Restaurant: Vespertine [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Location: 3599 Hayden Ave, Culver City, CA 90232. (323) 320-4023
Date: April 19, 2024
Cuisine: Jordan merges back in Meteora ideas
Rating: Expensive, but flavors are better than old Vespertine
Vespertine is a very unusual confluence of all sorts of artsy weirdness. It’s helmed by Jordan Kahn formerly of Red Medicine and currently of Destroyer across the street. I’ve generally been fond of Jordan’s unique culinary style. Post-pandemic he opened Meteora and has now (finally) reopened Vespertine proper.
Above is the building where the restaurant is located
After a lengthy 4+ year “break” Vespertine is back as Vespertine 2.0. The first floor looks about the same.
A slightly sweet Birch water. Very mild.
Supplements.
The menu.
We went for the rather excellent expensive wine pairing because the BYOB policy is pretty bad — one bottle.
Wild Scallop. Passionfruit, aji amarillo. Very strong high acid sour passionfruit cut through the richness of the scallop nicely.
Spring. Peas, wild onion. The description doesn’t quite reveal even a fraction of the contents, taste, or texture of this flower garden. I think some kind of almond cream stuck it to the bowl.
Deep Ocean. Sweet prawn, quince. Very bright intriguing “broth” taste. Hard to place.
Obsidian Mirror. Smoked mussel, plum. Very soft moussy texture and great flavors. Sweet and briney.
The Deep Seven. Ula’ula koae, red papaya. Some kind of ultrarare deep sea fish.
Coturnix Quail. Heather, sacred pepper. The first of several quail dishes, this was super succulent with the rich “beurre blanc – esque” sauce.
Quail Liver. Pickled forest leaves. A quail dolmade? Very smokey.
Porridge Bread. Heirloom peel corn oats. The fried bread was used to wipe up the liver spread (and flowers).
Fried bread.
Cody, the Somm at this other table.
Aged Dairy Calf. Yeast fudge, magnolia. Succulent, rare, veal. Almost felt like cubes of med rare pork chop.
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Red Earth. Pumpkin, strawberry. Super smokey baked/roasted yam. Very very Jordan dish.
After the savory we moved back downstairs for dessert.
Jordan said this was Rasmus Munk — if so he gained A LOT of wait.
The tea menu.
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Temple Mist. Light green tea.
Lamb Fat Pancake. Caramelized maple, woodruff. A sort of fatty beneit / fat glazed donut with a maple cream. Pretty delicious, if slightly oddly meaty.
Special dessert of Uni, old PX, and some other stuff. Oddly, this totally worked.
Icy Birch. Milk jam, tiger nut. Very Jordan. Super cool and mild. Almost like plain ice.
Layers. Black raspberry, tonka bean. This was an amazing dessert. Nice texture with crunch, softness, and chew. But super delicious. I ate half of Erick’s too, despite the sugar.
cherimoya. Very interesting complex fruit flavors, the usual odd texture.
Amazing meal — but eek! Overall the food was some of the best Jordan has ever done. It was less sweet and cloying, totally weird and unique, but consistently delicious. Quantity of savory was a bit low. Service was excellent, especially Cody’s wine service. His high end wine tasting is a fabulous pairing over very nice wines — and this is tough food to pair. There was a somewhat anoying 1:15 stall between the last savory and the desserts. I was getting pretty antsy.
And we weren’t even that full so we stopped at a taco shake for some authentic $2 street tacos! At the opposite price point.
Seething meats all set for the chopping.
Chop, chop!
El Pastor.
Micro tortillas.
Basic street tacos. El pastor, chorizo, and brisket.