A New Favorite: Tasting Menus

It's early in the morning here in Moscow.  The sun is already peeking through the sky with some golds and reds and it is just 4:30.  I woke up thinking about food, a common occurrence.

Within the last few months, I saw a television show on Netflix called Chef's Table.  This show looks at some famous chefs around the world, their restaurants, and what it is they are doing in them.  This became my favorite show in record time.  I love the music, the backdrop, the variety... and it is about people making good food for humans to enjoy.

One of those people was Gaggan Anand, a chef working in Bangkok at a restaurant called Gaggan.  The theme of his restaurant is progressive Indian, and he takes the flavors of India and the produce of Bangkok to make amazing dishes.

In February, Peter and I went to Gaggan, and it was absolutely stunning.  The menu was all emojis, one after the other, and the courses came out so quickly.  And, we have photos of every single dish, but I'll spare you the 28 different pictures, knowing that some highlights will suffice.  I'll admit that it is a trial to restrain myself, but this would be a mighty long post otherwise.

This is the emoji menu, with the different pieces.  The entertaining part of the menu was trying to guess which things would be coming based on the menu.  

This is Yogurt Explosion, one dish that Gaggan is famous for.  He took the yogurt of Indian cuisine and found a way to keep it in this egg shape, so when you eat it, it breaks into your mouth and the texture is incredible. 

This black dot was a highlight of mine.  I can't be certain what all is in it, but it tasted like charcoal bread, deep and rich and full, and it was almost crunchy in the texture.  At Gaggan, the textures were nearly superior to the tastes. 

This was the ice cream emoji.  

It is uni, in a crepe cone, and the presentation is enough to make you smile.

It was difficult to photograph this, but this would have been my favorite moment and close to my favorite dish.   It was the tomato emoji, and it was a tomato matcha that the chef had to prepare at our table.  He scooped in the powder for the tea, poured some water from the teapot.  Whipped it up with a special bamboo tool, shook it around to release the aromas.  The whole moment had this ceremony and this ritual to it that was simply wonderful, and when you put the bowl to your lips, the smell enveloped you in this incredible smell. 

And then, the chef himself.  We had such a great time at Gaggan, and I realized that I enjoy the lingering over dinner, the food that keeps coming and never makes you full.  We were seated around 6:30 and left around 9:30, so our meal was long and glorious.  A dish would come out, you could enjoy it, and then it would vanish and another one would take its place.  Plus, having the bite-sized food gives the opportunity to taste all these different meals and enjoy them all, taste them all, with a stomach that can manage.

In fact, I liked this Prix Fixe idea so much that I found another restaurant for it in Bangkok, for the next trip.

Sidebar: The food in Bangkok might be my favorite food.  There are so many restaurants there, of all kinds and calibers, and it might be my favorite place to eat.  I display as evidence this photo of me at a steakhouse called El Guacho.  Even coming from steak country, I've never tasted anything so delicious.

But that's neither here nor there.

In April, we went to a restaurant called Sra Bua, at the Kempinski Hotel.  There was a menu there, called The Journey, which was heralded in some of the local news as a fantastic modern Thai cuisine, and we wanted to give it a try.  I'm sad to say that we didn't get photos, because of Songkran.

The service at Sra Bua was some of the best I have ever encountered.  In fact, when I think back to dinner, the service was the tipping point to make it one of the fanciest meals I've ever had.  Every person on staff knew what was happening, knew service in this fancy restaurant, and made the effort, and it was just incredible.

Online photo. This was soup you drank from the straw. 

They started us with a special dish, for Songkran, a tasting of traditional Thai snacks.  In fact, I think we tasted at least 5 different dishes that were gifts from the chef, starters not on the menu, and Songkran specials, because we kept wondering if this was the first dish, or this, or this.  There was a little pouch of cashew nuts in basil, a typical Thai street food, and a small skewer that was flash grilled at the table.

Online photo. DIY Noodles.

The food was very Thai, and it honored the Thai traditions while still being new and fun and unusual.  There was a traditional soup in a bowl of sand with a straw, and diy noodles in a syringe, which you put into miso soup.

Online photo. Seabass with Apple and Celery. 

My favorite was the apple and celery salad, a nod to papaya salad, with the seabass and spicy sauce.  The textures and the tastes just converged into this delicious moment.  It was fresh, spicy, textured.  This place gave a menu that was more than a few bites.  Unlike Gaggan, where it was usually one mouthful, Sra Bua was a full, dish that you could get into, over and over again.  If a dish was enjoyed (and so many of them were), you could enjoy a few bites of it as opposed to just one.

But, back to Chef's Table.

One of the restaurants featured was White Rabbit, here in Moscow.  I have been to White Rabbit, and went back in the fall when I first arrived with some of the other new people.  But, this time, I went back to enjoy the full tasting menu.

This restaurant has a story of going down the rabbit hole into a whole new cuisine.  From the television program, the Russian style of food was taken back a few eras during the communism reign.  From a diverse set of foods into something more streamlined, Russian food has been undergoing a change back into the old style, and the chef (Vladimir Murkhin) has been facilitating that change.

I went to the tasting menu just a few weeks back, and I really enjoyed myself.  It was a bit absurd, and I've never had a meal like it.  I couldn't decide if I liked the food or if I didn't.  The tastes were so unusual, so different, so strong.

Here are a few of the dishes with a few descriptions for you.

Caviar, pear, and mead. And it was strong mead too.  Caviar is an unusual texture, with this burst in your mouth of flavor and intense taste. 

I loved this little drink, the raspberry/carrot with some vodka.  The bite tasted like farmland, with a strong cheese and dried salmon.

This bread with the fresh butter made me want to cry, it was so good.  The knife was strange, but that presentation and the smell and tenderness of the bread... Oh man.

A common Russian dish, schi, which was so bright and delicious.  The little sandwich is similar to a crabcake, but it was light, and airy, and beautiful like spring.

There's a whole section in the television program about this dish... Moose Lip dumplings.  I wasn't sure how I would feel about those, because they look so unusual on the screen.  However, this dish was quite nice.  I thought the dumplings overpowered the taste of the meat inside, but the sauces were out of this world.

A palate cleanser... Medlar.  This is a new favorite fruit, because we ate the ones that they brought us in addition to the sorbet.

As a non-sugar eater, this was my absolute favorite dish.  This is technically a dessert, a cake, a mousse, and an ice cream.  And, in the last restaurants that I enjoyed, the ends were too sweet.  At both of the other restaurants, I left the restaurant thirsty from excess sugar.  This dessert, though, was perfect in its savoriness.  The base was a black bread of some sort, slightly sweet, then a chocolate mousse, and the top was sour cream ice cream.  The black bits on top were some sort of garlic, leading you into a dessert mindset without killing you with sugar. 

During lovely dessert, they also brought us these noses.  Why?  It was unclear at the time, but each of them had a smell on the inside and a name on the outside.  I chose one that smelled like gingerbread, one of the more common sweets for fall and Christmas here.  Another one smelled like church incense.  We made our choices, and as we finished our meal, they gave us little bottles of perfume.  Why?  It is still somewhat unclear to me.

This ending had to be the finest ending of any menu I've seen so far.  This is a very light willow tea, and whipped honey.  The waiter was stirring this honey in the bowl, and eventually gave us each a spoonful of it.  And it was the best dessert.  It was light, and fresh, and so incredibly delicious.  I can still taste it, and still think about it. 

I leave you with an excited K at a table.  I believe that I will be searching for tasting menus wherever I go now.