A la Carte Kitchen Week 11: The Last Supper

Week 11 Last Supper!
On Day 1, all of us went out to lunch at Metropolitan, a New American cuisine restaurant. We got the chef's menu for a really cheap price. I'll talk about the food there in another post.

This week's menu:
Amuse: Borage soy-wrapper sushi
Bread: Grilled Paratha Roti
Soup: Molecular Gazpacho
Salad: Octopus Salad
Pasta: Black Garlic Pasta
Entree: Duck Confit
Dessert: Carnival Dessert

Amuse: Soy-wrapper sushi with borage flowers. It was actually pretty good. I think it was stuffed with shrimp.

Bread: Grilled Paratha Roti. My partner and I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what parath roti even was. Turned out it was a type of Indian flatbread, almost like a tortilla, except it's buttery and more flakey. We served it with romesco sauce and cukes pickled with plum vinegar.

Soup: Molecular Gazpacho. What's so 'molecular' about it? A bit of molecular gastronomy has taken place here: the mozzarella is pureed with cream, then solidified into a sphere in sodium alginate bath. The result is a jelly-coated creamy ball of cheese.

Salad: Octopus Salad. With polenta croutons. I think they overcooked the octopus--it was pretty rubbery.

Pasta: Black Garlic Pasta. With summer squash, tomatoes, and cream sauce. It was OK, didn't like it too much.

Entree: Duck Confit. With dates, fingerling potatoes, and sunchoke chips. The duck itself looks pretty gross, but it was quite tasty.

Dessert: Carnival-Theme Dessert. Funnel cakes, pavlova, passionfruit curd, cotton candy, Merlot-cherry granita. Very festive, the granita was pretty good, strong wine flavor. Funnel cakes tasted good only when freshly made...

So that was our last dinner service. I had fun and learned a lot about fine dining plating and concepts!