Moto Part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

Course 5: Ginger Beer Fizz
Expectation: glass of ginger ale
Reality: they brought out a champagne glass and we mixed our own fizz.
Taste: Very gingery. Not sure if I'd want to drink it every day, but a nice change of pace.

And by this time, the wine started to kick in, and I have no pictures for a while!

Course 6: Goat Cheese Snow
Expectation: standard goat cheese
Reality: a small bowl with a white pile of cheese that looked like a fresh pile of snow.
Taste: very mild goat cheese. I don't know if the method they used to get this stuff to look like snow mellowed out the tanginess that goat cheese usually has. But the flavor was mild but obviously goat cheese. I could eat this cheese a lot.

No picture--i ate it too fast!

Course 7: Caramel Apple with Bacon

Expectation: An apple sitting on a strip of bacon
Reality: beautiful plating with a roasted (?) apple surrounding a bit of chicken, in a great bacon fork. Served with aromatic utensils.
Taste: Great! The apple had a bit of sweetnss, and the chicken inside picked that up. The sauce was like a bacon-infused mild bbq sauce. The aromatic utensils, shown better on the right, had sprigs of sage in them. Just freshly picked and aromatic so that if you breathed in while spooning the food into your mouth, you really enhanced the flavor with the sage.

Side note on presentation: As you can see from the picture above, the plate was served on metal plates that look like a battleship setup. The aromatic utensils with the sage in it were a nice touch that allowed you to control how much sage accent you put into the dish. Well done.


Intermission: The wait staff at this point brought out these things that looked like brownies. In reality, it was deep-frozen pumpernickel croutons. We were asked to wait for them to defrost. Troy took an early taste and gave us the notice that they were delicious.


Course 8: Boullabaisse
Expectation: some seafood soup
Reality: A minimalist presentation with a mussel, a bit of anchovy (i think, i can't remember what was on the right of the bowl) and a deep-fried soba noodle. Oh jeez, the wine is now really kicking in, so I can't remember, and the picture isn't telling me what it was!
Taste: whatever was in it, it was brilliant. The soup had such a variety of flavors, and was very complex, but still stayed light. Not too tomato-y, if that's a word. Unique presentation and great taste.

Course 9: Hamachi and Gumbo
Expectation: a soup and some fish
Reality: on the left, we had a small trivet-like plate that had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. The hamachi ( a variety of a white fish) was
Taste: The hamachi was delicious. I've been on a sushi kick, so this just added to it. They did a nice job of spicing the fish so it was really tasty. So good that I ate it before I remember to snap the picture. The gumbo was good, but not so great that it made you want to slap your momma (to borrow an expression from a woman I met who came from Louisiana). I think I like my gumbo better ;-D. Overall, though, the impression the dish left was very strong. placed on the trivet, and what cooking it had was done by the cold. It was essentially raw. The bowl on the right was gumbo.

Course 10: Jalapeno with Cilantro
Expectation: A pepper on a plate with some herbs
Reality: a green puff with some crunchies on it
Taste: so good, I didn't snap a picture till it was gone. You can see some of the jalapeno bit, and tell that its green, but that's all i got. I think I wound up licking the plate.




Course 11: BBQ pork and all the Fixins'
Expectations: pulled pork sandwich
Reality: Cool presentation of pulled pork and sauces.
Taste: I do remember the taste was outstanding. By now, the croutons have been defrosted. This was the bread part of the fixins.' We also had 2 sauces, but for the life of me, I can't remember them. The croutons lived up to Troy's billing. They were awesome.





Course 12: Chicken Fried Mac-n-Cheese

Expectation: You would figure that if they resorted to mac-n-cheese, they must be running out of ideas and we'd be done, right? I expected fried chicken and kraft mac n cheese.
Reality: highball glass filled with elbow macaroni that had been deep fried until crisp with a couple of chunks of fried chicken on top.
Taste: the deep-fried macaroni were interesting. Added a texture to it unlike normal macaroni. I'm an al dente pasta fan so I found it intriguing. The fried chicken had a very spicy batter that played nicely with the mild cheese sauce covering both the macaroni and the chicken. Overall, great dish. But you knew that because you know Mac and Cheese is my fave ever.

Course 13: Steak and Eggs
Expectation: some scrambled eggs and a t-bone
Reality: moto's presentation of steak and eggs featured a boiled egg on the left, and some rare slices of kobe beef on the right. No memory of what the middle item was. The egg on the left is a quail egg, and they sliced it down to this cute little square. Unless is came from a square quail.
Taste: Not being able to stand eggs, I concentrated on the beef. It was tender, and awesomely amazing. Second best raw or nearly raw beef experience ever (and that's another blog post waiting to happen).

With this, we move on to dessert, and another blog post.

A Journey to Moto (Part 1)

We were recently in Chicago, and had the chance to go to Moto Restaurant. This was Troy and I's second trip there, and this time we brought along our friends Christy and Cian. It was part of our annual baseball trip (more on that later).

Anyway, the deal with Moto is that the chef, Homaro Cantu is a really creative guy, and comes up with all sorts of way to juxtapose your expectations with reality. For example, we had a dessert that looked like a hotdog, but was made with sweet stuff. We also had nachos for dessert.

The food was so tempting and good that I often forgot to take a picture before I ate each course. So apologies in advance for having to browse my half-eaten food ;-)

Did I mention there were 19 courses? And 12 wine pairings? Unbelievable. Now lets see if I can remember them, because this was a while ago.

Course 1: The Menu
Well, even the menu is half-eaten.
The waiter delivers the menu on a crisp, tortilla-like cracker. On one side the 5- and 10-course menus. The reverse side features the "Grand Tour Moto" -- the 18-course mac-daddy offering. If you are traveling 1000 miles, you have to go with the Grand tour, and thus we do. Next up, the wine decision. They offer 12 pairings with the 18 courses. Back to 1000 miles, so we're in on that too.

The menu sounds interesting. We're getting Italian food, Chicago dog, nachos, sushi, carrot cake.

Sounds pretty normal. HA! Surprises await.

Course 2: Nitro Sushi Roll
Expectation: fish wrapped in seaweed.
Reality: Salmon with flash-frozen ginger puff topped with sesame-oil infused liquid nitrogen. Oh, with some wasabi powder sprinkled in for good luck.
Taste: Outstanding. The liquid nitrogen "cooks" the salmon in a very unique way. The ginger puff gives the meal some texture. The really outstanding thing is the sesame oil that has turned into Rice Krispie type morsels of deliciousness. The paired wine was duval-leroy vertua NV-- a dry, crisp sparkling that I thought went awesomely with the sushi. It helped cut through the tanginess that I think the liquid nitrogen delivered.



Course 3: Italian Food

Expectation: Spaghetti and Meatballs?
Reality: 2 soups placed side-by-side in one bow--liquefied pepperoni pizza and Caesar salad.
Taste: Surprising. One wouldn't think that you could get a soup to have a nice consistency and taste like the food its imitating--but this did. Especially the Caesar salad soup. It was if you were drinking the romaine, garlic, anchovies and croutons from a well-made salad. Short of making the salad then throwing it in the blender, I am baffled about the process to make this soup. The second side tastes like a pepperoni pizza. This side was not as good as the other side because you couldn't pick out some of the various flavors like in the salad side. The overwhelming flavor here was spicy pepperoni and tomato. Pleasant, but not the surprisingly pleasant amazement as the other side. Note here that when having pizza, one expects beer, and sure enough, the "wine" pairing was a beer. A nice Belgian (unibroue TERRIBLE chambly for those keeping track at home)


Course 4: Red and Yellow Beet Cake

Expectation: BEAT!
Reality: Wow, if beets always tasted this good, I would eat them more often.
Taste: light, fluffy, mild beet flavor. Small variances in the taste of the red and the yellow. The sauces are also made of red and yellow beet, but flavored differently than the beet cakes. The things on the right? Not sure, but that and the herbs added some different flavors and textures to the dish. The dish was enhanced by a pairing with a riesling that was really quite nice. I could have had seconds of the wine. The dish, not a big beet fan, but if I was ever going to order beets, I wouldn't have them any other way.




I'll pause here (because its late, and since this post is being written so far after our trip, why not?), and display the wine pairing list. Wish I could figure out why all my pictures are being rotated.

More later....