Vespertine, take two

LA County Safer At Home: Days 30-37

Baja Ensenada Surf n Turf Grill.

Time to order! Busy.

Busy.

Shrimp tacos. Mmmmm.

Fish tacos. MMMM.

Sour beers from Smog City, Phantom Carriage, and Mammoth Brewing.

Smog City June Lady at front.

Mamooth Brewing Cherry Sour, center.

Smog City sour lineup. Snugglebug, Benny and the Bretts V3, Aztec Currency, June Lady.

A ton of food from Vespertine.

The spread.

The menu. From right to left, from top.

Seafood boil, pickles and pimento cheese, garden box, collard greens, sweet potatoes, grits, cookies, pudding cake, spoonbread, hot sauce.

Collard greens are intense, sweet potatoes are good but the odor lingered, grits were very rich.

Pudding cake (left) was tasty but not as fancy as description suggested. Spoonbread was mildly sweet and quite tasty, a little like cornbread.

Don't quite get the obsession with literal boxes of vegetables.

Pickles and peanuts were good, pimento cheese was rich.

Seafood boil, reheated the next day, was delicious. Best part of the meal.

Yes, there's collard greens buried under there.

Might have been prettier if it hadn't spilled?

Just straight sugar and pecans.

Kogi Taqueria's carnitas fries. Beer batter FTL.

The Chego-era pork belly bowl. Too bad they messed up the rice this time-- sticky and soggy.

Starting the fooding off with the old Konami favorite, Baja California Fish Tacos. Even during the stay at home, they're quite busy for take-out. And the shrimp tacos (well shrimp and fish both), so good! Got a restock from Smog City Brewing as well. The Snugglebug (in the 32oz can) in particular was quite good, and the June Lady is well-known.

Revisiting Vespertine. Chef Jordan Kahn's second take-out menu for his Michelin 2* during the COVID-19 safer-at-home order is based off the Georgia/American south Lowcountry, and works much better than his first menu go-around (Asian fusion based off his old Red Medicine restaurant).

Unlike Vespertine itself, which is an experience, the take-out is instead takes the literal ton of food approach. The preference for literal boxes of raw vegetables, dishes where other vegetables-hide-the-actual-vegetable-dish, and bowls of grits or porridge don't always make sense to me, but in the context of the Southern cooking, I defintely see the fit this week. In this case, the grits, the pickles, and especially the seafood boil are all culturally appropriate, take-home-friendly, and delicious. Even the collard greens, once you find them under the celery garnish, are intense-yet-fitting.

The desserts this time around are overrated-- they're still good, but not worth the hype... and that seems to remain the biggest spoiler to Vespertine. The exquisite experience of dine-in still doesn't translate, and to his credit, Chef Kahn realizes that. His execution has significantly improved from his first menu, I'm just not quite sure how excited I am to keep paying the non-insubstantial price. As of this writing, menu three (Yucatan) is now being served. As intriguing as it is...

Wrapping up fooding with Kogi Taqueria, the distinct opposite of fine dining and Chef Kahn. Done by the founder of the noveau food truck movement, Chef Roy Choi's Kogi is bold flavors, Asian fusion done into rice bowls, burritos, french fries, and most famous, tacos. The Chego-era bold flavors of the pork belly bowl are almost always good, although this time the rice was clumpy and soggy, gross. And the carintas kimchi fries have apparently been changed (or maybe they always have been, and I forgot?) to beer-battered, which is much too crunchy and doesn't quite balance right with the sauce on top.