And the world was very dazzling for a while around that table
So I am not at the HFA's all-night Joan Crawford marathon tonight. Instead, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and I went to dinner with saira_ali, M., and Saira's sisters who were visiting from out of town. We went to Journeyman.
Wow.
I had never eaten at Journeyman before. I had the vague belief that I had once eaten at a restaurant with a tasting menu, but mostly because I remembered being served tomato granita as an amuse-bouche. As I wrote to my mother when I got home, to the best of my ability to recall, over the course of four hours we ate:
Pickled sea bass with beet granita and crème fraîche. The sea bass was densely savory, the granita vegetable-sweet, the crème fraîche astringent. It was an astonishing start and everything that followed lived up to its implications.
Clams on yellow watermelon with pickled cucumber and corn, tiny mushrooms, some finely diced stone fruit (best guesses peach or yellow plum), and what looked like sorrel to me. My favorite for the combination and scope of textures and flavors. The clams were sweet clean brine.
Heirloom tomato terrine with jalapeño-and-cucumber sorbet and rabbit rillettes ("gefilte rabbit"). It was extremely beautiful to look at, like millefiori glass or a non-terrifying version of Jell-O salad. I loved the little slice of striped green tomato like a miniature watermelon.
(Probably between two earlier courses, the server brought us bread, which was dark and very delicious, with butter and olive oil. I kept using bits of it to mop up leftover sauces, purées, and reductions.)
Grilled octopus over a kind of mole with thinly sliced radish and a sweet corn reduction (i.e., Things Made from Corn). There were chopped pistachios on the other plates, sprinkled attractively between the three stations of octopus.
Deep-fried egg yolk over a sweet pepper sauce with little croutons and bonito flakes on top. It sort of imploded juicily if you ate it in one bite. No grease.
Tiny buckwheat pancakes topped with rolls of duck breast and a sweet onion purée. My favorite for sheer deliciousness and the fact that, due to Rob needing a replacement without onion, I was lucky enough to eat two. They were garnished with anise flowers.
Locally caught sea bass over French lentils with salmon roe on top and a lemon sauce underneath. I am fairly certain I ate the delicious leftover fish skin off the plate of someone who didn't want it.
Loin of mutton and mutton shoulder over soft-cooked sunflower seeds, pickled corn, and cumin-spiced carrot purée. The loin was a meltingly rare slice, the shoulder a shreddy, savory cube. I left no sunflower seeds and am still surprised.
(This was the last of the savory dishes; there was a break for coffee and tea. There was also a lot of alcohol going on, but I didn't take notes on it. We were allowed to order off the Backbar menu, so my last drink was an avocado mocktail with coconut milk. Would buy from seller again. Frequently.)
A cheese plate with eight kinds of cheese, including two splendid goat's milk cheeses and one sheep's milk which I kind of hoarded, a cheddar so sharp that Rob was the only person who loved it and happily ate it all to himself, and one soft cheese that tasted like socks and everybody left on the plate. We all felt bad about that, but not bad enough to eat it.
A sweet tea gelatin that I could not eat because it was black tea, but admired visually, tannin-amber and dotted with a savory whey reduction.
An assortment of custards, ice creams, and sorbets; mine was plum sorbet with condensed pear and slices of fresh peach. Rob had a buttermilk sorbet and hay custard with crystallized apple. Saira had an extraordinary sour plum ice cream that I mooched.
A plateful of tiny little cookies and pastries, including olive oil macarons and shortbread with (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yhlee alert!) cherry blossom jam. We drank Saira's flight of chinato and ran out of room.
Somehow, after that, we walked home.
Rob took pictures. I'll link if he posts them. [edit] Behold! It was an incredible gift of an evening and some of the most beautifully prepared as well as uniquely delicious food I have had in a long time. Company delightful, drinks ridiculous. I walked back into the conversation on the phrase "hug a cactus" and I really feel that was the best possible entry point.
Rabbit, rabbit. Yay.
derspatchel and I went to dinner with saira_ali, M., and Saira's sisters who were visiting from out of town. We went to Journeyman.Wow.
I had never eaten at Journeyman before. I had the vague belief that I had once eaten at a restaurant with a tasting menu, but mostly because I remembered being served tomato granita as an amuse-bouche. As I wrote to my mother when I got home, to the best of my ability to recall, over the course of four hours we ate:
Pickled sea bass with beet granita and crème fraîche. The sea bass was densely savory, the granita vegetable-sweet, the crème fraîche astringent. It was an astonishing start and everything that followed lived up to its implications.
Clams on yellow watermelon with pickled cucumber and corn, tiny mushrooms, some finely diced stone fruit (best guesses peach or yellow plum), and what looked like sorrel to me. My favorite for the combination and scope of textures and flavors. The clams were sweet clean brine.
Heirloom tomato terrine with jalapeño-and-cucumber sorbet and rabbit rillettes ("gefilte rabbit"). It was extremely beautiful to look at, like millefiori glass or a non-terrifying version of Jell-O salad. I loved the little slice of striped green tomato like a miniature watermelon.
(Probably between two earlier courses, the server brought us bread, which was dark and very delicious, with butter and olive oil. I kept using bits of it to mop up leftover sauces, purées, and reductions.)
Grilled octopus over a kind of mole with thinly sliced radish and a sweet corn reduction (i.e., Things Made from Corn). There were chopped pistachios on the other plates, sprinkled attractively between the three stations of octopus.
Deep-fried egg yolk over a sweet pepper sauce with little croutons and bonito flakes on top. It sort of imploded juicily if you ate it in one bite. No grease.
Tiny buckwheat pancakes topped with rolls of duck breast and a sweet onion purée. My favorite for sheer deliciousness and the fact that, due to Rob needing a replacement without onion, I was lucky enough to eat two. They were garnished with anise flowers.
Locally caught sea bass over French lentils with salmon roe on top and a lemon sauce underneath. I am fairly certain I ate the delicious leftover fish skin off the plate of someone who didn't want it.
Loin of mutton and mutton shoulder over soft-cooked sunflower seeds, pickled corn, and cumin-spiced carrot purée. The loin was a meltingly rare slice, the shoulder a shreddy, savory cube. I left no sunflower seeds and am still surprised.
(This was the last of the savory dishes; there was a break for coffee and tea. There was also a lot of alcohol going on, but I didn't take notes on it. We were allowed to order off the Backbar menu, so my last drink was an avocado mocktail with coconut milk. Would buy from seller again. Frequently.)
A cheese plate with eight kinds of cheese, including two splendid goat's milk cheeses and one sheep's milk which I kind of hoarded, a cheddar so sharp that Rob was the only person who loved it and happily ate it all to himself, and one soft cheese that tasted like socks and everybody left on the plate. We all felt bad about that, but not bad enough to eat it.
A sweet tea gelatin that I could not eat because it was black tea, but admired visually, tannin-amber and dotted with a savory whey reduction.
An assortment of custards, ice creams, and sorbets; mine was plum sorbet with condensed pear and slices of fresh peach. Rob had a buttermilk sorbet and hay custard with crystallized apple. Saira had an extraordinary sour plum ice cream that I mooched.
A plateful of tiny little cookies and pastries, including olive oil macarons and shortbread with (
yhlee alert!) cherry blossom jam. We drank Saira's flight of chinato and ran out of room.Somehow, after that, we walked home.
Rob took pictures. I'll link if he posts them. [edit] Behold! It was an incredible gift of an evening and some of the most beautifully prepared as well as uniquely delicious food I have had in a long time. Company delightful, drinks ridiculous. I walked back into the conversation on the phrase "hug a cactus" and I really feel that was the best possible entry point.
Rabbit, rabbit. Yay.
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Thank you for writing this up--it sounds delicious.
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I suspect Journeyman makes its own, because everything else they served appeared to be ridiculously local, house-made, and amazing, but if your sister can find a commercial source, please let me know!
Thank you for writing this up--it sounds delicious.
You're welcome! It was amazing and demanded to be shared, even if only literarily.
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I am so glad you enjoyed it.
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You did mention the people who run it! Our server was also, apparently, the owner, so we probably met one of your friends. He had an excellent, quick-spoken deadpan and described Stichelton cheese as "a splinter faction of Stilton."
I've known about Journeyman since discovering Backbar in 2012, but we never made it despite multiple visits to Backbar. Saira and M. took us. It was amazing of them.
We had a wonderful time.
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I still haven't been to Backbar, because they hadn't opened it yet when we went to Journeyman. I may have to remedy this.
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I was just in the process of editing my comment! That's him. (I do not believe we met Diana, although her face in that photo is turned away and I suppose it's possible she's changed her hair in four years. There was one woman working the floor, but she was mostly at other tables.)
I still haven't been to Backbar, because they hadn't opened it yet when we went to Journeyman. I may have to remedy this.
You should. Their bartender got bored once and tried us on different kinds of absinthe.
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And yep, that's Tse Wei. Diana still had short hair the last time I saw her, but that was a while ago.
Would you mind if I sent this link to them? I think they would be utterly delighted to read your descriptions of the experience: vivid writing meets vivid food. (I can just c&p the post text if you'd prefer not to include the comments thread.)
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Not at all! Just apologize in advance for me if I misremembered dishes or got anything else technically wrong. I did not actually take notes on any of the food; I reconstructed the list from memory and then double-checked against
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That was a lot of the conversation!
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*flicks Tiny Wittgenstein and his even tinier camera off your shoulder*
The duck pancakes, grilled octopus, deep-fried egg yolk, and the mutton are all fighting for My Favorite Thing We Had.
Mrrrrrrt.
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It was the kind of food where you find yourself smiling as you eat it. Partly in amazement, partly because it just tastes that good.
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It makes me very happy that my life contains both of these things.
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I have eaten some really impressive food this year. I had not eaten anything like this.
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Nine
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Me, too. It followed on a pretty cruddy day, chiefly marked by a protracted doctor's appointment and e-mail I would rather not have needed to send. The weather was muggy and I was badly underslept. But I managed to get to
You can see pictures if you follow
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There are now pictures, too!
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I walked back into the conversation on the phrase "hug a cactus" and I really feel that was the best possible entry point.
I've never heard that phrase before, but having heard it I can't imagine many better entry points.
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Thank you for the invitation! It was marvelous.
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TWIST MY ARM.
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(The planet is very small.)
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