After seven stops on the 7 train, Gavin Kaysen, Executive Chef of Café Boulud and members of his kitchen crew, 7 strong, landed in Flushing where they embarked on a reconnaissance eating tour of the area’s pho shops — with a stop off at the Grand Restaurant in the New World Mall for dim sum. Fueled by Tsingtao, they explored in and around the dining rooms and stalls off Main Street, slurping and sweating their way to discovering the essence of pho — that great Vietnamese noodle soup.

Even with foggy heads, the mission was clear: take what they learned back to their kitchen at 76th and Madison and recreate it with a pronounced French technique.

“The quality of the broth knocked me out,” admits Kaysen, a Southern California native who grew up eating the stuff. “No matter where we were—or what type of establishment we visited —the broth was always pristine, delicate, yet extremely complex.” In conclusion, it would take the James Beard Award winning chef every bit of that golden medal to interpret the dish.

Over time his vermicelli-splattered tasting notes led to several broth iterations, with a final version debuting a month ago on the restaurant’s winter Le Voyage menu. He begins with a clarified beef stock, made from neck and oxtail bones.  It is cooked down with a 12-spice mixture including cinnamon, clove and star anise and then seasoned with a light soy and house-made hoisin sauce. As for the glass noodles, they’re bought in Chinatown.“You cannot possibly improve them,” he says. They are topped first with beef tenderloin and braised beef tendons and then with a salad of mung beans, mint, Thai basil and cilantro.

The dish has been a big hit with the restaurant’s Upper East Side clientele.  It is poured tableside style français and available for the remainder of the season. It will also be the first of four courses at a Burgundy and Beyond wine dinner on February 8th where umami and Burgundy will wed for an evening. (There are still a few seats left at the communal table in the private dining room.)

When asked about how he found a wine to go with the rich, fatty noodle soup, the restaurant’s sommelier Blue Pilkington said, “I don’t think it is really difficult at all so long as you have a wine with well-developed and integrated soft tannins.”

Though Burgundy can be a little more forgiving than most reds and holds up to pho’s robust broth, it’s still immensely challenging to match. Pilkington demystifies the concept: “The earthy quality of the wines made from the pinot noir grape head towards the umami spectrum, showing more intensity and purity than any other red wines do. Thus, the umami in the pho will draw out even more of the same from the wine.”

During the dinner Pilkington will pair three wines with the course, most notably the Etude Pinot Noir 1996 from Napa Valley (not technically a Burgundy, but the same grape). “These wines will compliment rather than be in any dominance over the pho and the final experience.”

As for Kaysen’s pairing suggestion? “Usually I’ll do it with a beer, which is probably the best way.”

–Matt Rodbard

Sometimes a spicy dish can just about bring tears to the eyes. And not because of Scovilles. “I got to taste some 100-year-old gochujang and it was absolutely mind-blowing,” said Top Chef runner-up Angelo Sosa, about the fermented red pepper paste, with a near crack of the voice. When chefs get a chance to sample the good stuff, things can get a little emotional.

Sosa had just returned from a 10-day eating tour of South Korea and wanted to share the details. As chef-owner of New York City Asian comfort food restaurant Social Eatz, Sosa—raised by an Italian mother and Dominican father—has mastered the art of banh mi but this was his first trip to the land of banchan and bulgogi, supported by the Korean Food Foundation and serving as a reward for winning Eater’s Greatest Burger In America competition with his Bibimbap Burger. If it isn’t obvious, Korean cuisine is blowing up these days. Are you taking notes?

Sosa’s first stop was to observe the art of kimchi production, the spicy, funky, national dish of Korea. “It was like the Bordeaux region for cabbage,” he said of the mineral-packed produce he pulled from the clay soil at a patch in Hanam, located on Seoul’s eastern edge. Each cabbage weighed over five pounds and had the texture of a crisp apple.

In the yard of a 300-year-old house, an old lady showed him how it’s done. The cabbage had been brined for 10 hours in salt and water, rinsed and patted dry. She then peeled back and brushed each layer with a sauce of baby shrimp, fish sauce, fish stock, daikon radish, scallions and red peppers. The fermentation process, which follows, lasts around a week.

“Some Americans just don’t take to the stuff,” he said, implying that they are really missing out.

Sosa next visited Seoil Farm, a scenic farm and factory located in Anseong—two hours south of the capital. It is here he experienced the century-aged gochujang—a fermented pepper paste stored in earthenware called onggi. “I was the first foreigner to be let in,” he says of the secure area where he was allowed to sample the secret sauce. There, a worker lifted the heavy clay lid and burrowed through three inches of a tar-like substance to ladle out a pinkie-sized sample of the Ferrari-red mixture reserved exclusively for medicinal purposes.

“They say it has cured cancers,” said Sosa of the prized elixir, without a hint of suspicion.

Back in the States, Sosa is coming down from the experience. But only barely. “I want to book my next trip today,” he said even while weighed down by jetlag. And so should you. The year 2012 is going to be a big one for Korean cuisine. And now that we’ve got you thinking all about kimchi, do yourself a favor and don’t be one of those Americans.

Say…uh…kimchi me!

–Matt Rodbard

Shigeto Kamada of Kambi Ramen House

Kambi was one of several restaurants and over 30 premium sake, shochu and craft beer brewers who were pouring on October 7th at SIP + BITE + SLURP. About four hundred sake enthusiasts, and a few dabblers, joined LUCKYRICE and the Japanese Culinary Center at the Metropolitan Pavilion to taste some of the best sake available in the U.S. While most Americans are used to drinking cheap sake that is served warm in most run-of-the-mill Japanese restaurants, our guests had a chance to learn about and try junmaishu (“pure rice sake”) that is made from just four ingredients, water, rice, koji and yeast. The inexpensive sake you find in most restaurants is what’s called futsushu or “regular” sake which usually means that the rice used to make it is not milled and in order to increase the production yield, manufacturers add distilled alcohol and extra water. Warming it masks the poor flavor.

At SIP + BITE + SLURP, we tippled sake from a number of premium artisanal producers from the rural areas of Japan. Many of them have been owned and operated by multi-generations of the same family. When you taste how good sake can be, it’s difficult to go back to drinking the warm, mass-produced futsushu that most of us are used to drinking. We followed the experts who picked Dassai and Tatenokawa as their favorites in a blind taste test and we’re happy to say we agreed with them wholeheartedly. The excellent Tatenokawa 18 Junmai Daiginjo was something new and delicious. Unfortunately, they make so little of it that they’re only able to bring about 300 bottles of it into the U.S.

Japan’s Beer Revolution

On Tuesday, September 27th and Wednesday, September 28th LUCKYRICE will give away a pair of tickets ($50 value) each day to The Japan Society’s tasting and talk about Japanese craft beers, Japan’s Beer Revolution.

From Thursday, September 29th to Thursday, October 6th, LUCKYRICE will give away a pair of tickets ($100 value) each day to SIP + BITE + SLURP.

The price of entry is no more than two clicks and a few keystrokes. Follow the rules below and your Twitter handle will be entered for a random drawing each day during the promotion period.

To Enter:

Step 1
Follow @luckyricefest on Twitter.

Click here to follow us.

Step 2
Tweet a link to this page. Remember to mention @luckyricefest and #sipbiteslurp so we can see your entry. And, tell us who you would bring as your guest (friend, lover, family member etc.). Don’t forget to mention his or her Twitter handle if he/she has one. If that special person enters also, you’ll have two chances to win.

Better yet, make it easy. Click below to auto-tweet.

Step 3 – Check your Twitter dedicated messages the day after you enter. We’ll pick a winner at random and contact him or her via Twitter dedicated message.

Limited to one entry per day per Twitter handle.

By entering this ticket Promotion, entrants accept and agree to be bound by these Official Rules. Any violation of these rules may result in disqualification. All decisions of the judges regarding this Promotion are final and binding in all respects. Click here for complete Terms and Conditions

Enter To Win Tickets Here

Buy Tickets Here

If you’ve lived long enough, you’ll remember that thirty years ago, eating raw fish in a Japanese restaurant sounded bizarre and even a bit disgusting to most Americans. Nowadays, famous actors consume so much sushi that they give themselves mercury poisoning.

In the early part of this millennium, thanks in large part to a certain renegade East Village-based Korean American genius, ramen has supplanted sushi as the Japanese food of the moment. But it doesn’t stop there. New York’s Japanese food scene has become so sophisticated that it’s possible to consume various regional specialties just in the area south of 14th Street. As American diners’ knowledge of Japanese cuisine increases, we have also begun to understand the brewing methods and the flavors of fine artisanal sake (more often called nihonshu or literally “Japanese wine” by the Japanese themselves.)

LUCKYRICE, in conjunction with the Japanese Culinary Center, presents SIP + BITE + SLURP, an exploration of sake as interpreted by artisanal brewers from various regions of Japan. The brewers themselves will be in town and will be getting together for one night only to pour their sake and talk about the various areas of Japan from which they hail.

We’ve also lined up eight restaurants representing four major regions of Japan. As you walk the floor, you will be able to taste both the sakes and dishes from Hokkaido in the north to Kyushu in the south and the major urban centers of Kanto (Tokyo area) and Kinki (Osaka area) in between.

Brooklyn’s Hibino will present that most elegant of Japanese foods kaiseki-ryori which originated in Kyoto, the ancient seat of imperial power. Hakata Tonton, which has transported the pork specialties from the southern Japanese island of Kyushu to the West Village will be providing bites. Kasadela – based in Alphabet City – will show you what a sticky, sweet and spicy Nagoya-style tebasaki (chicken wing) tastes like. Otafuku located on 9th Street, will be cooking their take on okonomiyaki which translates to “as you like it” meaning that you can have that Japanese pancake your way. Michelin star decorated Kyo Ya, usually tucked away in the East Village, will come out to play and represent Hokkaido as will 47th Street’s sleek sushi bar Tsushima.

We’ll also have the Kambi Ramen House located in the East Village- that’s where the SLURP comes in. In Japan, noisily slurping your ramen not only cools the noodles as they enter your mouth but also shows how much you’re enjoying them.

Join us and get ready to say as the Japanese do before one eats a meal itadakimasu which means “I shall now humbly receive.”

Please see below for the artisanal sake, shochu, craft beer brands and restaurants that will be present and which regions of Japan they will be representing.

Buy Tickets Here

The food, prepared by an all-star line-up, was delicious. The New York chefs in attendance included Marcus Samuellson, Anita Lo, Daniel Boulud, Kerry Heffernan and Francois Payard. Paul Bartolotta was in from Las Vegas and Jose Garces of Amada in Philadelphia offered wonderful dishes as well.

But, the showstopper was a live demonstration by Chef Morimoto of how to break down what appeared to be about a 200 pound maguro, from a whole fish to pieces of sushi. Here’s a look at how it’s done:

It’s been a year in the planning so you can imagine how excited we were when we kicked off the 2011 LUCKYRICE Festival last night at annisa.

Here’s a picture of the two stars of last night’s LUCKYRICE Kick-Off Dinner Presented by HSBC Bank: Chef Anita Lo and Danielle Chang, the founder of LUCKYRICE.

What a delicious meal it was! Anita prepared a five course tasting menu inspired by the themes of the festival events and each course was paired with an outstanding Austrian wine provided by the Austrian wine expert Monika Caha.

As we waited for the guests to arrive, we nibbled on a selection of five hors d’oevre which gave the guests an idea of the types of tastes they will be getting at the Grand Feast: Duck Rillettes with 5-Spice and Hoisin on Toast, Chilled Avocado Soup Shooters, Unagi and Scallion Fritters with Soy Glaze, Annisa Canapé Cups and LUCKYRICE Balls.

If you were not aware of the delicious food that Anita Lo is cooking at annisa, take a glance at this menu. Of course, this is not what you would order on a normal night at annisa but as you read through the combinations of flavors, you will get a sense of how versatile a chef she is.

First Course – Talk and Taste Korea
Tartare of White Tuna with Korean Chili Paste
Fritsch Grûner Veltliner Steinberg 2009 (Wagram, Austria)

Second Course – Morimoto
Foi Gras Chawan Mushi with Sunchokes and Meyer Lemon
Stadlmann Zierfandler Mandelhöh 2008 (Thermenregion, Austria)

Third Course – Night Market
Seafood Medley with Curry Laksa Sauce
Neumeister Sauvignon Blanc Klausen 2009 (Steiermakr, Austria)

Fourth Course – Macau
Pork Tenderloin with Manila Clams, Black Beans and Green Garlic
Anita & Hans Nittnaus Pannobile 2006 (Burgenland, Austria)

Fifth Course – La Fête Chinoise
Blancmange with Toasted Almonds and Kumquats
Anita & Hans Nittnaus Trockenbeerenauslese 2005 (Burgenland, Austria)

While last night’s dinner was an intimate affair for about 40 guests, tonight’s cocktail party at The Bowery Hotel will be an exciting celebration of cocktail culture with hundreds of guests in attendance. Seventeen bartenders will be serving cocktails made with Asian ingredients. Let’s hope for a warm evening so we can enjoy those cocktails on the hotel’s beautiful terrace.

We maintain that anyone, regardless of race and background, can master any Asian cuisine and cook it as well as anyone from whichever Asian country, provided they have the proper ingredients and training. Japanese chefs, after all, have mastered just about every global cuisine, haven’t they? Judging from the comments on the CNN Eatocracy blog, others choose to take the cultural essentialist position claiming that only Asians can cook Asian food and the only authentic food is in Asia.

Close to 300 comments were posted in response.

See for yourself:

Five Misconceptions About Asian Food

Mark your calendar and get ready to fill your belly on February 3rd, 2011. The day is known as Seol-nal (Lunar New Year) in Korea and is more popularly known elsewhere as the Chinese New Year. Usually a week before the actual Lunar New Year, I get really excited thinking about all the good food, the family reunions and the traditional games I used to play. This year will be no different.

When I was 9 years old, still living back in Seoul, Korea, I would dress up in my traditional Korean clothes known as hanbok, which consists of a blouse shirt known as the jeogori and a full-length wrap-around skirt known as the chima. The tricky thing about this outfit is tying the goreum, the ribbon located in the front of the blouse jacket. I would usually struggle by myself for about 10 minutes or so making weird knots and finally giving up and asking my mom to make that perfect goreum. I distinctly remember loving the feeling of being in my colorful hanbok, twirling around and then catching the air underneath my chima. The joy of being in the chima was also in its unlimited ability to expand which was critical since I was always determined to eat as much good food as possible but also needed to hide my bulging stomach.

Waking up on Seol-nal, I would usually be greeted in the morning by the mouthwatering smells of delicious mandu (Korean dumplings), jeon (pan-fried dishes) and dduk-gook (rice cake soup) and the sounds of my mother and aunts talking and cooking while the pans on the stove sizzled. As part of the tradition, before indulging ourselves in this delectable food, we dressed in our hanbok and paid respect to our elders by doing saebae or bowing. When the kids do saebae, the adults usually give saebae money to them. When I was growing up, I put much more emphasis on how much money I would receive than on honoring the elders. What kid wouldn’t?! After all, the saebae money kept me in toys and books for the rest of the year.

After saebae, we could finally eat. The signature Seol-nal dish is called dduk-gook, a flavorful rice cake soup made with chicken, beef or anchovy broth, garlic, soy sauce, scallions, with lightly beaten eggs mixed in. We Koreans believe that eating dduk-gook brings good luck and blessings for the year ahead. The elders liked to tell the kids that if we ate all our dduk-gook, we would get one year older and wiser. Oh, the responsibility that came with eating one bowl of dduk-gook! I even wondered if I would age 3 years in one day if I ate three bowls of dduk-gook.

As an adult, I often think about the good old days when I would get up feeling ecstatic about wearing beautiful hanbok and eating wonderful homecooked food in the spirit of the New Year. But because I have now reached the age where I don’t particularly want to think about getting one year older, I’ll just think about the beautiful, savory food that will be prepared in Asian homes everywhere to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit.

“Sae-hae-bohk mahn-hee bah-duh-sae-yo!” (“Happy New Year!” in Korean.)

Dinner at Sanur

Gathered in the no-frills basement restaurant was a delightfully curious assortment of dining companions—a supermodel, a government dignitary, a crazy chef, a revered food critic, hungry friends—lured together by the promise of good Malaysian grub.

Sanur looks like a stereotype of the Chinatown “hole-in-the-wall” restaurant: fluorescent-lit, adorned with frayed expired calendars and with questionable bathrooms that make you think twice about drinking that second glass of water…the type of joint that screams out “cheap & authentic!” and that unfortunately characterizes too many Asian restaurants in America.

Fortunately for us, the food was—as promised by Ling “I’ve-eaten-here-100-times-but-don’t-hate-me-‘cuz-I’m-supermodel-skinny” Tan—tasty, as in loaded with fermented shrimp paste, oozing with fat, salted and generously spiced.

First up was the signature Malay dish, “Roti Canai”. Frequently described as a pancake, this was much more than that—a flaky, savory-sweet, crispy-yet-chewy concoction made of flour, ghee, egg and condensed milk that is best eaten dipped in the accompanying chili-laden chicken curry broth. We placed 4 orders to start.

Then the dishes started to arrive, one after another, quickly overcrowding our table with everything from the quotidian chicken satay to the exotic “Bak-Kut Teh” (a pork-based herbal soup). Along the way, there was Malaysia’s signature rice noodle dish “Char Kway Teow”, lady fingers (okra) and on choy (hollow Chinese greens) with sambal, fried fish balls and tofu stuffed in peppers and eggplant, aromatic crabs and oh-so-much-more.

Aromatic Crabs

Of particular deliciousness was the stingray wrapped in lotus leaf, which was, at $16.95, the most expensive item on the menu. I love presents, and this certainly looked like a culinary offering from the Malaysian food gods. Chef Sun Chen Lai deep-fries the exotic-sounding stingray (more commonly known on our shores as skate fish) before wrapping it in a lotus leaf and returning it to the wok. The dish is served with a tangy sambal sauce.

“Very authentic,” said the Malaysian Trade Commissioner, his head bobbing up and down with approval.

“Delicious,“ said the Important Food Critic, with a mouth too full to utter further descriptives.

Stingray Wrapped in Lotus Leaf

Meanwhile, the dinner conversation remained light and breezy. The sugarcane juice we were sucking down gave us a sugar high but kept us politely sober. As Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, most Malaysians don’t drink booze—which may partially explain why I don’t have many Malaysian friends—until recently.

“How was your trip to Sichuan this summer? Did you see any pandas?” asked Ling, the most affably childlike supermodel with whom I’ve dined in recent memory.

“What I want to know is if you ate any panda,” Jeffrey “The Man Who Ate Everything” Steingarten teased. “Panda ears are delicious…much better than pig ears.”

“Really!” asked Ling with incredulity.

At this point, Michael Bao—the bad-ass chef with a schoolboy’s charm—strolled in, looking particularly swanky in his new threads and buttoned-down-to-here shirt. Despite our protesting stomachs, we decided to order more food: off-the-menu black-pepper crabs that Jeffrey had been craving ever since his last trip to Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile, Bao regaled us with his jaw-dropping stories of coming to America; the oldest of 6 children, the future chef was a teenage Vietnamese refugee who endured weeks on a boat with 60 or so other men before he was rescued by Americans and brought to upstate New York. There, he was adopted by an Italian family he had met while washing dishes in their family restaurant.

There were more stories—about gangsters, bullet wounds and drugs, but the aromatic black-pepper crabs had found its way to our table by then. Quickly wok-fried, these crustaceans were lightly dipped in a peppery sauce and oozing with crab gut goodness that the uninhibited pull out with their teeth. Just as I got to this messy work, Bao fixed his stare on me: “Wanna check out a new restaurant space with me tomorrow?” And with dizzying speed, Chef Bao threw out some quick-fire “back-of-the-envelope” numbers that attested to the infallibility of his newest venture. Oh Bao, I thought, Asians really are good at math!

Courageously, Steingarten asked the gorgeous Ling about her love life. It turns out that the supermodel not only does not drink booze or coffee (tea is OK, though), smoke cigarettes or, for that matter, eat cheese, she also won’t date any one who does. Protesting, the encyclopedic Steingarten started to expostulate about the etymology of cheese and something about its Chinese origins. He was probably joking, but by then food coma had set in and no one was in the mood to challenge him.

Our mouths tingling from the spices and imaginations set afire from Chef Bao’s coming-to-America saga, we spilled out onto Doyers Street—once the home of Chinatown’s most menacing gangs and now the stomping ground of bankers and stiletto heeled women tipsy from $17 cocktails at Apothéke. Bellies full, the night still young, leftovers swaddled in take-out containers swinging side-by-side in plastic bags, we stepped into the night.
– Danielle Chang

Sanur, 18 Doyers Street
Tel: 212.267.0088