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Archive for Vespertine

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.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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.

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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
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