Sourdough bread and butter : Bread was very nice. Butter was average at best.
Tomatoes: I really liked the dish. Great pick up on flavor, really bright. The tahini addition gave it a lot of depth. Definitely the thickest tahini i’ve ver had.
Avocado Abalone toast - I think it was decent, but it felt kinda dull. Texture execution was good but i think I was probably looking for something more aggressive in the pickle/acid department. They topped it with small dill pickles but they were pretty flavorless.
Kanpachi: The rice cakes were kinda dry cause it’s multi grain. The fish was fine. The citrus candied oil was a nice touch. I enjoyed it and really liked the flavor of the oil.
Sturgeon: Salt bomb central. The fish of the day was black cod - something super delicate that gets overpowered quickly by the salt. Then there wasn’t really anything to offset the salt. The charred corn husk puree reminded me of taro. It was a really one note dish. Maybe it’s just me but i really like more light flavors with black cod. But the salt was tough to get through. Also only two pieces opposed to the three pieces @porkbelly had.
Pork Cheek: SALTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT. I think the brine solution was off. It almost tasted like cured pork. Then on top of it they sprinkled salt on top. The charred bok choy and peanuts were nice. But at $38 that’s a rough one to bite into.
I’ll probably give it a few months before I go back again and I’m definitely not ordering anything from the main protein sides. Even if they weren’t salty, they were relatively bland dishes especially at the price. We informed them of the salt levels. I think the dish composition and flavor profiles have less to do with opening week jitters and more of a conceptual style of the chef. Not sure if going in a couple months would change that. You can tell there was a lot of thought put behind these dishes. The presentation is great, the technique is well honed. Just the flavors fell flat for me for the majority of the dishes. Service was pretty spot on there. Almost too attentive
Maybe it’s insecurity, creative overthinking, instead of just focusing on what tastes good. And again, I sound like a broken record, but a lot of out-of-town chefs don’t do enough research on the L.A. / SoCal palate. Market fresh is only part of it. But, unlike others, I don’t think she’s bandwagoning for dollars. She seems to really love living in L.A. I hope it works out for her and Simone.
Sidebar: This has nothing to do with nothing. But Nina Simone was an extremely difficult person who supposedly - when she wasn’t performing - made everyone around her miserable. I would be really interested in hearing about Chef Jessica’s relationship to the singer - is it the music, her activism or her difficult personality, and the significance of naming the restaurant in her honor.
I’ve been to Manresa several times. I’ve been both when she was CDC and after she left. For what it’s worth, I preferred the individual dishes and menu as a whole when she was Manresa’s CDC. The talent is there (it’s also there with chef Mitch, I just didn’t care for the menu that night I last visited).
With that said, I have maintained the opinion that Manresa is 2* Michelin, not 3*, at least according to my tastes and experience. I’ve had 2 great dishes there (under chef Largey), but otherwise mostly good dishes. I’ve dined at Manresa and Saison on back to back nights and Manresa and the Restaurant At Meadowood I’m back to back nights. In both cases, the difference between Manresa and the others was apparent both to me and my party, though Manresa was good and certainly nothing to sneeze at.
With that said, I do think she is talented and has potential. I haven’t been to Simone yet but I think it’s early yet and given her technical prowess she can get things dialed in. It sounds like some calibration is needed to realize her potential but the ingredients are there to make this a good restaurant. I’d give it a few seasons to find their groove with the food style and menu.
Admittedly, many of us rabid diner-outers (myself being guilty as charged) on this board (hey, we’re on the board because we are rabid, right?!) tend to “pounce” on hotly anticipated openings. It often takes time for kitchens to find their prime conditioning, and we should give each culinary team a chance to find their bearings.
The only caveat with waiting is that many times, the fickle L.A. market doesn’t allow restaurants to stay open that long before the dreaded 86.
Yah. I think there’s nothing wrong (and even useful) for FTC’ers to visit a restaurant during the grand opening and early days. People do want to know how the food is.
It’s just that if we see potential, it might be worth visiting it again after a bit to see how it’s progressed.
And sometimes new restaurants do quite well even in the early days but those are rarer (Howlin’ Ray’s, Shin Sushi, Torihei, etc., knocked it out of the park even in its early days).
Having eaten the bread and butter at Simone and at Petit Trois within the same week, I really liked the Simone bread and butter more. I’m surprised that @Clayfu thought the Simone butter was just average, as I really loved it. Maybe it was the pairing that the Simone sommelier suggested – Cuvee Marie Jurancon Sec. Nothing like a good wine and butter pairing! Seriously, I think the acidity of the Cuvee Marie Jurancon Sec cut through the richness of the butter.
If anyone goes to Simone, I highly recommend the Cuvee Marie Jurancon Sec which the somm said was his favorite white by the glass on the menu. Nice also because you can have a glass of white and then move on to a bottle of red.
i ate at manresa during her tenure, i don’t remember many details but i thought it was hit or miss. I remember loving the arpege egg but didn’t care for the much lauded “into the vegetable garden” dish. It tasted like what the lamb in my main entree should be eating.
given all that, i’d still like to try simone’s chef’s table.
Chef Kinch’s rendition of Le Gargouillou by Michel Bras, with a “dirt” of burnt chicories. It, like the “(insert season) Tidal Pool” at Manresa in my opinion, has gotten a bit more reductive and less harmonious with each visit. It’s more of an austere palette cleanser now. Last time, it was simply announced as “…Green and Bitter…” and it tasted as such.
I think even locally to RTB/Avery’s “North Coast” which was a tastier and more interesting expression of Northern California “terroir” so to speak (lamb - aged sashimi and its barbecued fat - oysters, ice plant, mermaid’s hair seaweed, artichoke/cardoon and lamb jus).
One challenge in presenting a tasting menu is maintaining a consistency of delicious dishes (or at least dishes that fit well into the context of a progressive meal). Again, the pedigree / training is there, and it’ll be interesting to see how Simone develops over the next couple of months.
I saw this last night too! I’ll call the restaurant later to get the price point and more info about this since I don’t see that the Chef’s counter is available on Resy anymore.
