New restaurant from ray garcia and brad ray, (ray-ray?) inside the disney concert hall opens march 23rd.
review forthcoming?
one item on the menu: beef tartare, black truffle, Kaluga caviar, and creme fraiche.
calling all asian @moonboy403 
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Saw that resys were open and booked for pre theater their first weekend. If anyone goes during soft opening would love some reco’s. Also note AstErid. 
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thanks, fixed. I’ll try and report back with some early 
ratings.
and welcome to ftc.
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I bet they are sourcing some delicious caviar.
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Welcome to FTC!
Will be sure to try it!
Eagerly awaiting the first reports. Have my reservation booking finger ready.
Invited to the friends and family opening this week. Their staff is pretty new so they are going through training as well. Space is a huge revamp from the Patina days.
Menu that pulls from both Chefs - ray Garcia and Brad ray’s culinary backgrounds. The dishes with some Broken Spanish throwback were fantastic. The orecchiette was also delicious - loved how chewy they were - like knife cut noodles.
I feel like a homer so feel free to take it with a grain of salt, the one dish that really stood out was the caviar dish.
898 squash tamale, crema, beurre de barrate, Schrenckii
A moist mildly sweet squash tamale topped with a very light crema. Caviar is served table side in tin to add as much as you want. I’ve eaten a ton of caviar dishes now and this was the most unique prep I’ve had, usually the caviar is a topping and many times a more superfluous addition but in this case you really need all the components together for the dish to shine. The salty sweet aspects explode together and the texture play of the tamale with the defined dry eggs of the schrenckii play a great mouthfeel combo. Also, at the pricing, probably the cheapest place to eat a whole tin of the Schrenckii outside of wholesale.
Sorry about the terrible pic composition 
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what’s the ice cream sitch like?
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there was no ice cream on the menu O_O
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What’s with Astrea cavair being in LA everywhere? Are chefs getting it at a good price, because online it’s about the same as every other company importing Russian sturgeon. Why this brand?
price good. flavor great
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Brings up a question I’d been thinking about to @Clayfu : Has the current Ukraine conflict (and sanctions on Russia) affected the world of caviar? I’m aware that Russia is not a been huge player in the caviar sourcing biz even before war broke out., but I was just wondering about how the whole thing has affected the caviar industry, (if at all)…
(and the Mod can break this off into its own “Russian caviar: Threat or menace?” thread if he so chooses)
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they use less salt than their competitors so you get more umami in each bite. i think chefs like that as mostly the caviar is used as a sort of garnish so it’s nice to get more umami into the dish in a pleasant way and they can just use salt for seasoning. totally speaking out of my ass though.
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So far I have only gotten one email in regards to if we use Russian caviar, which we do not. I haven’t really looked at retail numbers - but at the restaurant level it’s been the same.
But as you know, we are very transparent on where we raise our caviar. Other companies are not so transparent so it’s certainly a possibility that they may be impacted
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Our flavor profile is very different from most caviar producers. Attributed to how long we age our sturgeon and how we age our eggs.
But a recent thought that’s been running in my head is that restaurants and consumers on the west coast are basically used to tasting one specific farm’s caviar despite all the brands. Almost every brand is using that one farm as their base supplier so when we came along the flavor profile is completely different.
Price wise we are a touch higher (or more than a touch) than most other restaurant wholesale companies but outside of one white whale of mine, none of the decision makers seem to care about the price disparity due to the increase in flavor and texture profiles they enjoy.
Probably doesn’t hurt that we don’t feel like a corporate brand. We are basically two people doing marketing/sales/education, one and a half (me being the half) delivery driver, three office staff. So when you talk to someone - you’re talking to someone with very intimate knowledge of what’s going on.
We still have a ways to go to break through the market strength of some of the big dogs. But we are chipping away!
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Enjoying this dish as I type. Chef Garcia came over to congratulate me as the first customer to order it lol… Delicious! #TeamAstrea
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how’s the smog and mosquito sitch outside?
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