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Archive for Jordan Kahn

Return of the Khan — Meteora

Jul25

Restaurant: Meteora

Location: 6703 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038. (323) 402-4311

Date: July 21, 2022

Cuisine: Primal Elfin

Rating: Late Red Medicine reborn

_

 

Meteora is the latest restaurant by Jordan Kahn. I’ve been following him for years, from Old Red Medicine, to Late Red Medicine, to Vespertine (on site), to Vespertine (at home), to Destroyer. He’s one “out of the box” chef for sure! Meteora is a new high end ala carte concept. it’s currently in soft opening, but as a “regular” customers (who ordered a bunch of takeout from Vespertine) Erick and I got invites.

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It’s located in the old Auburn space (which was a great restaurant, BTW, and I was sad to see it close). I’ve actually eaten in at least 6 restaurants in this space: Citrus, Alex, something else, Hatfields, Auburn, and now Meteora. It’s a gorgeous space but must be somewhat cursed (probably too large).

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Jordan clearly has a substantial investor pipeline because the build out is not only so “him” but is quite extensive. Really, the bones of the Auburn space are largely unchanged but they have grafted on a ton of primal, forested, elfin, Michael and Roger Dean details. It’s very dark, and really weird ambient music blares. It’s also scented like a forest. You just have to experience it.

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The bar area and its whacky decor. It’s darker and moodier than these photos make it look, I brightened them up so things were visible.

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The bar is like a weird Sleestak cave. Or something designed by Catalan genius Antoni Gaudí.
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The cocktail tables, like most everything, are totally form over function. They are tiny, made of rock, and not even level. Barely usable at all!
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The cocktail menu. Weird stuff. There is barely any wine yet. We brought ours. They do allow corkage fortunately, although it’s not cheap.
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Pressed melon juice, anise hyssop, melon seed milk, aged grape liqueur, bee pollen-agave spirit.
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Freshly-pressed sugar cane juice, lemongrass, jicama, ginger, biodynamic lime, wild corn and cane spirit.
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Ancient purple corn, pressed plum juice, apricot seed, avocado leaf, opuntia, aged corn spirit.1A4A1685-Pano
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The main dining room is just as weird as the bar — only larger. The open kitchen from Auburn is still there, only mostly blocked off. This space is huge. You can see how they have scaffolded the Alien Forest Gaudí details over the old Auburn interior.

It should be noted that the lighting in here is extremely minimal, and Jordan doesn’t like flashes, so photography was VERY difficult.
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Welcome cocktail of “kombucha”.
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From my cellar: NV Billecart-Salmon Champagne Brut Sous Bois. VM 92. Bright yellow. Pungent orchard fruit and lemon curd scents are complemented by suggestions of vanilla, anise and smoky minerals. Toasty and silky in texture, offering juicy pear and tangerine flavors plus a deeper suggestion of candied fig on the back half. Closes sappy, focused and long, with repeating smokiness and strong mineral cut.
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The current menu.
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Live Scallop. Lightly marinated in deep ocean water, dressed with smoked donganiza sausage, crunchy lovage steams, preserved apricots, Indian mallow, and crisps of giant kelp.
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A liquified rendering of sausage was poured over it and then ground sausage sprinkled. The kelp can be seen on the left side. It was way too fragile to actually support placing the mix of scallop et al on top. But the unusual flavor of the scallops was delicious. Very rich with all that sausage fat. This set the pace for various systematic qualities of Meteora cuisine:

  1. concealed ingredients
  2. flowers, leaves and foliage on top
  3. high fat “sauces”
  4. complex and unusual pairings, tending to include sweet, savory, and “herbal”
  5. very varied textures
  6. bright colors mixed with earth tones
  7. awkward methods of eating that don’t allow all the ingredients in the mouth at once
  8. black bowls and awkward flatware

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Bigfin Squid. Quickly grilled and seasoned with wild spruce and bird’s eye chile, with young coconut, ripe cherimoya, crunchy jicama, and a vibrant dressing of macadamia nut milk.

This was certainly a flavorful dish, one of our favorites. The black crisp was almost solid enough to support the squid, although it tended to break into small pieces. The textures were both soft and crunchy and firm. The flavors were spicy and assertive and distinctively southeast asian. There was a coconut acidic tone.  Excellent.
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Avocado Pie. Biodynamic avocados cooked in hot ashes, flaky crust of avocado leaf and einkorn flour, grilled strawberries, caramelized lettuce, herbs and leaves of the moment, finished with spanish peanuts, burnt onion and a warm bone marrow vinaigrette (pure fat again!).
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Here after they basically poured molten bone marrow on top and sprinkled with the peanuts. This giant “tart” fragmented instantly. It did taste great but the failed attempts to get any reasonable percentage of the components into one’s mouth at any one time were a bit frustrating.
riesling
From my cellar: 2012 Prager Riesling Federspiel Steinriegl. 94 points. Screwcap. Slightly off-dry, barely any development. Didn’t have the exotic fruit that I sometimes get from riper vintages in Austria but instead it had lots of tart yellow fruit accompanied by an impressive steely minerality. Liked this a lot, a textbook Riesling. Just a shame this producer is so difficult to source here.

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Caramelized Lobster Rice. heirloom indica brown rice crisped in black claw, grilled lobster glazed with black jaggery and sugar kelp, roasted fruits of the moment, black butter, sea lettuce, and a crisp of roasted brazil nuts and allepo chile.

The rice and lobster were (as usual) hidden under the foliage. This was a powerfully flavored dish — bursting with all sorts of tastes — except that of lobster. It was very good, but mostly tasted of exotic spices. The texture was primarily “wild rice” like. It was pretty spicy and so went well with the riesling.
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Wild Pacific Dungeness Crab. Gently warmed over the embers and dressed with coconut fat infused with roasted crab shells and allspice, cucumber molasses, slow roasted turnips, and slices of heirloom banana.

You can’t see it in the photo but there was actually a lot of crab under the layer of greens. Once mixed up it had lots of crab in butter flavor. The other elements were interesting. I fortunately did not seem to get a bite of banana, which I hate. People thought it an “unusual” pairing. As you can see, this had most of the hallmarks of Meteora dishes.

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Red Sea Bream. Grilled on the skin and wrapped in banana leaf, dried cacao flower, wild iceplant, served with a praline of smoked chiles, hazelnuts, and clove.

The net effect here was grilled fish with an excellent and powerful mole negro (black mole). The sauce was spicy with a hint of chocolate, cinnamon, and clove. This was one of our favorite dishes. It was also quite spicy.

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Wildflower Porridge Bread. Baked in a clay pan and brushed with coastal wildflower honey and aged goat’s milk cheese, served with a condiment of charred heirloom peppers and passionfruit juice, with fresh buffalo milk curds.
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The bread was dense and crispy under the pile of cheese. Much like a cornbread. The white topping was basically a buffalo ricotta. The red one tasted like Muhammara. Fairly nice, if very rich. The combo of the dairy and the “Muhammara” is something I do all the time at Lebanese and Armenian places by putting lebneh and Muhammara on pita together. This variant worked as well.

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Wild Fire Morels. Grilled over smokeless coals, served with swiss chard stuffed with a jam of roasted duck jus, overripe plantain glazed with tamarind, spruce tips, and a griddled flatbread of young coconut and burnt wheat.
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This is the flat bread. It was thick and delicious. I stuck a bit of everything else in there. It was quite good, very meaty, and rather unusual. The spruce was INTENSE. Most chefs do not cook with spruce!

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Erick brought: 2005 Dom Pérignon Champagne Rosé. VM 94. The 2005 Dom Pérignon Rosé is an attractive, persistent wine with plenty of character. Sweet dried cherry, mint and rose petals are some of the many nuances that develop with air. Savory notes that are on the edge of vegetal and a real feeling of tannin from the 27% still red Pinot in the blend give the 2005 a decidedly savory edge. (Drink between 2020-2030)
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Smoked Beef Rib. Rubbed with wild pine resin and gently smoked overnight, served with an array of grilled heirloom cucumbers, green melons, tamarind reduction, and a spicy paste of green peppercorn and coriander.
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In the back here is the ring of odd “condiments” and the fabulous spicy pesto-like green paste. The meat itself was very rich and pastrami like with a great smoked flavor. It worked very well with the spicy paste. The crunchy cucumbers and the like were more “interesting.” Pine resin. haha!

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Tamarind sauce on the left.
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California Lamb. Coated with a paste of roasted cacao and panca chiles then slow-smoked over live oak embers, served with candied green papaya, charred collard leaf, roasted beats, and a sauce of elderberries and aged rum.
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As usual for Jordan the protein was all hidden under some vegetation. There was actually plenty of lamb here (once one broke through). It was a bit well done but had tons of flavor.
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The beets actually tasted fairly “normal.”
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The dessert menu.
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Strawberries. Lightly warmed over the embers, dressed with cherry pit kombucha and virgin almond oil, an ancient almond “cake” wrapped in aromatic fig leaf, whipped buckwheat cream.
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This is the hard crunchy “ancient almond cake”. It was very crumbly, like shortcake, and you took some of the buckwheat cream and sauce and strawberries and made a kind of falling all over the place nordic strawberry shortcake. Very tasty though, even if it adhered to almost all of the “rules” of Meteora cuisine, including it’s inability to stay on the terrible modernist wooden flat flatware.
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Buckwheat cream.
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Cherry pit kombucha.
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Redwood Ice. Ripe California kiwi dressed with green olive oil, sweet cream custard infused with crushed lemongrass, shaved coconut, puree of roasted almond cookies.

This was my favorite and was like a Filipino dessert with Thai and California redwood flavors.
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Sweet Corn. Frozen sweet corn custard, crispy ancient cereals, a caramelized crepe made from almond, coconut, and psyllium husk, roasted pecan butter, wild candycaps, and a light cream of aged rum.

Mild and soothing flavors. A lot of textures going on here. It wasn’t super sweet, more primal and foresty.
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We closed out the place, so I got to take a picture after it was empty.

Meteora will be polarizing for sure. I found it largely successful, at times brilliant. The experience is one-of-a-kind. The dishes are beautiful, unique, and mostly delicious. They are weird and a bit hard to eat, and you certainly wouldn’t want to come here alone — or really with 2 people — it pretty much requires exactly 3-4. I will repeat some of the features of the food:

  1. concealed ingredients
  2. flowers, leaves and foliage on top
  3. high fat “sauces”
  4. complex and unusual pairings, tending to include sweet, savory, and “herbal”
  5. very varied textures
  6. bright colors mixed with earth tones
  7. awkward methods of eating that don’t allow all the ingredients in the mouth at once
  8. black bowls and awkward flatware

And add some odd details about the service experience:

  1. Decor is really cool, but very form over function. For example our mushroom shaped table was very uncomfortable. There was no where to put one’s legs.
  2. It’s so dark that a phone light is absolutely required to read the menu or see the food.
  3. The odd shaped table barely fit one dish.
  4. Odd (but appropriate) ambient music was quite loud. At the same time the servers were instructed to whisper.
  5. The whole restaurant is scented (like a forest)
  6. Staff were all super nice and very excited to be there.
  7. Plates, wine glasses, flatware etc were all gorgeous but marginally functional. The flatware was hyper flat and food fell off it. The wineglasses had no steams, were heavy, not of crystal, and had a hyper annoying turned in lip that made them difficult to actually drink from.
  8. Dietary restrictions seem like they would be impossible to navigate. The dishes have so many ingredients and are so integrated.
  9. Not good for anyone who likes to know exactly what they are eating.
  10. Beverage options for those not bringing wine or loving really exotic cocktails are fairly limited.

For me, as most of this doesn’t bother me too much, this is the best incarnation yet of the “Jordan Khan” style. The food was delicious and had more “protein” than Vespertine. He’s a very talented “chef” (artist?) as is able to push the boundaries of what you expect food to be like while mostly still keeping it delicious. I found Meteora tasted better than Vespertine and was closer in style and spirit to “Late Red Medicine” but more advanced. It’s in this primal forest elfin style that doesn’t really have a clear definition. Hard to explain, but there is a consistency to all the elements food, decor, music, scent, style, and even the hard-to-use flatware.

I hope they change up the menu frequently, which knowing Jordan is likely. If they do it’ll be interesting to keep trying.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

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Related posts:

  1. Return to Paul Wools
  2. Return to Esso
  3. Return to Rocco’s
  4. Yamakase Return
  5. Vespertine does Alinea
By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Foodie Club, Jordan Kahn, Meteora, Wine

Vespertine does Alinea

Dec18

Restaurant: Vespertine [1, 2, 3, 4]

Location: 3599 Hayden Ave, Culver City, CA 90232. (323) 320-4023

Date: November 11, 2020

Cuisine: Jordan gets back to his roots

Rating: Top flight takeout

_

Boy it’s been a long time since I made a food post. Sigh, quarantine life. I still haven’t been in a restaurant since March 11, 2020. Total record for my life as I’m sure that from my birth 4-5 weeks was the record (during summer camp in the early 80s!). Now, that being said I have been cooking up a storm but they aren’t elaborate enough to write up unless I start cooking posts.

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. Since the pandemic started he’s been doing “out of the box” fancy takeout meals, and this one is an Alinea retrospective from Jordan’s time there. As I’ve always wanted to go to Alinea but rarely make it to Chicago, this seemed a perfect opportunity to dabble in that direction from the safety of the patio.


Above is the building where the restaurant is located, but I wasn’t there, Erick picked up the food and we ate elsewhere socially distanced.

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The survey of a two person meal. Because Erick and I are gluttons (and wanted to social distance) we each had a set just like this.1A4A3120
The printed “links” to the virtual menu.
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And the virtual menu.
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Pear. Celery leaf & branch, curry.
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A top down view. This was light with a vague pear finish to the “water.”

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Oyster Cream. Lychee, horseradish, chervil. This could dish had great texture (slippery and soft) and a very nice oyster / horseradish flavor. Refreshing and herbal.
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Duck. Pumpkin, banana, Thai Aromatics. Following the instructions, first you ate the bite to the right which was quite lovely with the Thai bit infused into the pine-nuts. Then we drank the rather lovely pumpkin/banana soup. One of the best pumpkin or squash soups I have had.
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Halibut. Shellfish custard, hyacinth vapor. There were some complicated instructions about boiling water and pouring it into the outer container in order to release the “vapor” components. We didn’t bother with that but the fish (and particularly the thick which custard) were moist and quite lovely.

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Beef. Elements of root beer. The beef itself was pretty good, and the mashed potatoes I think were trying to serve as the cream part of a root beer float. There was this weird root bear tone to the sauce which made it overall too sweet for my taste. One of those whacky ideas that wasn’t entirely successful. Jordan has also been putting too much sweet in his savory in recent years.
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Idiazabal. Maple, smoked salt. This cheese “chip” had the texture of a shrimp chip, which was quite nice. It had a sweet and cheesy flavor and was overall very pleasant.
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Bacon. Butterscotch, apple, thyme. Here in this odd presentation the sweet and savory thing worked perfectly. Lots of interesting smokey depth.
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Black Truffle Explosion. This optional dish require that I actually cook. I had to boil water and cook the pasta and then melt the truffle butter.
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Finally it was topped with truffle, the greens (warmed in the melted butter) and parmesan. The whole thing was eaten in one bite and was a nice bit of truffle/umami exploision.
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Chocolate. Avocado, lime, licorice. The Chocolate and lime parts were great, particularly the fluffy lime mousse. The avocado was fine but I’m not sure how I feel about avocado in desserts.
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Our wine lineup.

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From my cellar: 2007 Domaine / Maison Vincent Girardin Chevalier-Montrachet. VM94+. Bright medium yellow. Very ripe, expressive nose offers yellow peach and white flowers. Opulent, shapely and very ripe, in a distinctly sweeter style than the Batard. Gives an impression of lower acidity too, but there’s plenty of acid here. I suspect this one will shut down in bottle. Girardin, who bottled most of his crus in April and May of this year, noted that the 2007s really only started to express themselves in February, and that many of his fellow producers bottled this vintage too early.
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Erick brought: 2008 Domaine / Maison Vincent Girardin Chevalier-Montrachet. VM94. Reticent but pure aromas of apple, clove and crushed stone. Powerful, tactile and rich, with a sweet impression leavened by a strong crushed stone component. (A retaste of the 2007 Chevalier-Montrachet, which I predicted a year ago would shut down in the bottle, was indeed tightly wound, but its apple and mineral flavors showed outstanding verve and purity; it would be a treat to taste these two vintages side by side in six or seven years.) Incidentally, Girardin gives his grand crus a slow fining but does not filter them.1A4A3194
Erick also brought (open from the night before): 2010 Jean Noel Gagnard Bâtard-Montrachet. BH 94. A discreetly exotic nose combines notes of wood toast, acacia blossom, pear, peach and apricot along with hints of mango and papaya. The powerful and admirably concentrated broad-shouldered flavors possess a very round, suave and succulent texture where all of the dry extract really coats the mouth on the explosively long, complex and driving finish. This should be a knockout in 8 to 10 years.

Overall, we had a great evening. Great company, great wines, and great takeout.

Now in absolute terms the meal was only medium epic by my standards, but it was one of the best “fancy takeouts” I’ve ever had. They really do a great job packaging it and things survived the transit and the considerable length of our leisurely evening quite well. Really, actually bordering on amazing how this elaborate plating “travels” and clearly because of considerable effort on the restaurant’s part, including the very elaborate plastic containers. Yeah, the meal would have been better on premises, but considering, it was about as good as you get. Trying to imagine how it would have been on site, and therefore forgiving temperature issues and the takeout plating (which as I said is at the very pinnacle of takeout plating). Tonight was even better than our previous Vespertine menu (which was good) and all the dishes were tasty. The beef with root beer was a touch weird — in that very special Jordan Kahn way — but all the others were actually excellent.

Portions were also larger than the previous Vespertine take out meals I have had. Just one of my two meals was plenty. And as I had two, I ate the second the next day and it also held up quite well.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

Related posts:

  1. Vespertine at Home
  2. Food as Art – Vespertine
  3. Down the White Rabbit Hole
  4. Artsy Toppings – Sushi of Gari
  5. Sumo Bowl Yamakase
By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Alinea, Corona Dining, Foodie Club, Jordan Kahn, Modern Cuisine, Vespertine, White Burgundy, Wine

Vespertine at Home

Sep22

Restaurant: Vespertine [1, 2, 3]

Location: 3599 Hayden Ave, Culver City, CA 90232. (323) 320-4023

Date: September 11, 2020

Cuisine: Modern chef’s take on Japanese

Rating: Top flight takeout

_

Boy it’s been a long time since I made a food post. Sigh, quarantine life. I still haven’t been in a restaurant since March 11, 2020. Total record for my life as I’m sure that from my birth 4-5 weeks was the record (during summer camp in the early 80s!). Now, that being said I have been cooking up a storm but they aren’t elaborate enough to write up unless I start cooking posts. And we’ve had some good takeout but the pictures are usually ugly. But this particular dinner was a bit different and photoed fairly well.

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. Since the pandemic started he’s been doing “out of the box” fancy takeout meals, and this one has a Japanese theme.


Above is the building where the restaurant is located, but I wasn’t there, Erick picked up the food and we ate elsewhere socially distanced.

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Vague intro.
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The instructions and menu were irritatingly available only online and referenced via QR code — true this saves on paper — but it did require me to squint at them on my phone all night.1A4A1608
Japanese style hand towels!

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And a nice chopstick box.
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Paul brought: 2011 Domaine Matrot Meursault 1er Cru Les Perrières. VM 94+. One of the brighter wines in the range, the 2011 Meursault Les Perrières bristles with pure energy and pedigree. White flowers, crushed rocks, white peaches and graphite all take shape in the glass. Elements of razor-sharp minerality support the vivid, crystalline finish. Today, the Perrières is pretty buttoned up, but it should open up with further time in bottle.

agavin: clean and nice
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The menu for the night.
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Along with reheating instructions. The problem here is that while these would work okay for a couple sharing the meal by themselves it doesn’t work so great with a couple of us social distanced (in far corners of the patio not physically interacting). There is no easy way to get it heated so we just dealt with the luke-warm temp.

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From my cellar: 2011 Joseph Drouhin Meursault 1er Cru Les Perrières. JG 94+. The 2011 Meursault “Perrières” from Maison Joseph Drouhin is also outstanding, offering up a deep and very classic bouquet of apple, passion fruit, iodine, hazelnuts, chalky minerality and vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, crisp and very minerally in personality, with a rock solid core, excellent focus and balance and a very long, pure and laser-like finish. This is a stunning example of Perrières, and like the Laguiche Morgeot, it will only need a handful of years in the cellar to start drinking at its peak.

agavin: lovely
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Setup for the tofu dish.
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Fresh silken Tofu “Kingugoshi”. Fresh silken tofu made to order. Inspired by Tousuiro, served with a variety of Shojin Ryori accompaniments.

This was one of the less successful dishes. The tofu itself had a very nice texture but a slightly bitter taste, probably from the base used to set the tofu (sometimes ash or calcium sulfate). The vegetables were better, with that definite Japanese vegetable taste and some good textures.

It should be noted that the dish shown here, and all the dishes, were intended for two people to split. We gluttons got a “pair” each because even if we had wanted to share it would have been unsafe and complicated.
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Vegetables to top the tofu with.
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A salt that’s probably basically natural MSG.
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Erick brought: 2007 Etienne Sauzet Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Combettes. JG 95. The Sauzet parcel in Combettes were planted in 1950, and these old vines have produced a magical wine in this great vintage. In fact, premier cru Puligny simply does not get any better than this! The bouquet is a beautiful and classic mélange of lemon oil, peach apple, crystalline minerality of enormous complexity, spring flowers and a gentle framing of vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and very pure and racy, with a rock solid core, brilliant focus and balance and a very, very, very long and racy finish. Pure liquid beauty.

agavin: sadly a bit advanced
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Handmade Soba “Hourai.” Cold buckwheat noodles cooked and chilled to order. Served with traditional accompaniments inspired by Honke Owariya.

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The toppings.
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What’s most likely a dashi (and shiyo) broth.
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This dish was much more successful than the tofu. Pretty excellent anyway. And it was cold, so the lack of heating didn’t matter. Basically it’s just good soba. Maybe not as good as at a top flight soba spot, but very impressive for a non-Japanese chef.
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From my cellar: 1996 Alain Hudelot-Noellat Clos Vougeot. JG 93+. I am a very big fan of the Clos Vougeot at Domaine Hudelot-Noëllat, which I find consistently to be one of the best examples in the Côte d’Or. The 1996 is a lovely example of the vintage that hails from the plus and buffered camp, with a lovely core of pure fruit fully carrying the structure of the vintage. The bouquet is deep, complex and quite sappy in its blend of plums, black cherries, woodsmoke, a touch of venison, coffee, a great base of soil and a stylish framing of vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and impressively pure on the attack, with a fine core, ripe tannins and a long, focused and tangy finish. This is certainly approachable today, but in terms of complexity, it is still a tad on the primary side and a few more years of bottle age should be rewarded with even greater aromatic and flavor complexity. A lovely 1996.

agavin: pretty excellent.
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Black Cod “Hitsumabushi”. Black cod grilled over Japanese Charcoal, charred and lacquered with kabayaki glaze. Prepared in the style of Atsuta Houraiken Honten.
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The toppings and some green tea to turn it into tea rice later.
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Instructions.
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More or less assembled. This is basically like BBQ eel, but black cod. Now he did a good job, but it would’ve been much better with the eel. It was pretty good with cod, but a touch blander (aka less fatty). The sauce wasn’t as sweet as usual either.
1A4A1680
Erick brought: 1996 Camille Giroud Pommard 1er Cru Clos des Epeneaux. The nose is slightly fuller than the 2000 but stylistically similar. The palate has a little extra dimension, but there is an amazing family resemblance to the 2000 – amazing considering the different vintages and elevages. I’d say they need a similar time to maturity too. Would be a great buy.

agavin: nice
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1A4A1659
Kurobuta “Tonkatsu.” Breaded Japanese cutlet with accompaniments. Prepared in the style of butagumi.
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Some miso soup, tomatoes, tonkatsu sauce, ginger, and cabbage.

This was a good dish, but the batter was excellent, but it suffered from being too “cold” (reheating was hard). Additionally I wasn’t sure what to do with the cabbage as it normal tonkatsu places I always eat it with a vinegary dressing which wasn’t here. Actually love the stuff with the dressing.

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Sashimi. Inspired by the preparations of Takayoshi Yamaguchi. This was very solid sashimi. Nothing complicated but very good.
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Toppings.
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1A4A1668
Matcha Cream Puff. Crispy choux pastry filled with matcha cream. Inspired by the “yatsuhashi” cream puffs of Kiyomizu Kyoami. Very nice cream puffs. There was a very strong green tea note to the cream which was bracing but nice.
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1A4A1669
Fruit Sando. Japanese milk bread filled with whipped cream and fresh fruits. Inspired by the beautiful fruit sandos of Coffee Nikki. These are VERY Japanese, and I’ve had them and similar many times in Japan, but I can’t say that I love them. Like white bread with whipped cream and fruit. haha.
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1A4A1664
Taiyaki. A warm crispy waffle, shaped like a fish, filled with sweet vanilla custard. Inspired by the epic “Magikarp fluffy custard taiyaki”.

Actually kind excellent. Would have been better warm and fresh from the oven, but still good.
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Our wine lineup.
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Overall, we had a great evening. Great company, great wines, and great takeout.

Now in absolute terms the meal wasn’t totally epic by my standards, but it was one of the best “fancy takeouts” I’ve ever had. They really do a good job packaging it and things survived the transit and the considerable length of our leisurely evening quite well. Yeah, it would have been better there, but considering, it was about as good as you get. Trying to imagine how it would have been on site, and therefore forgiving temperature issues and the takeout plating (which is awesome for takeout plating) I’d say that some dishes would even there have some of the same issues, like the cod not being as “rich” as a great piece of Japanese BBQ eel. But it would have been even better. Still this was an incredible job for a non-Japanese chef stepping out of his comfort zone. Strongest savory dish was the soba which was excellent.

I do have a minor beef with the enforced “2 person” sizing as it only really works for close couples. These things as plated don’t split well. Given that we are huge eaters (at least Erick and I) it was okay to have 2 full meals each, but that’s not cheap.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

Related posts:

  1. Food as Art – Vespertine
  2. Eating Tuscany – Boar at Home
  3. Sumo Bowl Yamakase
  4. Matsumoto Maxsumoto
  5. Katana – Stripping it all Down
By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Burgundy, Champagne, Foodie Club, Japanese Food, Jordan Kahn, Sashimi, Sushi, Vespertine, Wine

Down the White Rabbit Hole

Oct28

Restaurant: Vespertine / White Rabbit [1, 2]

Location: 3599 Hayden Ave, Culver City, CA 90232. (323) 320-4023

Date: September 17, 2019

Cuisine: Modern Nordic Art Food? Russian Haut Cuisine?

Rating: White Rabbit dishes were great, Vespertine ones weird

_

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. Tonight’s dinner is a combo dinner with Jordan hosting Vladimir Mukhin the chef from Russia’s most renowned restaurant: White Rabbit.


First of all, we have the bizarre building which seemingly was built (like much of this section of Culver City) without purpose and is now is host to the restaurant — only! I had an office across the street for 2 years as well, back when I founded Flektor.

In the back yard, so to speak, is this gigantic steel cactus tower. Yes, everyone needs an expensive cactus tower. And there are kooky modern gardens.
This one we waited in at the beginning of the meal, and at the end for our final course (but more on that later).

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As we waited here they had a Didgeridoo player. Yeah, weird.
7U1A7653-Pano

Above the dining room is the entire kitchen floor. We didn’t (couldn’t?) hang out here long but it looked sweet (and immaculate).

The open roof deck (which feels like inside) is a sort of lounge floor where the meal began.

DSC04069
The four of us with Chef Vladimir Mukhin from White Rabbit!

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In the lounge, the tree was prepopulated with crispy dried somethings.
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Maybe pineapple crisps.
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And dark hand towels.
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A welcome cocktail of hibiscus and stuff.
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Mysterious treats called coco lardo. I’m not sure if it was lardo, or “like” lardo. It did taste coconuty. I think those things inside were Linden buds.
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Sunflower with caviar and pine-nuts. The pine-nuts are under the caviar. This was delicious — because it was good caviar.
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Mackerel, Celery, Malt, I think. This was bright flavored but not brightly lit (except when I took this photo with the cel phone light).


Now we moved on down to the cool dining room, nearly temple-like in its silence — except for the spacey spa music and the sound of wooden spoons scraping on expensive stoneware plates.

I do have to say that tonight, probably because Chef Vladimir Mukhin was “in charge” of the floor, they were lax on the “rules” and didn’t give us trouble about tripods or using the cel phone as a light. I didn’t go all the way to using the big flash, but last time we were here when they enforced “no shutter sound”, “no flash”, “no light” and “no tripod” it was damn hard to take any half decent photos at all. Much better this time.

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The napkins have their own box.

V E S P E R T I N E - Erick Pangilman - 09.17.19
The wine pairing was mandatory. This sucks as I don’t love wine pairings and this was typical. A bunch of cheap, off the beaten path wines that are more weird than good.
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2007 Dr Hermann, Erdener Treppchen “6” Kabinett Riesling. This was probably the wine I liked best of the pairings. It’s not expensive though, maybe $20.

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I figured I’d photo the glasses this time.

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The food menu.

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Russian Black Salt. To prepare a black salt you mix in equal proportions rye flour and white salt of coarser or fine grinding. The mixture is wrapped in a linen cloth and scorched in a Russian wood burning stove for 8 hours, using exclusively dry birch wood.7U1A7698
Prawn, aged plum, bone marrow. The black salt was sprinkled on top. These were nice, sweet and tangy.
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Hoto, Yamadanishiki Daiginjo, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.
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Sake!

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Markovnik and Scallops.
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You break through the crunchy top for the delicious “meat” underneath.
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2018 Onward Wines, Malvasia Petillant Natural, Suisun Valley.
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Slight spitz.
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Courgette, char roe, chicken fat, spruce.
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The was very good. Bit of a pickled herring vibe.
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Black bread. You could use it to sop up the delicious sauce.
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2011, Brokenwood, Semillon, Hunter Valley, Australia.
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Golden.

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Salted milk mushrooms, green tomato, herbs. This dish was by Jordan Kahn and was his only fully successful dish of the night. Salty, light, and crunchy it was an excellent vegetable dish.
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2011 Chateau Carbonnieux, Bordeaux.
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Bigger glass.
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Baked Cabbage and Caviar. This symbolizes Russia, in this case “the poor” of Russia in that boiled (or baked) cabbage is one of the main staple foods.
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But with champagne butter sauce it then represents the “rich” of Russia (aka the Caviar and Champagne). It was actually a stupendous dish. The cabbage had great texture and in the rich buttery champagne/caviar sauce was scrumptious.
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I can’t actually read the label.
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Blanco.
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Experimental Pumpkin, Guava, Madrone Bark. Another Jordan Kahn dish. I didn’t like it at all. I don’t love pumpkin and this was vaguely sweet, cloying, and had that soft obnoxious pumpkin texture. I didn’t even finish it
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2017 Seabold Cellars, “Olson” Chardonnay, Monterey, California.
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Fake Chard.
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Black cod, radish, tangerine. Lovely fish dish.
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2014 Ojai, “White Hawk Vineyard” Syrah, Santa Barbara Country.
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Poor man’s Hermitage.
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Fibers, Bracken Fern, Sacred Pepper, Aromatic Carnanel. Another Jordan Dish — like old rope — the beef version. Very over cooked beef stew/rope? Not so great.
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Green Salad. This was the only failing Vladimir dish and I have a feeling it was Jordan making him do it. Supposed to be a “dessert” it was a weird sweet salad. Kind of gross, salad with a sweet flavor.
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2003 Quinta do Crasto, Vintage Port, Douro, Portugal.
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In a mug.
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Black Cap Berry, Meadowsweet. A Jordan dessert. Terrible. Just cloying with a weird root vegetable tone — not what you want in a dessert.
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The wine lineup.

The attractive but perhaps impractical bar area on the ground floor was used for the penultimate course.

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Birch Inner Barc, condensed milk. Not bad. Weird though and it had an augmented reality app that was supposed to do something. We couldn’t get it loaded though.
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The post dinner “dessert” spread back out in the garden.
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Caramelized Sunchoke Mushroom. These were tasty, pretty much like a “bearclaw” or “apple fritter.”
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Sorrel Curd, Wintergreen. It was dipped in this “cream.” Under the red was a mild whipped cream like substance.
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Berries.
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Zoom on the berries.
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A weird book.
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Sea Buckthorn Pearls.
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It’s possible this was the Sorrel Curd, Wintergreen – hard to know with these things.
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Cups for the tea.
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Douglas Fir Tea — Vespertine loves pine and resin notes.
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Two scents, one designed by each chef — lol — you get to take these home.

 

Overall, this was a great experience and very interesting. Quirky though. The building was amazing and the staff was very friendly. And fortunately Jordan’s oodle of rules was much more lax tonight — although there were still some.

Everything was still scented like douglas fir or something. Smells like spa. Sounds like spa. Looks like art.

For something so visual and aesthetic, it was very difficult to photograph — or even see you food. Everything was hidden. Hidden by darkness. Hidden by shadowy deep containers. Hidden by flowers or leaves. You can see that my descriptions were vague as they give you no menu to remember them by.

The Vladimir dishes tonight were fabulous. All were great except for the sweet “salad.” The Jordan dishes were almost a complete bomb — only the “mushrooms” was good. The rest all had this cloying, sweet, root vegetable thing going that I didn’t like at all.

The meal was expensive though — yet ingredients were fairly plebeian for the most pair (excepting the caviar). The mandatory wine pairings sucked. Not worth the money and most of the wines weren’t that great. It’s some fairly hard food to pair — although the Vlad dishes easier than the Jordan ones. Those are almost impossible to pair.

So in conclusion, I’d love to try White Rabbit in Moscow, but the whole “chef team up meal” idea doesn’t seem to totally work. It should have just been White Rabbit food here in the Vespertine space.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

Related posts:

  1. The Call – Down the Rabbit Hole
  2. Book Review: Rabbit Run
  3. Jitlada – Fire in the Hole
  4. Food as Art – Vespertine
  5. Dragon in the Hole
By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Culver City, Foodie Club, Jordan Kahn, Vespertine, Vladimir Mukhin, White Rabbit, Wine, wine pairings

Food as Art – Vespertine

Apr30

Restaurant: Vespertine

Location: 3599 Hayden Ave, Culver City, CA 90232. (323) 320-4023

Date: March 21, 2018

Cuisine: Modern Nordic Art Food?

Rating: Excellent experience

_

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 long been fond of Jordan’s unique culinary style.


First of all, we have the bizarre building which seemingly was built (like much of this section of Culver City) without purpose and is now is host to the restaurant — only! I had an office across the street for 2 years as well, back when I founded Flektor.

In the back yard, so to speak, is this gigantic steel cactus tower. Yes, everyone needs an expensive cactus tower. And there are kooky modern gardens.
This one we even use for our final course (but more on that later).

The attractive but perhaps impractical bar area on the ground floor doesn’t seem to have much (any?) use and we just hung out here for 2 minutes waiting for our party to assemble and then headed upstairs.

Where Jordan greeted us personally — which is actually a nice touch and the whole experience most certainly feels like both a passion project and surprisingly intimate.

Above the dining room is the entire kitchen floor. We didn’t (couldn’t?) hang out here long but it looked sweet (and immaculate).

The open roof deck (which feels like inside) is a sort of lounge floor where the meal began.

 Everything is very “moody” with the scent of fir trees and soft spa music. In fact it’s sort of like “spa the meal”. Or maybe “gallery the meal.”

This “course” consisted of a fir (as in tree) flavored cocktail and some sort of similar tea. The cocktail in particular was excellent.

No menu was provided and the food is abstract, so my descriptions will be vague. This “dip” consisted of some hummus like whip covered in leaves. Photography was a serious challenge her as things were SO DARK, lit only by candlelight, and there was no flash allowed. Or tripod (in the dining room) or camera clicks or beeps!!! A kind of dried vegetable/fruit matter of sorts — actually dried kelp if I remember correctly — hung on our tree and we used it to dip into the dip. Odd as this was, it tasted rather lovely.

Then came a brown impossible to photograph thing. I think it was a savory burnt onion cookie stuffed with jam (blackcurrent?). It tasted good.

And a brown thing covered by a white soft thing in vague leaf shapes. No recall. Interesting textures. Tasted good too.
Now we moved on down to the cool dining room, nearly temple-like in its silence — except for the spacey spa music and the sound of wooden spoons scraping on expensive stoneware plates.

Pairing with this food was a challenge so we leaned toward champagne.

Erick brought: 1976 Drappier Champagne Carte d’Or Brut. 95 points. Rustic, PN character to this recently disgorged champagne. Nose of carrots, beetrots, raisins. A bit of damp basement as well, but this evidently comes from the aging. Leathery feel in the mouth, raisins as well. Very good and certainly with character, but lacking in elegance or precision. Though, has nice complexity.

I brought: NV Krug Champagne Brut Rosé. BH 94. Medium rosé hue. A cool, restrained and highly complex nose that is not especially fruity displays a moderate yeast character along with slightly exotic aromas of mandarin orange and Asian tea, all wrapped in an enveloping array of beguiling rose petal scents. There is very good richness with a relatively firm supporting mousse that adds to the impression of richness to the superbly complex and highly textured flavors, indeed one could aptly describe this as more wine that Champagne. As such this is indeed a sumptuous Krug rosé that is difficult to resist already though it should reward extended keeping if desired. As I noted in the original 750 ml review, that while I am not always wowed by the Krug Rosé, this latest incarnation in magnum is strikingly good.

This space age green disk was frozen peas?

On top of english peas? Delicious actually and a neat combo of textures and temperatures. Maybe a little too cold.

Savory rice pudding with flowers and trout roe. Actually tasted great. Mix of creamy and crunchy texture. Jordan LOVES these “shadowy” bowls where you can barely see the food. Serious photographic challenge in a room with very little light, no flash, no tripod, no shutter noises. I had to use the single tiny spotlight over our table and some creative positioning to even get a glimpse of the dish. And you can tell from my minimalist descriptions that the verbal brief conveyance of the contents of the dishes does not return to my consciousness when looking at the photos. My mind thinks of this as the “creamy white one with yellow.”

Our pale tinted wines.
 White asparagus and accompaniments. Very pretty plating.

Hidden by leaves.

Can’t remember what the substance was. The picture does not doo much to jog my memory.

Kale & crab — maybe. Served in a Lucio Fontana style container, this creamy mix reveals the truth that Jordan likes black and white — with the occasional splotch of color. There was kale (maybe) and crab definitely. It was actually quite good but had a dusty (dehydrated?) texture and the leaves tickled my throat. Wine wise, we progressed to Larry’s 1992 E. Guigal Côte-Rôtie La Landonne. 94 points. Lovely soft tannins, beautifully structured and very well made in a so called “lesser” vintage. Short to medium length.

Herby turkey. This special heirloom New England turkey was wrapped in herbs and then revealed.

It was dressed with sauce.

And sprinkled with flowers. It was really fabulous turkey, some of the best I’ve ever had. Perfectly moist and with a very evocative herbal/sweet quality.

Close up.

Fish hidden in greens?

Lamb. I remember this was somehow lamb.

Not that you’d recognize it or anything.

Lavender spray goo? The first dessert. This sweet, marshmallow stuff was sprayed on the bowl. Very thin too and you had to really work to scrape it off. I thought it was delicious though.

Roast carrots somehow reinterpreted as a dessert. Good too, but not as good as the purple goo.

The wheel of modernism turns on.

Herbs and granite wheel? VERY hard to photo in shadow there and I resorted (because it was the last dish) to sneaking on the light on my phone.

We got the scent that pervades the restaurant as a parting gift!

And a little picnic in the garden. It was so dark that I almost lost my sh*t. Only seem here because I had a floodlight in my bag!

Dates maybe under leaves.

We almost ate the ashtray.

Fresh currents. Au currant. Chestnuts? Blackberries. Or maybe some more exotic nordic variant.

Overall, this was a great experience and very interesting. Quirky though. The building was amazing and the staff was very friendly. But there were a lot of rules. No this, no that. No noise (Jordan likes it quite so you can here his repetitive spa music very clearly). The no shutter/beep thing is a little harsh. The spoons scraping on stoneware plates was far louder than the shutter. Even the (difficult to locate) soap in the bathroom had the same scent.

In fact, everything was scented. Smells like spa. Sounds like spa. Looks like art.

For something so visual and aesthetic, it was very difficult to photograph — or even see you food. Everything was hidden. Hidden by darkness. Hidden by shadowy deep containers. Hidden by flowers or leaves. You can see that my descriptions were vague as they give you no menu to remember them by.

The tastes were actually very good. Central in these dishes is textural and temperature contrast and play. They do taste good, but they have a very interesting textural quality — much like complex salad. So many leaves and flowers in fact that you feel like a bunny rabbit. Fibre content was excellent. But seriously, they did mostly taste very good. Subtle flavors, but harmonious. If you are a narrow eater though the “I can’t tell what I’m eating” or “this doesn’t look or feel like it tastes” factor might put you off. Not me. I enjoyed that.

Jordan has moved on a bit from his Elfin dining period to an even more conceptual space where while still covered in flowers and leaves things look less naturalistic and more mannered.

Completely unique. An experience. They can’t possibly be making money but they CARE really deeply. Despite the odd modernism, it did not come off as cold at all because the passion was very clear. The chef was there as a presence both in person and in the food and they were all very friendly. A few less rules maybe though.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Culver City, food-as-art, Jordan Kahn, modernist, Vespertine

Destroyer!

Dec07

Restaurant: Destroyer

Location: 3578 Hayden Ave, Culver City, CA 90232

Date: December 1, 2016

Cuisine: Modernist / Scandinavian

Rating: Cool daytime only spot

_

When we last checked in with chef Jordan Kahn he was playing host to Elrond’s table at Red Medicine.

Now he’s got a new place in Culver City, literally 100 yards from the old Flektor.com office I had 2006-2008. The area is filled with the weird and modern.

It’s called Destroyer and it’s breakfast and lunch only.

The decor is minimalist, and Scandinavian modern.

The menu is projected on the wall!

Here is the crazy master himself, looking intense.

This is a place about the small details, and this coffee “mug” is no exception.

The place is QSV, you order at the counter.

And more lovely details.

spice bread,creme fraiche,black currant,elderflower. Looks awesome. Kinda tasted awesome too, like scones and clotted cream — except for the weird moss. That was only for texture and just kinda interesting.

organic hen egg,crispy potato, mushroom. Very elfin, but delicious too. Fascinating textures.

The wall changed to lunch.

beef tartare,smoked egg cream, pickled mushroom,radish. Lovely!

And the meat was hiding underneath. My least favorite of the items, but still good.
 Frozen pear mousse, tonka, salted almond. Great textures, nice bright flavors.

Overall, this was a really neat little place. Just kinda fun. Fun flavors. Fun textures. Fun attention to detail. I’ll definitely be back.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

Related posts:

  1. Ford’s Filling Station
  2. Quick Eats – AR Cucina
  3. Sambar – Briefly Modern Indian
By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Destroyer, elfin, Jordan Kahn, modernist, Scandinavian
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