Their menu offers small plates, medium plates, and large plates. Superking and I stuck to mostly small plates so we could try as many items as we could stuff in our mouths! Here's a look at what we ordered...
Fois Gras Dumplings...juicy braised duck wrapped in a beautiful little dumpling pouch and served with a house-made plum sauce and a tiny radish and sprout "salad". The duck was perfectly moist and flavorful, the plum sauce had a lovely sweetness, and the radish provided a crisp fresh crunch.
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| we actually wanted to order their Gator Croquettes but they were all out |
Oyster Po' Boy Sliders...3 juicy little oysters breaded in cornmeal topped with lettuce, tomato, and a remoulade sauce all on their own adorable little brioche buns. I'm not a fan of oysters...I've tried them several times prepared several different ways...not a fan. But these, honestly didn't even taste like oysters (I mean that in a good way!). They were actually quite tasty! And not slimy!
Wild Boar Bowl...this was one of their medium plates, or bowl rather. Braised wild boar meat in a bowl with kimchi rice, kochujang (a red pepper bean paste), laver (a type of seaweed I think), a few carrots, a fried egg, and sweet potato chip for garnish. The red pepper paste provides a little spicy kick and the boar meat was tender and juicy!
At one point during this course, the hostess walked by and noticed Superking liking a certain hot sauce on the table. She stopped and asked with a devilish grin, "would you like something hotter?" Tentatively Superking says yes. She returns a moment later with a non-descript, non-labeled bottle filled with a dark sludgy sauce and says, "this is our Ghost Chili sauce." For those of you who may not know, ghost peppers are among the hottest in the world. To put this in perspective...the scoville chart which measures hottness of peppers says that a simple little jalapeno is about 4,000 scoville units. A habanero is roughly 200,000. A ghost pepper...over a million. In other words, don't go near these things unless you have a death wish. Luckily there are other ingredients in their Ghost Chili sauce besides just the ghost peppers to help cut the heat a little but its still pretty daggone hot! Use very very sparingly!
Ssam...no thats not a misspelling, and its not short for Ssamuel. Its basically like a Korean taco where you use a lettuce leaf as the shell and inside is pork (though there were also chicken and veggie options), purple rice, kochujang, sesame, radish, and scallions. The lettuce cups were crisp and fresh and the pork was tender and a little spicy. Every flavor was perfectly balanced and delicious.
One last small plate we had to try before delving into dessert...Wagyu Carpaccio. You just don't see a lot of Wagyu so its hard to pass up. This carpaccio was served with a nice clump of greens on top drizzled with soy sauce, sprinkled with pine nuts, daikon radish, and believe it or nor a few slices of pear! It sounds odd but the pear added a bright sweetness to the savory salty wagyu carpaccio with the soy and nuts.
Finally we order dessert and as we're waiting the owner brings us a dessert we didn't order. "Oh I don't think thats ours," we said. The owner replies, "I know but we made an extra one so we thought you'd like to have it!". Ok, an extra dessert can't hurt, right?
Chicory pudding with chocolate sauce, pecans, cane syrup salted caramels, and fresh cream. Omg! It was light and fluffy and creamy. Flavors of coffee and chocolate and caramel. And these lovely caramel wafers buried beneath all the chocolate sauce and cream; it was like finding buried treasure!
Then came our real dessert...Beignets. Ah, beignets! Even saying the word makes me happy. Beautiful little donut holes, fried crispy on the outside, soft and doughy on the inside, sprinkled with powdered sugar and served with 4 sauces...chocolate, caramel, strawberry jam, and cane syrup. We even dipped a few bites of our beignets in the leftovers of the first dessert...yumm!
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| Left: caramel; Top: cane syrup; Right: strawberry; Bottom: chocolate |
Needless to say, we were so stuffed when we left they practically had to call a crane to roll us out to the parking lot. But every bite was so worth it. A cool urban atmosphere, friendly attentive service, and awesomely delicious and unique food. Its very refreshing to find a hidden gem like this so close to home. Can't wait to go back!
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| the aftermath |
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