Speaking of Taiwan and seafood, we needs an Addiction Aquatic Development to open up here in L.A.
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Does Angler source non-âgoldâ pineapples (old-school sour rather than low-acid sweet)? I havenât been able to find them anywhere.
yes, but Chefâs are known as â3 michelin star chefsâ if the restaurant gets 3 stars under their tenure. Skeneâs would definitely be a 3 star chef, he opened/had equity and was the head chef at a restaurant that received their first 3 stars under him. If anyone would qualify under that terminology itâd be him
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Was at Angler on Friday night, fairly slow. Seemed to be one full restaurant for one turn.
Also 3 tables got the King Crab O_O (not me!)
I wanted to like it based on the concept but I thought it was just a fancy sushi market with OK quality sushi. Granted I didnât try any of the other concepts. Iâd rather have something like the Hong Kong style seafood restaurants with tanks of live seafood and you pick and choose how its cooked.
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Oh funny you mentioned this place. We went with really high hopes when we were in Taiwan a few months ago and it was a major disappointment. We only tried their sushi and sashimi and everything was mediocre to bad. I would say you would find better sushi at Gelsons than this place. The setup was also very hectic and not very pleasant. The place looks dope though, which gave me high hopes.
Maybe the live seafood is better, but the sushi and sashimi was a hard pass.
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Saisonâs co-founder is a somm.
Not one miss on the menu. The only dish that wasnât outstanding was the spot prawn. Good but difficult to eat and sauce was a little overwhelming for the sweetness of the prawn. Highlights were
Antelope tartare
Beet
Radichhio
Potatoes
Sea bass with crispy skin in spicy schezuan sauce
Melon sorbet
Damage was $900 for 4 people but we had oysters, spot prawns, $168 ribeye, $180 bottle of burgundy and a bunch of drinks. I think we could have easily shaved off $300-$400. Weâd certainly come back.
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Great service as well. Free valet parking. They take your ticket at the end of the meal and pull your car up. I didnât take a picture of the oysters but they were excellent. $4 a pop. Listed on the menu as bivalves. Kusshi and Beausoleis. Perfectly shucked. A lot of good briny liquid. We all enjoyed the seaweed vinegar.
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Saison used to only use one importer / distributor for sake as that source also carried wine (Vine Connections). Angler is now using World Sake and Vine Connections for sake from looking at that sake menu. Canât say their selections are solid (other than Yuho which is one of my favorites), but I think they could do even better for sake pairing with a seafood centric menu and some sake pair even better with oysters than what they are using currently. They are supposed to have Den (Den Sake Brewery, Oakland) but interestingly not mentioned.
I believe Saison once hosted some really big name wine producers for super wine dinners, including Aubert de Villane of DRC who flew in just for that some years ago. So it should not come off as a surprise that their wine lists are ridiculous and deep.
Although some say Keiko a Nob Hill has an even deeper and wider wine list including many not listed, as Seigo san has a ridiculous collection and specializes in Bordeaux and Burgundy.
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Oenophiles gotta be damned fast speedreaders!
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Just imagine the somm updating that monstrosity regularlyâŚwhere does he even start?
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Oenophiles donât bother reading through it cause everything is marked up 4x per the standard saison/angler protocol.
uni for scale or it didnât happen
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Anglerâs corkage fee for LA (and I believe the exact same for SF)
$50 for each of the first two 750mL bottles of wine, $100 per 750mL bottle thereafter
Problem with a large and deep wine list is unless you have something so niche you know they wonât carry it or donât have that particular vintage, you run the risk of bringing something they already have. But likely not an issue with the geekiest oenophiles who are probably way more prepared and have already figured it out.
The part that will always kill me, is that some of the best sake or wine pairings are with cheaper bottles that generally cost less than corkage, and not the fancy expensive ones, yet the pairing with the food is truly excellent (just speaking in general, though not always the case). Did that before, of course donât let the restaurant know or some will think you are taking the piss. Although nothing wrong with baller bottles, sometimes you just have to spoil yourself and your friends rotten if you can afford to (or frequently if you can really afford to).
If Bruce Lee were a sommelier: Be wine or sake, my friend.
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The web site says âsample wine list,â but the PDF is generated by BinWise, which suggests that itâs real-time inventory, or close to it.
Some of the markups arenât high. E.g. Picariello Fiano is $45, undiscounted retail in California is $22.
Went Sunday night, it was about 1/3 full during the time we were there. It was a bit jarring to leave behind the bright, hard, concrete parking structure with its sad fountain and walk into an expansive space bathed in warmth and fire on one side in the open kitchen, and cooly lit in blue on the side with the tanks. Fake shark on that wall was a little corny, but whatever - you can choose to look at the â1 comma crabâ underneath it. (Definitely helped to distract from the fact that I was at the mall where I worked my first job during high school. 
) Hachiya persimmons, various post-fillet fish carcasses, and aromatics hung over the prep areas, presumably to dry/age.
Service is unobtrusive and more fine dining style - condiments and dishes brought and thoroughly explained, plates and silverware changed as necessary, glasses kept filled, manager-looking type checking in, great pacing. One notable detail was that whether you were a post-shopping party of two sharing just a few small dishes, or a large party ordering large-format (cough more expensive cough) dishes and drinks, you were treated with the same professional courtesy and not an ounce of the condescension Iâve seen at some other popular restaurants.
Another plus? There is PLENTY of space between tables; nobody is sliding their ass across your plate as they squeeze into the seat next to you. Volume on the âshitty 80s musicâ (per the Saveur article @robert posted) is loud enough to hear the song but not so loud as to drown out conversation.
On to the food.
Daisy - tequila, passionfruit, pisco.
Oysters (Kusshi, Shigoku, and Pacific Gold) - very good. The seaweed vinegar > cocktail sauce.
Radicchio - ridiculous. Would go back for this alone. Our server described the radicchio âXOâ as a radicchio reduction with a touch of sherry vinegar topped with crunchy fried onions, garlic, and shallots.
Sea bream ceviche - A very good rendition of ceviche with a hint of lemongrass(?). Not mind-blowingly good, but fun to eat, like cracking the top of creme brulee and trying to get a good ratio of sweet crunchy stuff to soft stuff underneath.
Live spot prawns - cooked perfectly, sauce was redolent with shrimp-essence and so nice sopped up with the parker house rolls. (Thanks for the pro-tip, @PorkyBelly!)
Potatoes. Crunchy at first bite, tender in the middle, just really nice texturally. Cheese was fine.
Box crab - served with drawn butter and cocktail sauce. Sweet, delicate flesh, perfectly cooked, difficult to eat because of the spines, even though the legs were pre-cut. (Spoon some of the custardy innards onto a roll, sprinkle with the bbq salt - yum.) Parker house rolls with cultured seaweed butter in the background - a must get for all the dipping opportunities, and that butter tho.
No dessert because two of us were stuffed after all this. Didnât think it was prohibitively expensive, especially given the quality of the ingredients and the amount of work that goes into dishes like the radicchio. (Per a FB post - âThe outer leaves and aromatics are cooked slowly over the embers, and then aged above the fire for a few days. Those aromatics are gently simmered into a radicchio XO sauce, and seasoned with a dressing of radicchio vinegar and XO.â) Itâs not hard to spend this much or more at a lot of places around town. Sure, they arenât located on the basement level of a second-tier mall, but easy, free parking has to count for something in this town, no?
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On the enormous wine book. Is that ridiculously showoff-y or a wine connoisseurâs dream? I donât get it. Some prankster (with time on their hands) should go over there and make the staff wait while they go over the entire book. I mean, thatâs what itâs made for, right? 