The Fighting 44s

Yeah I know it’s a stupid title. Just acknowledge it, then move on.

I have to say, one of my most favorite things about my family is that we do not fear food. Especially my mom’s side. My maternal grandfather used to be a diplomat. Meaning that they had to move around a lot because of my gpa’s job and were exposed to lots of different cultures. Imagine my little grandma being tossed into a new environment where she doesn’t speak the language, with a bunch of kids and having to figure out where to buy food and feed her family. You can’t be a wimp when it comes to those situations. When my mom first got married, she only cooked Korean food for my dad, because that’s all he really liked at the time. But once they started having kids, my mom was able to take us out to non-Korean restaurants and cook non-Korean things and experiment.

Which brings us to August of 2007. My brother and I at Morimoto, being the pigs that we are. For the life of me I can’t remember most of what we ate but I know it was pretty good. I think we both got the $80 omakase menu for lunch.

First course was beltfish.

Second course was a salmon mango napoleon for the brother. I’m allergic to mango so they made me this alternate dish of salmon with cucumber and caviar. He said the napoleon was really good. My salmon, despite how simple it was, was also really tasty.

Third course was chu toro with some sort of bleu cheese topping and some salad with shaved bonito on it.

Fourth course was just a palate cleanser - essentially strawberry soda

Fifth course was a soba with another sort of cheesy touch to it

Sixth course was a miso cod. I’ve had this before but this time they gave me a bigger piece than I got last time.

Seventh course was the sushi course

Eighth course was dessert and seriously, this was the best dessert I’ve had at Morimoto. Usually the desserts are sort of crappy, but this was excellent. It’s a blueberry mirroir cake. My favorite part of the presentation were the little trail of poo-berries. It looks like the cake pooped a trail of berries.

Ok so the bonus? Some ridiculously good sushi I had last month at this teeny place in White plains NY. The guy who owns it used to work at Nobu but now he runs this little place with his wife and daughter. It’s just really good quality fish with tasty garnishes on top. And this guy doesn’t half ass anything. They make their own soy sauce blend and use real wasabi instead of the powdered stuff. What I’ve heard is that this guy is like the soup nazi from Seinfeld, for example, he won’t take walk-ins, only reservations. So even if the restaurant is empty, he won’t let you sit. But if you make a phone call from outside of the place and make reservations, he’ll be happy to seat you. My brother called in advance and made us reservations.

We started with a grilled skate wing. It must have been dried in salt and sugar at some point, it was chewy and salty and sweet.

Then a smoked monkfish liver. This was really good, it had the texture and a little bit of the taste of cheese.

Then we had the collar of some fish. I can’t remember which, but apparently my mom said this was my grandma’s favorite - aw.

I had the sushi moriawase.

I can’t remember what the platter is called, but my brother had the higher-grade version of what I had.

My other brother had a sashimi platter where everything came in a fun basket.

My mom had an a la carte plate where she just ordered stuff she liked

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Blog, Ellen's Cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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