Swan Oyster Depot, SF – Timeless Eating

The mood here is tutti a tavolo a mangiare. It is a little like joining the family at the dining table, but a happy family. After all, a family that eats together stays together right? They joke, banter about meaningless things and talk about sports whilst shucking oysters and clams and serving customers.

oyster station

oysters - kumamoto, miyagi, blue point

There are more luxurious dining places, chairs and waiting in line is a real pain but the fresh seafood is undeniably good. The seafood here is what you see if what you get. The menu is either on the board or in front of you. We sat in front of the bivalves and watched them repeatedly shuck the oysters and clams and had some of those briny morsels for ourselves. It isn’t just pristine produce that sets this place apart; it is about the history and the family – the Sancimino family bonded by blood and also by a labour of love that they perform every day with a great sense of joy, and that little extra goes a long way.

We skipped the chowder having read mixed reviews about it and stuck to the fresh, raw and cured. With pints of ice-cold Anchor Steam, we picked through a platter of oysters, raw clams, house smoked salmon and some juicy shrimp.



house smoked salmon



house smoked salmon

cherry stone clams

seafood salad


Very unfortunately for us, there was no crab and crab fat (we were too early for the crab season) – there was a collective groan in the room when they announced that there was no crab for the day, and no uni. Nonetheless, it was just honest no bullshit good food.



shrimp and cocktail sauce

Swan Oyster Depot
1517 Polk Street
San Francisco

Saison, SF. Amazing.

This is definitely one of my favourite meals this year alongside the incredible sushi dinner at Sawada.

The aesthetics are modern minimalist but gorgeous. The cooking philosophy is the celebration of the return to roots of cooking by and around fire and respect purity of ingredients.

The food is phenomenally good. Chef Joshua Skenes is a very gifted chef. The kitchen puts out creative plates made with modern techniques and the old craft of fanning flames to achieve differing degrees and effects of fire - to roast, char and to fire-kiss.

There are Japanese sensibilities in the cooking and the plating. We were presented an striped jack kissed by a coal and the roasted bone gelee and a lamb tartare that looked but tasted nothing like pieces of sushi and a bowl of dehydrated mustard leaves with seaweed broth and mixed grains made me think of an ochazuke but a more powerfully flavoured version of it. This common theme carried on from the savoury to the sweet courses, buckwheat for dessert? Buckwheat soufflé, ice cream and roasted buckwheat tea, not too sweet, nutty and light, this dessert was right up my alley.

Not everything points Japanese and not all the flavours are familiar. Some flavour combinations are out of this world. Toffee, bread, milk, beer – a duck liver toffee, caramelised white chocolate, beer foam and crunchy bread with about another 10 different elements is something that when the server announces doesn’t make sense but somehow in your mouth it does. I wondered out loud, I wonder how the chef managed to come up with this combination, imagination and smoking I believe was the response I got. And I believe them. Whatever it is, it works, Saison produces an amazing gastronomic experience.

The evening begins with a couple of drinks. We were welcomed with a glass of Krug, cheers to good start for a splendid dinner – we are here yay!! And then once seated, our palates were refreshed with a glass smoked sage soda, pineapple espuma and garnished with the tiniest coriander blossoms.

cheers with krug

soda, smoked pineapple, soda

And this was the rest of the meal -

custard, grilled turnip, sea urchin

reserve caviar, corn pudding, tomato gelee

striped jack, cherry blossom

live scallop, avocado, trumpet lily

king salmon, its roe, vichysoisse

king salmon, its roe, vichysoisse

abalone, roasted over the embers

tomato, sungold tomato, safflower oil, grilled tomatillo consommé

spot prawn, swarnadipa spices, yoghurt, mandarin

melon, melon soup, fermented melon skin, coconut, ham

melon, melon soup, fermented melon skin, coconut, ham

60 day lamb, slow grilled nightshades

brassicas, toasted grains, wild seaweed bouillon

toffee, bread, milk, beer

wood pigeon, boudin, warm spices, dates

raspberry, meyer lemon, basil buds

buckwheat, soufflé and ice cream

sesame cake with duche de leche and kinako

liquid molten vanilla bean truffle

chrysanthemum macaroons

a very good canele

Let’s get a few obvious questions out of the way.
Was it expensive? Yes. (eater did feature it as #7 in their list of most expensive tasting menus in American, Jan 2013)
Was the food good? Yes. It was very very good.
Was it worth it? Yes.
Will I go back again? Yes, absolutely.

Saison
178 Townsend Street
San Francisco

Ronin in HK

I will confess – despite the rave reviews it opened to, I didn’t enjoy my first experience here. We sat by the door and faced a wall all dinner. The menu read like a grocery list and the servers that explained it seemed condescending. The food, however, was pretty good so it did deserve a second go.

 

My second visit here was slightly more spontaneous, we were wondering the neighbourhood for decided to pop in for a few bites – plates are petite and dainty. The menu has changed since I last went. They now offer a tasting menu for HKD 900 which like the daily printed menu is based on the fresh seafood that they source.

 

Ronin will always be compared to Yardbird since it is their second venture hoping to strike gold like yardbird. Well, if Yardbird is yang, Ronin is yin. Like the food, the environment is more zen from the adrenaline pumping yardbird where you sometimes need to shout over dinner. The flavours are softer, clean and light – they let the ingredients do the talking. And on a totally random note, I really like the stoneware that they picked out for the restaurant.

 

 

We skipped the sashimi section this time.  We tried some the last time and the flavours were nice but the fish didn’t seem to be at the right temperature slightly on the warmish side despite being served on a bed of shaved ice. After seeing a few pictures of this delicious creation of this on the internet, we decided to try to heftily priced flower crab with mitzuba and uni. It is a luxurious combination without being too rich. The creamy uni gives it that richness and the crab gave the slight sweetness and I could have spoon after spoon but I think it lacks something that will give it a good pop – maybe ikura? We finished off with their unagi chirashi. The unagi was plumped, glazed and grilled and spiked with sprinkles of sancho pepper served on a bed of rice. The sancho pepper gave it that interesting dimension of lemony flavour and tingling sensation, this dish I really liked.

 

So my second visit here was more successful. Perhaps the early kinks have been evened out and the cooking and staff have found their stride. I might give the tasting menu on my third visit.

 

Ronin
8 On Wo Lane
Central, HKseats@roninhk.com

The Fisherman’s Canteen

Aberdeen Fish Market Canteen has two versions. The first version is its primary function as its name suggests, it serves as a canteen to the hardworking people that work at the fish market. It secondary function is a seafood restaurant that serves simply prepared fresh seafood.

I shall state the obvious: the seafood here is very fresh. Call ahead, state your budget, seafood preferences and if you want you can specify the way you want it cooked. The Canteen celebrates seafood. It applies simple cooking and it does little to mask the essential taste of all the different sea creatures on the plate. Here’s what we had in no particular order –



Deep fried abalone – very delicious. Unlike my imagined notions of a deep fried abalone, it wasn’t fried to a death but rather the quick cooking it kept it tender caramelizes the edges of the abalone.


Deep fried squid – lightly battered, tender and tasty


Steamed local lobster – not particularly sweet and a little chewy but dip the flesh into the brain, together it taste better.


Stir-fried prawns – sweet and fresh


Stir-fried clams with black bean sauce

Stir fried bamboo clams with black bean sauce – I’m not a big fan of black bean sauce in general on seafood but again still good tasting bamboo clams and clams

Steamed sea grouper

And we ended off with their double boiled seafood soup.

 

THE soup, which I am going to call the fisherman’s broth, is double boiled but unlike the traditional Cantonese soup which is clear is served to us looking a little cloudy. Who cares, it is probably the best damn soup I’ve had this year. It is hard to doubt why it is such a great soup once they lay the soul of the soup on the table - a small mount of crabs, bok choy and chopped up small fishes. It has a very different in flavour profile and cooking style to its Western cousins the cioppino and bouillabaisse but similar in spirit.To catch a glimpse of the other version of the Canteen, finish off the meal with a cup of milk tea and their only ‘dessert’ offering - deep fried French toast drizzled with condensed milk. Don’t miss this either because the French toast fried just right, crisp on the outside and light and fluffy in the centre.

 

French toast

The art of simple is actually hard. Less is more. In this kitchen I suppose this translates as do less to taste more and this is the kind of food that I’ve come to fall in love with more and more.

In Praise of Eggs

I’ve gone a little eggy. On Monday I bought a tray of regular chicken eggs, eight salted duck eggs and a dozen preserved duck eggs or what are also known as century eggs. Today is Thursday and I need to go shopping for more. Short of a heart attack diet, I have averaging a consumption of 4 eggs a day, excluding egg traces that might be found in confectionary, cakes and spreads. Other than consuming runny egg yolks with my own homemade chilli-spiked tomato sauce and scrambled eggs, I’ve learnt to utilise the other types of eggs a little more.

The century egg that might seem vile and strange to the uninitiated can be a little unnerving. In addition to that, the free publicity that it had received on it, was not at all positive as seen on Fear Factor, and I personally have been stared down at tables with the worst response being “Are you really going to eat that? You know they use horse pee in the preparation right?” honestly, I don’t know if they use horse pee, but it did put me off those black eggs for a good 6 months of so. Nonetheless, they are still delicious and they are a Chinese delicacy. They might smell funny to some, but the yolk is rich and creamy and the resulting preserved egg white turns into a springy jelly-like substance. Yes, it might be stinky, but durian is also stinky and last I checked so is a long list of cheeses and they are all still considered delicious. During the course of the week I’ve also taken a page from Xi Yan, in using the century egg in its preparation of its house signature salivating chicken, and it really does help in keeping the mouth flames at bay.

The salted egg is also something that I’ve learnt to cook with. Before this week I had only known how to use it through boiling, peeling and eating the yolk as it is with tofu and rice, but this week I’ve added another step, sautéing! This additional step actually enhances the fragrance of the yolk, a very useful kitchen tip.

Now since I had acquired new found knowledge about salted duck yolks, what should I do with it? I had a few ideas but that got derailed when I could not say no to my rare chance of scoring fresh crayfish from my fishmonger. All I needed was to find a way to tie the two ingredients together and here’s a dinner dish that I came up with: Spaghetti with salted eggs and crayfish

Spaghetti with salted eggs and crayfish
Serves 4



Ingredients:
8 salted duck eggs
2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
4 crayfish, cleaned and halved
300 g dried spaghetti
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
200 g Chinese flowering cabbage (choy sum / cai sin), washed and trimmed
Salt to taste
Freshly cracked black pepper to taste

Method:
1. Bring a pot of water to the boil. Gently lower duck eggs and boil, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Strain eggs and whilst still hot, halve eggs and scoop yolks unto a bowl. Discard egg whites and shell. Mash yolks with a fork and set aside.
2. Pre-heat grill to 180°C. Mix 1½ tablespoon yolk with butter and spread over crayfish meat. Grill for 8—10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to the boil. When it comes to a rolling boil, add pasta and cook as directed until al dente, then drain.
4. When the pasta is 2 minutes from being ready, heat oil in a large saucepan over medium low heat. Add egg yolks and sauté for 1 minute. Add flowering cabbage and sauté for another minute. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
5. Remove saucepan from heat, add pasta and toss well. Divide equally into 4 individual bowls, top each bowl with 2 halves of crayfish and serve.