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.
no subject
Thank you for writing this up--it sounds delicious.
no subject
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.
no subject