This is not a tasting menu. It’s a four-course menu with choices for all but the first course.
Great playlist. I wonder if the aprons were inspired by Burdell?
Everything in the first course was good but I would have happily made a meal of the chickpeas and a stack of roti (“buss up shut”). Mango pickles were great. Candied? plantain and pepper jelly with butter were very good. Crunchy, chewy fried yucca squares were great, like a cross between pão de queijo and mochi.
Mushroom picadillo was great but the green banana pastel was kind of bland for me.
Couldn’t figure out where the salt cod was in this dish, I guess it was the crunchy bits on the plantain but I didn’t taste it. Or maybe it was the seasoning in the egg. I liked the dish.
I don’t think we made the best choices for the second courses, they were a little similar in texture and didn’t have the wow factor some of the others did.
The goat, rice, and beans were great, felt extremely traditional. Sweet potato braised in pineapple was also great. The black bass was kind of boring by comparison.
The Blauer Wildbacher was my favorite of the wines, served chilled, went great with the goat. New grape to me. The somm said it’s maybe the only red version, mostly the grape is used for Schilcher rosés. With the mains there was also a 2013 Roagna Barolo, mellow and lovely but not as good a match for the goat.
Coconut sorbet? (“frozen treat of the day”) was fabulous. The guy at the next table got his in a fresh coconut but they ran out (we had 10:00 reservations and were the last party seated).
Excellent flan, nice bitter caramel.
This was so dry it didn’t really go with the desserts (would have been great with cheese, or a pork chop) but amazing stuff, basically the best Marsala made though it breaks some of the DOC rules so can’t be labeled as such. Lovely note to finish on. I wish I’d taken notes on the wines, there were a lot of interesting and special things. They inherited Ko’s cellar so have thousands of bottles to play around with.
It makes sense to me as the #1 choice for the NY Times’ top 100 as a corrective to the Michelin mentality.
