MisterMax

We had very nice father's day brunch yesterday at Tango in the building that used to be part of the Bryn Mawr station. Yang Ming is good too, though pretty far from the food in China.

Last Thursday, my wife and I went for the Kaiseki and were very happy. Lots of photos, which I find difficult to post here and liable to lead to some posting problem, but let's see: First Course, cold appetizer: tuna tartare topped with a thin layer of creme freche and caviar. Surrounded by fish broth and decorated with a shiso leaf. An excellent start. We would have preferred beluga caviar - this one, which the waitress said was smoked sturgeon caviar, was pretty salty. Second Course, hot soup: We were served a pair of cute little teapots nicely capped with tea saucers - but our waitress explained that it was a seafood soup, with scallops, shrimp, and mushroom. The soup itself was probably the outstanding flavor of the meal. Gorgeous, intense flavor - maybe the best consomme ever. Third course, cold seafood: Kumamoto oysters with ponzu sauce. Excellent fresh briny flavor. Loved the ponzu sauce as a chaser. Fourth course, sashimi - in three pictures: red tuna, seabream, salmon, white tuna, halibut, yellowtail, with two fancy maki. All of them were very good to excellent, but we found the yellowtail lacking. (see next three photos) Closeup of the maki that were part of the fourth, sashimi course. Fifth, warm seafood course: Softshell crab deep fried in red panko crust. Lovely juicy crab contrasted with the panko and stalks of pickled ginger. (But not what I would call ginger. What are they?) Sixth, the first meat course: eggplant stuffed with duck slices, with foie gras on top, and again the red ginger stalks. Silky, not mushy, with excellent taste and texture. The foie wasn't oozy melting, but the sauce was fine. I was surprised to be served the red ginger stalks again, but I liked them so much and they were so unusual I wasn't at all unhappy. Seventh course, second meat course: lamb chops with black rice and a sprig of broccoli. The least interesting dish of the meal, based as it was on something we can make at home. The rice looked like black beans, but tasted wonderful, glutinous like quay tow noodles, my wife's favorite. Sorry about the out of focus photo. I took another, but it was worse. Eighth course, dessert: Panko crusted pastry shells with vanilla ice cream, and fresh berries with whipped cream. A glorious ending, though we would have preferred a more Japanese ending - perhaps matcha ice cream or matcha sauce. The other plate with both our desserts: Fresh, good fruit with whipped cream. It worked! Both the posting and the dinner were fine. We enjoyed it and we'll be back.

There's now a sign on the door in Narberth giving the above address in Bryn Mawr and an opening date of Jan 16th. There's another sign saying that Margot Byob is opened Saturday at Carmine's former address in Narberth: www.margotbyob.com. - Max

We made the souffle for our New Year's Eve celebration. It did take 10 hours - or more. My wife made the souffle; I did the lobster and the sauce. Steingarten's recipe isn't clearly written, taking several rereadings to understand. It has some errors, like calling for tomatoes that aren't used, and some fussiness, like forbidding you from cutting the lobster tails in one step and then telling you to cut them a few steps later. My wife is an experienced souffle maker; she says Steingarten isn't detailed enough for a novice. The recipe had me killing and dismembering the lobsters with a knife, rather than with heat, which is an experience. An anatomy lesson from the dissection of a still-twitching being. Did you know that the coral (roe) is a bright cooked-spinach green before cooking turns it a bright coral color? Or what uncooked tomalley looks like? Next time I'll use a cleaver and hand-protection; my palms got several cuts from the rough shell. Will there be a next time? I think so; it would go much faster and I would correct my mistakes and Steingarten's too. Now I know that steaming the lobster for 10 minutes is quite enough; the tail doesn't toughen nearly as much. And we know that 20 minutes cooking the souffle would have been plenty. And that I probably should not have diluted the lobster jus with chicken broth. Was the lobster souffle any good? Yes yes yes! - Max