Honkman

I couldn't care less if the look is the same, food is about the taste and texture and as long as it can't be replicated 3D-printing is just another way for industry to sell people fake/fast/processed food instead of "real" food

Because you often aren't getting dishes that are well rounded, and you don't get the same nuanced harmonies when everything is a bite and a half. I don't hate them, but there is a lot to question about how and what they really display about the food. Of course, a bigger problem is that they are a main component of the shift in fine dining away from the enjoyment of your friends and family accompanied by excellent food toward the wow factor presented by a prima donna chef while you are accompanied by your iPhone or table tripod. Wine pairings are even worse, with all of that "service" who has time to enjoy their fellow diners. I don't know what tasting menus you have but mine normally last 3-6 hours and there is plenty of time to enjoy fellow diners. In addition, the food is often much more creative than your regular menu and it si nice to try food from great chefs without any limits for their creativity. Many chefs mentioned that they highly enjoy these types of "true" tasting menus (everything off-menu etc) which pretty much give them a carte blanche and all creative freedom.

Rutabaga is really nice in stews with pork belly. You could add also some raisins towards the end to have nice balance between the earthiness if the rutabaga and the sweetness of the raisins

Who ?

I would avoid 9-10 (too many disappintments) and go to George's if you want to stay in La Jolla. If you want to stay in Solana Beach Solace might be a good choice. If you are willing to drive about 20-25 minutes I would drive to North Park where you have a lot of good choices like Urban Solace, Smoking Goat, El Take It Easy, Jayne's Gastropub (all have different culinary strength just look at the online menus).

Some people think that Bittman hasn't really read the original article http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2013/02/28/no-its-not-the-sugar-bittman-and-motherjones-have-overinterpreted-another-study/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ScienceblogsChannelMedicineHealth+(ScienceBlogs+Channel+%3A+Medicine+%26+Health)

I am always surprised that people talk about using flash in restaurants. We go all the times to different types of restaurants and take pictures of our food and see other people doing the same and i can't remember when we saw the last time anybody using the flash in a restaurant. I don't think that this is an issue anymore.

It's even more inappropriate in a fine dining restaurant, because they're one of the very last places where some sort of vestigial decorum is expected to hold. I don't care if someone rarely has the chance to attend fine dining; having to see him photographing every item makes the whole thing declasse for other diners like having to watch him licked the jus from his knife with relish, just to make sure that he was extracting every last atom of value from the precious experience. Meh. it's my food. If I want to commission an artist to paint a portrait of it for me, what's the big deal? Do it at home. At a restaurant, 'Meh. it's my food' doesn't hold, unless you're so utterly self-absorbed that you think that your table constitutes a perfectly sealed little bubble of reality, within which you have a divinely-granted right to do as you please: to photograph, answer calls, speak as loudly as you will, or whatever. As long as I don't use flash other tables will most of the time don't even recognize that I photograph my food. I simply like to to document what I eat (and I do the same at home) so I don't see what the problem is if I do it discretely in any restaurant. I don't think that taking a photo of my food discretely (which is the key word) will diminish your restaurant experience.

Grass fed beef (without grain finish) will give you a much stronger natural beef flavor whereas grain fed has a much more buttery flavor.

This is what I mean by non-problem. Sous-vide did not make this possible since braising and slow-cooking had already been available techniques for millennia. But sous-vide produces a completely different product than braising so I don't see why it is addressing a non-problem. It is just another (not a better or worse) solution for a problem. By your argument once you have one solution to any problem it is not worth looking for any other options

I don't really see what is wrong with organic - the environmental impact of current, conventional agriculture is huge so supporting ways to lessen this impact even in restaurant setting is very positive. If you think organic is only for advertisment you might want to read some articles or books from Nestle, Pollan etc. Same with grassfed beef - are you aware that cows can't digest corn and that the corn-based diet is very painful for them (and often requires medication) ? Grassfed beef not only taste better (beef vs "buttery") but is also a statement against animal cruelty. I prefer that restaurants include their sources of produce, meat etc. so I know who I support with my money. Eating (at home or at the restaurant) should be more than eating the actual food - it is not always possible to make the perfect choices but such "labeling" helps.

No I don't. But I wouldn't pour scorn on anyone who did - it is personal choice - there is no right or wrong. A lot of people in the UK don't like their meat pink - especially after the BSE issues. Unless you are eating ground steak, a lot of burgers in the UK contain offal meat. Only this week we had a chef ordered to remove undercooked meat from his menu http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/nov/13/raymond-blanc-lambs-liver-food-poisoning It's of course a personal choice but a burger well done tends to taste very much like a McD one - like sawdust. Do you have a link to any articles that show that burgers in restaurants in UK contain offal meat ? The link you provided is about a liver dish but has little to do with burgers

Just read your list and I hope you are not serious about "pink in the middle" burgers - why would anybody eat a burger which is cooked beyond medium/medium rare ? Do you eat your steak also well done ?

San Diego is very spread out, so will you have a car and where are you staying ?

Interesting - there is a long discussion on Chowhound about how much Brooklyn Girl has gone bad after the recent change of exec chef. Many which liked them before a lot seemed to stop going there.

Full review and photos: http://twofoodiesonejourney.blogspot.com/2012/10/delicias-san-diego-9-course-tasting.html There is hardly any part of daily life which hasn’t been deeply affected and changed by the internet over the last two decades. Starting from how we purchase nearly every kind of goods, how we keep up to date with news, how we gather information or how we communicate with each other. It is amusing and also sad at the same time to see how many people you see today in restaurants who instead of talking to each other are more occupied to stare on their smart phones and communicate through social networks with each other and the world. Suddenly everybody, even people you have never met in your life before, are “friends” and the importance of anything is measured in how much everybody “likes”. All those social networks from the established to the new ones have/had very little appeal for us as they seem to be more advertisement platforms or trying to extract every detail of your life even without any permission but there is one exception – Twitter. While Twitter is far from something we would truly call communication with its 140 character limitations and often pointless “discussions” it has one major attraction for us as foodies – the possibility of “direct” interaction with chefs. There are many ways to contact a restaurant through their web page or Facebook page but these possibilities normally only give you access to the FOH. Any time you wanted to discuss dishes or menus with any chef there was hardly any other way than going straight into the kitchen during a dinner. Twitter changed this as many chefs started to use it personally to keep in touch with colleagues and customers and it opened up many new possibilities to interact with them. When we recently had unexpectedly some reasons for a celebration we considered a few possible restaurants as good places for an extensive dinner or preferably a multi-course tasting menu. But when we went over our lists we remembered that one of our best dinners we had last year was an outstanding tasting menu at Kitchen 1540 under Chef Paul McCabe. Chef McCabe started to have an impact on the culinary scene in San Diego about ten years ago when he worked as Executive Chef first at Top of the Cove and then Star of the Sea. But he really made a name for himself far beyond San Diego once he started heading the kitchen at Kitchen 1540 and made it to one of the premier dining spots in San Diego. And so it took many by surprise when he suddenly announced end of last year that he would leave Kitchen 1540 for Delicias in Ranch Santa Fe. Delicias was one of these restaurants which exist for many years, 19 in the case of Delicias, but never made a real lasting impact on the dining scene in San Diego. Our single visit some time ago showed good but unremarkable food especially for the relative high prices. Once more details about the move from Chef McCabe surfaced it become more apparent that it was quite lucrative as not only he took over the kitchen but also became partner to owner Owen Perry, at the same time as Alex Campbell, formerly of Bertrand’s at Mr.A, with not only plans to revamp Delicias but also opening additional restaurants over the next years. Through his Twitter account he posted regularly photos of his new dishes and it became obvious that even though Delicias might not have the same customer base as Kitchen 1540 the cooking style of McCabe didn’t change much. Once the renovation of the restaurant and the revamp of the menu were completed recently we felt that now was a good time to try out Delicias. And after just a few tweets with Chef McCabe within several minutes we were able to set up a tasting menu at Delicias on a short notice. 1st Course: Shrimps - White shrimp blanket, spot prawn sashimi, ceviche, eggs and tempura This course was presented as a variation on shrimp ceviche which didn’t do the dish enough justice. In this complex dish we had a number of different shrimp preparations yielding a broad range of textures and flavors - starting from the soft and mild white shrimp blanket to the sweet and tender spot prawn sashimi to the citrusy ceviche with tempura adding some texture. Ceviches can often dominate a dish with their citrus-based sauce but in this dish it was well balanced with some spicy- and saltiness rounding out the flavor profile. A very good start to the tasting menu as the dish helped to awaken the taste buds. 2nd Course: Salad - Compressed vegetables and fruits The trend of having one dish to showcase the abundance of great produce in San Diego also continued with this tasting menu but at the same time it was fascinating to see how different the presentations are between the different chefs or even for Chef McCabe himself compared to his “produce” course during our tasting menu at Kitchen 1540. Whereas at Kitchen 1540 we had a very complex presentation with different dressings and powders here we had the mere opposite – simplicity. Using modern techniques to vacuum seal fruits and vegetables with looser cell structures and high water content helps to intensify the flavors yielding in dishes of stronger tastes of fruits and vegetables like watermelon and cucumber in this course. A great example that modern technique and pure and unadulterated flavors don’t have to be a contradiction. 3rd Course: Corn Agnolotti, poached Maine lobster, chanterelle mushrooms, summer truffles One would expect that a dish which contains lobster, chanterelle mushrooms and summer truffles would center around these special ingredients but even though they were integral for the dish they took a backseat to the most mundane one – corn. Wonderful sweet but not overly saccharine it elevated the agnolotti to light pillows of pasta but also formed the fitting foundation for all other ingredients. 4rd Course: Local White Bass, warm summer bean salad, house pancetta, pistou vinaigrette The White Bass was cooked nicely and very tender and flakey. The bean salad had numerous different types of beans and was a good choice for the mildly flavored fish. But what really brought this dish together was the pistou as it paired well with bean salad as well as the fish and was the overarching theme of the course. 5th Course: Pot Pie - Beef tongue, foie gras, vegetables, puff pastry When we originally set up this tasting menu we agreed on an 8-course menu with Chef McCabe but at the beginning of the night he explained to us that there would be an additional course. For this course McCabe came out of the kitchen to present this dish as the additional free course – a variation on pot pie which included foie gras. Obviously with the current ban on foie gras in California having the rare opportunity to eat this delicacy alone was very exciting but what made the course really stand out was how it was integrated into the dish. The easy way to serve foie gras would have been in a classical presentation au torchon or seared but this pot pie dish was a prime example where the sum is greater than its parts. Using the often underutilized beef tongue as meat for the pie was refreshing as it infused a strong, yet unique, beefy flavor but the foie gras in the sauce elevated the dish to a completely different level. Every bite of the dish included the taste of foie gras but it was balanced enough not to dominate everything but yet the dish wouldn’t have worked without it – simply a brilliant dish and not only a highlight of this tasting menu but one of the best dishes we had in a long time. And it doesn’t happen very often that we talk so much about a dish even days after the tasting menu when we were hoping to have it one more time for dinner at home. 6th Course: Colorado lamb rack, faro, harissa yogurt, compressed onion, cucumber, olive It is always hard to talk about the philosophy of a chef as they often draw their inspiration from many different sources but perhaps this dish is a good example of what we feel is part of Chef McCabe’s philosophy. On one side a rather classical interpretation of a rack of lamb but at the same time supporting the earthy flavors with an ancient, and rarely seen on menus, grain like faro. On the other side using modern techniques to create ingredients and flavors like the compressed onion and cucumber which present an unexpected twist leading to interesting contrasts, might it be, as in this case, by temperature, texture or flavor. 7th Course: Cheese – Coach Farm Triple Cream Goat, Roaring Forties Blue, condiments The cheese course presented two different extremes – a triple cream goat which was very mild but rich and had some light tangy flavors. Whereas the Roaring Forties Blue had a much more pronounced, bolder flavor with nutty undertones. 8th Course: Yuzu curd, miso graham cracker, meringue Yuzu with its distinct taste somewhere between grapefruit and mandarin with some floral notes is a good palate cleanser between the savory courses and the dessert. The miso graham crackers not only added some texture but also interesting umami flavor which reinforced the transition from savory to sweet courses. 9th Course: Chocolate tart, crunchy praline, toasted marshmallow, chocolate sorbet, maldon The tasting menu finished in a classical way with a chocolate based dessert. The chocolate tart had some interesting textural variety by the crunchy praline and toasted marshmallow. Adding some salt flakes helped open up the flavor of the tart. Using chocolate sorbet instead of the ubiquitous chocolate gelato ensured a certain lightness of the course. Perhaps not the most creative and unusual way to end the night but still a satisfying end to a great tasting menu. The outstanding experience we had with the tasting menu at Kitchen 1540 under Chef McCabe and his Twitter pictures of some of his dishes since he started working at Delicias set our expectations quite high. At the same time our first dinner at Delicias more than a year ago was unremarkable and the expected clientele at a restaurant in Rancho Santa Fe might imply that a chef has to hold back his creativity to be successful. In the end our concerns appeared to be unfounded and our experiences with a tasting menu at Delicias were on a very similar level as at Kitchen 1540. The creativity and execution of the dishes clearly showed the style we expected from Chef McCabe and it was interesting to see that some of the courses of the tasting menu were variation of dishes from the regular menu, like the lamb or agnolotti. And even though most of the off-menu courses showed a greater level of creativity the flow between off and on menu dishes throughout the tasting menu was uninterrupted and indicated the impact McCabe had on the quality of the regular menu. As much as bad service can ruin a dinner with great food, good service as we experienced at Delicias can elevate an already great night. And it is often the small details like well paced courses, enough time to enjoy some cocktails without being “forced” to start the tasting menu and attentive but unintrusive service which you see surprisingly seldom even at higher end restaurants that set the tone for great service. If there was perhaps one minor quibble than even though the current dining room feels less stuffy than on our last visit it was surprising to see that they used booths with very high backrests close to the kitchen to separate the dining room from the kitchen instead of creating a dining room with an open kitchen which would bring a much better dynamic and liveliness to the restaurant. It will be interesting to see how Chef McCabe will position Delicias as a restaurant in the near future. He has to find a balance to keep the regular menu interesting but not too unusual to attract his regular customers in Rancho Santa Fe but at the same time also create creative dishes to expand the influence of Delicias beyond being just a neighborhood restaurant. Perhaps he might take a similar approach as Chef Foshee at Georges in La Jolla who has an interesting regular menu to satisfy his regular customers but also more recently started TBL3, a special tasting menu, which gained a lot of attention for his restaurant far beyond San Diego. Using a tasting menu like we experienced with Chef McCabe will be the right step to make Delicias such a destination restaurant.

Some interesting cookbooks coming might be (in the end you have to take a look in the final product before making a final recommendation): - Burma: Rivers of Flavor - Gran Cocina Latina - SPQR - LudoBites

Full review and photos: http://twofoodiesonejourney.blogspot.com/2012/07/wolvesmouth-dinner-san-diego-6-course.html Celebrities are often part of advertisement campaigns as ad agencies tend to believe that people attracted to those celebrities will also decide to buy products used by them. Most of these celebrities often come from the show or music business and only more recently, mainly since the success of the Food Network channel, we have started to see chefs as main characters in some advertisements. Most of these celebrity chefs, like Mario Batali or Bobby Flay, have become such household names even to people who are not really interested in food that their images somehow got detached from cooking itself. Customers recognize them as being involved with cooking but most people will have problems to actually specify in more detail what kind of cuisine and cooking they represent. At the same time in today’s world of increasing importance of a diverse set of social media, ad agencies have recognized that it might have many advantages to do more focused ad campaigns addressing only a selected subset of potential customers. Using this approach also means that the “face” of the product doesn’t have to have such a broad recognition throughout the population but that he/she has to have a connection with the product. Instead of using for example a mainstream music band a more unknown band with a unique music style might be more attractive - or instead of celebrity chefs choosing chefs which are actually cooking and trying to push the boundaries of their cuisine. There is of course a large number of excellent restaurants and chefs in Southern California but to stand out nowadays it is necessary to have a very unique, creative cooking style but also noticeable business model beyond your “standard” restaurant. Over the last few years three chefs have shown for us this distinction – Ludo Lefebvre with his pop-up restaurant LudoBites, Laurent Quenioux with the different incarnation of Bistro LQ and Craig Thornton (also known as Wolvesmouth) with his Underground Dinner Series. Born in Orange County Craig Thornton started going into the cooking business by working and learning from Thomas McLaughlin at Serratto in Portland/Oregon. He subsequently went to cooking school at Western Culinary and started to work at some restaurants including Bouchon in Las Vegas and as private chef for Nicolas Cage. Over the years he more and more realized that the conventional way of serving dinners in a restaurant setting isn’t the best way to fully explore his creative visions and so over time he developed his own Underground Dinner Series at his own loft in LA also known as Wolvesden. These turn out to be more or less very exclusive dinner parties for 12 people each time and are some of the most sought-after reservations. Craig is doing most of the shopping, prepping, and cooking by himself with some help from friends and since the first time we have seen descriptions and pictures of one of his tasting menus we were more than interested to participate in one of those nights. A few weeks ago we were contacted by David Brigandi from Edelman that Chef Thornton teamed up with a well known beer brand (“most interesting man in the world” – Dos Equis) and that they were planning to have a few private dinners with a six course tasting menu in San Diego reminiscent of the Underground Dinners during Comic-Con and if we would be interested to join. It didn’t take much contemplating and we immediately accepted the invitation. The dinner took place at a penthouse in Little Italy close to State Street. Once you entered the building you were greeted and escorted to the private elevator for the penthouse. The elevator opened up to one long room which had two large tables in the center. Before the dinner started the about 30 guests had the chance to mingle and have some small talk with a sitar player providing relaxing background music. Not surprisingly the penthouse had floor to ceiling windows and even though it was already late night just seeing the myriads of lights from downtown to Little Italy to Point Loma gave you already a good idea about the fantastic view one would have during the day. The kitchen was unexpected meagerly equipped for such a large dinner and Craig mentioned when we talked before the dinner that he had to improvise and that this kitchen wasn’t by far on the same level as he is used to in his Wolvesden. Two pieces he brought with him was an immersion circulator and a deep fryer. Outside on the patio was also a grill which would play a role in our first course. 1st Course: Ribeye cap, grilled spring onion, pimento cheese, fritter, sweet 100, arugula Normally tasting menu start slowly with some light first courses but Craig decided to go full steam ahead already with his first course. Ribeye cap is perhaps one of the most overlooked cuts of beef in a restaurant setting. Also known as “butchers butter” it combines the best of both worlds by having the great flavor of a ribeye and the tenderness of a filet. In this dish it was even elevated more by being expertly finished on the grill to give it the right amount of smoky flavor – clearly discernable but not overwhelming the natural beef flavor. The homemade pimento cheese was a fitting companion with its slight heat and creaminess. Pimento cheese is often paired with grits which here took the form of some fritters. The sweet 100 completed the dish with their bursts of sweetness. Overall a really great start to the tasting menu. 2nd Course: Corn soup, crab, agretti, buttermilk, jalapeno, corn Summer time is also peak time for some of our favorite produce, like corn. Now is the time when fresh corn has this characteristic sweetness and freshness you can’t get from frozen or canned versions. Craig with his market driven cooking approach not surprisingly decided to showcase corn in one of his dishes. Smooth corn soup with some subtle tartness from the buttermilk was the foundation for this chowder-like dish. The crab pieces were a natural addition to it and the corn kernels added some texture to the dish. The inclusion of agretti was interesting and the first time that we tasted this well-sought after Italian vegetable with its acidity. 3rd Course: Halibut, gnocchi, squash, zucchini, zucchini blossom, tomato, pesto ricotta This was an Italian inspired dish with the different components well executed in itself and pure, unadulterated flavors – moist, flaky fish, lightly grilled vegetables, sweet tomatoes, Roman-style gnocchi with the earthiness from the semolina. What brought this dish together was the pesto. The saltiness and vibrant freshness of the pesto paired well with every single other component on the plate and so you dipped everything into the pesto before you ate it. At the same time the pesto was balanced enough that it didn’t overwhelm the other flavors but just amplified them - one of the highlights of the night. 4th Course: Romano beans, yellow French beans, haricots verts, peach, potato, beet, pistachio, coffee soil, nectarine, saba, lemon oil, horseradish It’s a good trend to see more and more chefs not shying away from focusing on produce alone as key driver for a creative dish and ignoring meats altogether, and Craig is no exception. Here we had a selection of different types of beans with different textures and flavors accompanied by peaches, potatoes and beets to broaden the flavor spectrum. The pistachios and the ubiquitous “soil” (it seems every upscale place currently uses some homemade soil on their menu) provided some textural balance to the dish. Similar to the pesto in the previous course the horseradish cream tied this plate together. 5th Course: Pork belly, avocado, grilled pineapple, radish, sopes An interesting and successful take on a deconstructed taco – sous-vide pork belly which was so tender that you didn’t need a knife, sopes for the masa flavor of the tortillas and different fillings like pineapple, avocado and radish. The sauce was a surprising mix of pork reduction, burnt tomatoes, ginger, soy sauce and pineapple juice which combined to a very complex taste covering sweet, sour, salty and tart. 6th Course: Tres leches cake, dehydrated strawberries, strawberry pop rocks, green tea-lime cream The tasting menu was completed by a tres leches cake which itself would have been an adequate finish. Dehydrating the strawberries helped to intensify their flavor and sweetness and the green tea-lime cream with its tartness ensured that the dessert didn’t end up overly sweet. There is always some skepticism going to such kind of dinners where you don’t know anybody or if they are even interested in food and facing the possibility of just an advertising event. But reality couldn’t be further from these doubts. The night turned out to be a very relaxing event where people with very different backgrounds, most of them connected through Comic Con, had a chance to experience interesting conversations and unique, creative food. It was interesting to see that such a broad range of personalities, covering screen writers, comic book artists, actors, engineers, former NFL players etc., had no problems to immediately connect. It was also interesting to experience that even though we had many interesting discussions covering movies, books, art and science the conversation always circled back to food once we had a new course in front of us – the unifying power of creative, thought-provoking food. We had the chance to talk to Craig Thornton before the dinner and got some ideas about the logistics to set up the tasting menu in San Diego as he had to transport all the ingredients from his trusted vendors at the Wednesday Farmer’s Market in Santa Monica by refrigerated truck. He also explained that he got no limitations for this dinner in San Diego about what dishes he would cook but at the same time also admitted that some of them might not have the same level of uniqueness as he would normally present at his regular dinners in LA. And this also reflects our impression of the dinner – a successful night with creative and interesting courses covering some unusual flavor combinations but compared to some of the reports and pictures we read and saw about his LA dinners he seemed to hold back a bit and played safer than usual which is not surprising considering the circumstances of the dinner. For us it was more of a teaser to experience his cuisine for a first time and raised our interest even more, and we see this dinner as a prelude to a real Wolvesmouth dinner in the Wolvesden in the future.

So you can't get the extended tasting menu for dinner at Per Se ? It wasn't a problem at French Laundry and they actually prefered itcompared to lunch.

Not very good - if you want Thai food in SD uour best options are Sab-e-lee and Siam Nara, both are decent but not great but still much better than Saffron

We felt that the cocktails couldn't compete with "real" cocktails you would get a good/decent bar but somehow they were OK for the more "playful" evening, and yes they tended to be on the (very) sweet side. Your spot prawn dish with pickled daikon and a very delicate ocean broth sounds very interesting.

Full review and photos: http://twofoodiesonejourney.blogspot.com/2012/06/evolve-cuisine-san-diego-explore-your.html Evolve Cuisine (San Diego) – “Explore your Senses” Tasting Menu Trends in the food world are no different than trends in other parts of life. Some of them evolve over time and become part of the mainstream food world like “farm-to-table”. Today hardly any restaurant doesn’t use some kind of play on the theme of farm-to table to describe their approach towards ingredients and dishes. And even though the concept gets overused by now it also describes a pleasant development of a stronger consciousness of restaurants and customers alike towards a more thoughtful approach regarding sourcing of ingredients. Some other trends get so overhyped that they become more of a stigma than description so that they slowly fade away and only might reappear under a completely different premise as it happened with molecular gastronomy. One of the big buzzwords of the restaurant world in the 90s with pioneers like Ferran Adria, it became more and more a cuss word for restaurants who didn’t understand the original intend but forgot that the quality of the final dish is key to a successful restaurant not the abundant use of new fancy techniques. Over time many of the techniques and tools used during the molecular gastronomy heydays became standard tools of many advanced kitchens like, sous-vide, vacuum sealer, different stabilizers and enzymes and are used today without much reluctance. Chefs using these modern tools understand by now that these are just tools to achieve a better dish and not their main focus. This new attitude was also captured by the seminal work of Nathan Myhrvold and his team who wrote the book which labeled this field – Modernist Cuisine. We have seen quite a few restaurants in San Diego using tools from the modernist cuisine arsenal and incorporating it in very impressive ways, like at Blanca, Georges and Kitchen 1540 by using for example sous-vide, liquid nitrogen or transglutaminase to name a few. But at the same time none of these restaurants strongly advertised their use of these tools as they were just aids to achieve their final dishes. And so it was just a matter of time until the first chef in San Diego would use a more “direct” way to clearly advertise his work as part of the Modernist Cuisine movement – Evolve Cuisine. Evolve Cuisine is the brainchild of Chef Daniel Barron. We first heard about Chef Barron when we read about his work at Anqi in Costa Mesa which is an Asian Fusion restaurant that also offered special molecular gastronomy tasting menus at their chefs table. He got his start into the culinary world through the American Culinary Federation Apprenticeship Program at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Michigan before he worked successfulyl in a number of restaurants in Nashville (Mad Platter), New York (Cesca) and Atlantic City (Donald Trump’s Premier Casino Restaurant). More recently he moved to San Diego to take a position as Executive Chef at Blue Point Costal Cuisine where, similar to Anqi, a special molecular gastronomy tasting menu was offered on request beside the regular standard menu. Finally beginning of this year he decided to be able to create dishes without any restrictions in a conventional restaurant setting and started Evolve Cuisine to focus on the “culinary intersection of modernist cuisine and fresh, organic fare”. Chef Barron is working at Evolve cuisine together with Pastry Chef Jeff Bonilla, who is best known in San Diego for his work with Cups and as Executive Pastry Chef at Kitchen 1540, and Mike Yen, mixologist who worked at Nine-Ten, Avenue 5 and Kitchen 1540. Evolve Cuisine is at this point not planned as a restaurant but as a catering service which uses the currently highly popular pop-up concept to promote its ideas, dishes and philosophy. The most recent incarnation of the Evolve pop-up was focused on “exploring the senses” with a 7-course tasting menu at Fixtures Living. Fixtures Living is during the day an interesting place to buy furniture for kitchen, bath and outdoor but not the first place you think about for a pop-up restaurant. As it turns out the space is very well suited for such an event with its few communal tables, several small booths and bar. It’s a beautiful open space which allowed a lot of interaction between the guests. The open kitchen gave everybody the chance to see the chef and his team preparing and plating the different courses. Amuse Bouche 1: Duck confit ravioli The night started with a reception and three amuse bouches prepared by the three cooks helping Chef Barron throughout the night. The first one was a deep-fried ravioli filled with duck confit. The ample duck confit had a good but delicate flavor which was easily overshadowed by the fried pasta dough. The amuse bouche would have been more successful if the pasta wouldn’t have been deep-fried to let the duck confit shine. So the dish had mainly the ubiquitous flavor of deep fried food. Amuse Bouche 2: Smoked duck breast If there is one kind of utensil which symbolizes best what went wrong with molecular gastronomy it is any kind of syringe – unwieldy, awkward to use in a restaurant setting, doesn’t add anything to any dish and should simply be forbidden to be used by any chef. This amuse bouche proved the point as the idea of combining smoked duck breast, bing cherries and coconut milk was interesting but the execution lacked and it was hard to get a good taste of all the components. Amuse Bouche 3: Seared Yellowfin tuna For us clearly the most successful amuse bouche of the night – Conceptually a simple dish with some seared tuna and a yuzu based aioli but the flavors of the fish and the aioli nicely came together to form a very tasty bite which we would have liked to have as a larger portion. Cocktail 1: Tequila shooter Mike Yen also prepared two excellent small cocktails to go with the amuse-bouches during the reception. The tequila shooter resembled visually a hefeweizen beer but also the flavors reminded us of this class of beers with its slight fruitiness and subdued tartness. Cocktail 2: Cranberry-lime Cosmopolitan The Cosmopolitan was slightly on the sweet side but nicely balanced by the encapsulated cranberry and lime juice. A good play on this classical cocktail and we couldn’t resist to ask for seconds. 1st Course: Smell – Crab consommé, sweet pea, truffle For this dish we were instructed to pour the broth over the peas and pea shots and stir everything. By this, one created a kind of chowder with a wonderful mix of truffle and crab aroma. The flavor of the liquid resembled the heady aroma with a very delectable taste of the crustaceans which was never overwhelmed by the truffle flavor. The balance between both flavors was impressive. The peas delivered a welcomed textural counterpoint and made this dish to one of the highlights of the tasting menu. 2nd Course: Sight – Sculpin, honeysuckle, red chile Sculpins, also known as scorpion fish, are very unusual looking creatures and even though we weren’t served a whole one this dish was a good example for mildly flavor fish. This piece of fish was lightly coated but the crust didn’t interfere with the flavor of the sculpin. Both sauces, one of them characterized from Chef Barron as an Asian-inspired pesto, accompanying the fish had some Asian influences and the red chile added some heat to the dish. The dish would have benefited from another component, like a vegetable, otherwise it was too protein heavy and felt one-dimensional. 3rd Course: Sound – Lavender, pork jowl, mustard Some grassfed beef, smoked, sous-vided and then seared, was the foundation of the dish. It was combined with pork jowl, starting point of guanciale, mustard green and a lavender based vinaigrette to yield an impressive salad which only had the “mistake” of being too small. The pop rock made from mustard were a nice gimmick but didn’t add much to the dish. 4th Course: Touch – Chicken liver, ahi, pumpernickel, peach With the controversy around foie gras in California and a few protesters somewhere outside Chef Barron decided to rename all foie gras into “chicken liver” for the evening. Here the foie gras was incorporated into a panna cotta which still had the characteristic taste of the foie gras but at the same time made it particular light. Pairing foie gras with ahi is quite unusual but due to the lightness of the foie gras panna cotta this combination worked really well as the foie gras didn’t overwhelm the fish. The pieces of peach brought some burst of fruitiness and sweetness and completed the dish. Cocktail Intermezzo: Acid rain Mixologist Mike Yen introduced another one of his creations midway through the tasting menu. In addition to having a nice flavor profile with strong notes on lemongrass and some sweetness from the pink cotton candy rose which slowly dissolved in the cocktail the visual aspect of the cocktail was also entertaining – once you poured the cocktail over the small rocks in the glass you created some “fog” from the dry ice. 5th Course: Taste – Beef cheek, uni, fava beans This course showed again the advantages of sous-vide cooking. Instead of braising the beef cheeks which would result in tender meat with a more fibrous texture cooking it sous-vide gave an equally tender meat but with a much more satisfying texture resembling a steak. The beef checks were paired nicely with some grits made out of hominy and pumpernickel and a sauce created from uni and eel as two main components -a strong dish and one of the highlights of the night. 6th Course: Sensory overload – Duck confit, spot prawn, blackberry, horseradish Chef Barron described this dish as using every part of the duck – the spot prawn was filled with duck confit accompanied by some seared foie gras, dried duck sausage and a blackberry sauce. Even though the different components were executed well this dish also showed what happens if you are using too many techniques just for the sake of it. The dried duck sausage didn’t add anything to the flavor and had a distracting texture but would have been much more enjoyable if it wouldn’t have been unnecessarily dried. This dish also was again too protein-heavy and felt unbalanced, some non-protein components would have helped the dish. 7th Course: Dessert – Watermelon, prosciutto, basil, love & break dancing Pastry Chef Bonilla mentioned that he wanted to capture different parts of summer and the dish indeed included variations on ingredients which are associated with summer and its grilling season – grilled corncake, candy prosciutto, caramelized goat cheese, lemon air and watermelon semifreddo. All components of this dessert came nicely together and created a great finale of the tasting menu. Especially the watermelon semifreddo was exceptional and so it was no surprise that an extra portion of it was successfully requested at our table. We went to this tasting menu from Evolve Cuisine with little expectations and were even a little bit skeptical if we would witness an evening where technique trumps flavor and creativity. But we came away quite impressed from this night and enjoyed the whole experience a lot. Starting from the location with its communal tables which created a nice setting for interesting conversations to the professional but yet pleasant service to the good pacing of the menu. But most importantly the food presented throughout the night turned out to be creative, well executed and used all kinds of techniques just trying to achieve the best flavors for any dish. It was good to see another new chef in San Diego who could bring new creativity and culinary momentum to this city which recently lost some of its best chefs. If there could have been perhaps one improvement to this tasting menu it would be that Chef Barron tended to cook quite protein-focused but those dishes which had more vegetables and other components, like the consommé, mustard green salad and beef cheeks, were the highlights of the night and hopefully he can extend this to all of his dishes. Evolve Cuisine positions itself as focusing on modernist cuisine and even though they use, like many other chefs, modern techniques advertising themselves in this direction might limit their customer base. Buzzwords like modernist cuisine might attract a few foodies but still discourage many other potential guests and it also doesn’t do dishes of Evolve Cuisine justice enough. They should instead describe themselves as what they are – a team of very talented chefs focusing on developing creative, well executed dishes exploring new flavor combinations. Even though Evolve Cuisine won’t have any pop-up events until fall we are already looking forward to visit them again in the future and take part in their culinary journey.

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avaserfi - great looking dish as always but I am curious about the plate you were using for the dish. Do you have a photo of the plate and where did you buy it ? It might look like one I am trying to find for some time

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