Well folks, the inaugural Chez Dad came and went and let me tell you, it was a real doozy.
The idea to start a pop up restaurant inside my own apartment has been something I’ve been threatening to do for years. Yes, there have been plenty of elaborate dinner parties where I procrastinate until 4pm and serve fried chicken for 15 people at 11:15pm. But it wasn’t until our recent move to Oakland and seeing those sweet sunset views over Lake Merritt that I though, yeah, this is the ideal setting to push for a Michelin star from the comfort of my own kitchen.
So a few months back, we had 10 friends join us for a seven course meal. A mere two hours earlier, Steph had returned from Ikea with foldable chairs so no one would have to sit on an upturned plastic beer fermenting bucket like they sometimes had to in our old place. Praise be that we had invested in the Chez Dad monogrammed steak knives years earlier.
Alas, I forgot to take pictures except for the night’s crowning achievement: the sight of one perfect little puffed potato in my palm, a neat little trick I practiced (mostly unsuccessfully) all week.
I’ve been accused of using a lot of french words on menus and listing ingredients people have never heard of and I stand guilty of that charge today. In the spirit of transparency though, I’ve gone into some detail below on the products, techniques, and the thought process behind them:
Steph’s bread with house-cultured butter, fermented with an assist from some fancy Icelandic yogurt. Decent tang, but could’ve gone even funkier. Next time, next time. Steffo Dough™, always a hit.
Puffed potato, also known as a pomme soufflé. Served with crème fraiche and za’atar. Let me tell you, puffing potatoes is not for the faint of heart. I had a really excellent version at Momofuku Ko last year and finally worked up the gumption to email them for their recipe, which calls for frying the spuds at three different oil temperatures, all while vigorously swirling the oil in clockwise circles. I think we got six more or less perfect and that was a win in my book. This video really captures the magic.
Gilda with pacific anchovies, purchased from the good people at Sea Forager and cured in the style of boquerones (hat tip to State Bird Provisions’ recipe and the one at Hunter Angler Gardener Cook). Served with red shishitos from Happy Quail Farms, a rare-ish find.
Clarified apple soda (zero proof) made with local gravensteins from Stan Devoto’s farm. Following a technique from Dave Arnold’s Liquid Intelligence, I clarified with pectinase, an enzyme that, you guessed it, breaks down pectin, and then force carbonated in plastic bottles. Boy, did it foam like a bastard. Tasty, but a bit on the sweet side for dinner, I probably should’ve watered it down a bit.
Halibut crudo with agrumato, apple, radish. I cured the halibut overnight in konbu, a type of seaweed. It’s a Japanese technique called no kobujime, where you soak the konbu sheets in water until they’re pliable, rub them down with a half lemon, salt the fish, and then wrap them up into snug little green packages, and refrigerate overnight. Agrumato is extra virgin olive oil with whole citrus thrown in the press for good measure. This one had some citron in it.
Gazpacho with tomato, husk cherry, and Jimmy Nardello pepper. The soup was a recipe from the French Laundry cookbook (no bread, heavy on the cuke). We poured this one tableside like all the cool kids are doing these days. I have to say, Nardellos are truly the king of peppers. Husk cherries, like a sweet little tomatillo, were a nice addition as well.
Rockfish kasuzuke with shichimi togarashi, honey & lime emulsion. Kasusuke is another Japanese fish-curing technique, this one using sake lees, or the dead yeast at the bottom of the barrel which sounds less appealing. It adds some sweet sake undertones and is an all around classy touch. I gave my sous chef Steph the wrong instructions for this and she whisked it all together instead of properly emulsifying it so it was loose but still tasty and no one knew that secret until just now. The original idea was from a meal I had at Spring in Paris way back when.
Stuffed chicken wing with sticky rice, fermented pluot-fresno hot sauce. You learn a lot about yourself when you spend your night boning out chicken wings at 2am and suddenly realize your podcast stopped a while back so you’ve just been working in monkish silence for hours. I stuffed the wings with sticky rice mixed with shallot, white shoyu, mint, and opal basil. They were roasted and glazed with the hot sauce and garnished with Thai basil. The hot sauce was a mash of fresnos, pluots, garlic, and 7% salt, fermented for 3 weeks, and then blending with pineapple and apple cider vinegars.
Duck aiguillette with lacto-fermented peach, tokyo turnip, olive. Man, few things beat the excitement of getting an overnight delivery of eight duck breasts to your door. I salted, scored, and air-dried them overnight in the fridge to dry them out a bit. The lacto-fermented peach (2% salt, 5 days) was blended and emulsified with some olive oil.
Tarte aux quetsches with fig leaf crème anglaise. Prunes, man. Pretty good, pretty good. I toasted the fig leaves, crushed them a bit, and then let them steep in the crème anglaise. It’s a dead ringer for coconut.
Thanks again to everyone who came. We’ll be announcing new dinners in the near future. Sign ups are over here.