and difficult to work with, but once you get passed the mental daunter, you’ll be rewarded with a unique elasticity and bounciness not found in other noodles.

Classical French cooking tells us never to boil stock. Ramen broth shits all over this notion. To make a good ramen broth, fatty, tendonous bones are boiled for about 12 hours. The fat gets emulsified with the water, the broth gets cloudy; that’s okay—you want that. The result is a rich, creamy, and intensely flavored soup that kills the classic American chicken noodle any day.

OYSTER PO’ BOY WITH HELL & HIGH WATERMELON BEER
shaved baby fennel - shrimp buttered brioche - compressed watermelon with lime salt

I’m in love with the Hell & High Watermelon beef from SF brewery 21st Amendment.

LOBSTER & DRAGON FRUIT SALAD
avocado puree - mangoes - sea salt

Changed the plating on this dish.

24-HOUR BEEF NAVEL & TOMATOES
arugula puree - peeled tomatoes - licorice jus