Dump-adjacent!
Snagged one for next Wednesday evening. Will report back! And also for the popup at Konbi echo park sunday
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I lied! we went last night. Here’s the rundown.
Overall: REALLY delicious. Really fun experience, super chill. It was QUITE long for 6 courses (didn’t leave til almost 10:00) and I hate to say that the portions were TOO big? Granted my wife and I are small people but there was a lot of carb action (pancake, toast, rice, potato waffle, cake) which got us quite full quickly. But the flavors, amount of effort put into each dish, originality all get a great score. Maybe just a little more acidic, vegetable forward dishes (like the salad that accompanied the chickpea cake) would help cut through. Didn’t do pairings, had their welcome cocktail (cherry shrub + amaro) and called it because we both had early days today.
Menu:
Snack Course: A Pizelle with vegan n’duja, uni, fingerlime, hoshigaki, and shaved dried uni scraps (like an uni bottarga!) Really nice start, a little more fingerlime would be awesome to have acid in each bite but that carrot 'nduja was killer. Also love eating last year’s hoshigaki as the new batch hangs overhead.
First Course: Various sea snacks, matzoh, yuzu kosho aoli.
Loved this one, there was a TON of each of the abalone, whelk, mussels. The jaew like sauce they were in is great. I dug the tin fished inspo with a touch of thai + jewish.
Next up Pissaladière made with a chickpea Socca. Arugula salad. I LIKED this one but the pit-in olives n top of the socca were a bit of an annoyance because you couldn’t compose a great bite. This is where we started to realize that the meal would be QUITE large. The arugula salad on the side was really nice but the bits of thinly sliced lemon were a little tough to chew. But the dish I think about the least…
Dressed crab: My favorite of the night. A whole rock crab head stuffed with rice, currants, vadouvan curry, cashews. Served with a plate of a vadouvan/crab fat sauce on the side to toss the contents of the crab head into. Texture of the pilaf was great with the tiny shreds of crab throughout and the occasional large lump. curry sauce was killer.
Shrimp Toast: Love anything with Transparentsea shrimp. The newburg sauce was delicious, the shrimp topping delicious, gilded with more caviar + some pickled ramps. The ramp focaccia was tasty but maybe fried a bit too long as the crusts were quite tough. Also this was HUGE. After the crab a giant hunk of toast was hard to get through. Then again, if I had half of the toast I’d be like “why not the full toast!” so better to have too much 
Trout Tails + Accoutrement. Second favorite of the night. Chef came by and talked about the excitement of serving what would normally be a bummer, the trout tail. Dry aged with Beet Molasses, grilled. Perfect texture on the trout + skin. The horseradish/beet sauces were great. Potato waffle with the cornichon and pickled beets, also great. DEFINITELY fulfilled the “jewish deli” theme on this one and it reminded me of home in New York. I loved this one.
Last! Apple + Sunchoke Cake. I know I was complaining about the meal being big but I do love to end on a cake-y dessert, I sometimes get sad if the only dessert is an ice cream/sorbet situation. This one was great, really decadent dense cake, almost bread pudding-y with a whey caramel. I loved the black walnut jam on the side, I don’t think it needed the truffle (my wife wasn’t a fan) but black walnut was such a staple in my Georgian household growing up there was a nice familiarity that came through in this dish.
They sent us home with a little mason jar of marcona almonds, always a nice touch. They even asked us for a favorite song which made it’s way onto the playlist. Overall, this is the kind of meal I think I was missing in LA. A midrange tasting menu price point that is risk taking and creative. I know we have things like Kinn and Orsa and Winston too, those are the kinds of dinners that excite me where I can go in and be surprised even if some dishes are a miss. And what I miss most about the food scene in NYC.
I’d go back for a menu change for sure.
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Progression and point of view of this tasting menu seems unique. Love it.
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For the folks on here that go try and ask for seats 17 and 18 per Sergio’s recommendation.
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Thanks. I’m waiting for the next round of reservations to open.
smorgasbird november reservations are open for booking now on resy.
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Smorgasbird November reservations are now sold out on resy. 
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Nov. 28: Sang Yoon, Father’s Office (Fox calls him an “honorary Jew”)
Nov. 29: Lee Wolen, Boka
Nov. 30: Elizabeth Heitner and Nestor Silva, Malli
Dec. 1: Michael Solomonov, Zahav
Dec. 5: Miles Thompson, new restaurant opening in L.A.
Dec. 6: Ana Sortun, Oleana
Dec. 7: Katianna and John Hong, Yangban Society
Dec. 8: Christopher Kostow, The Restaurant at Meadowood, The Charter Oak, and Loveski Deli
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What’s special about those 2 seats?
If it’s the seats I’m thinking of on the left side of the chef’s table, they are closest to where they are doing a lot of plating for the dishes in the tasting menu. It’s off to the side of the main kitchen line as they’re still running their normal menu for the rest of the restaurant.
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2nd stop of my pre-dinner bang…
corned beef tongue, cornichon de bourbonne, mustard seed & lovage
Exactly like corned beef but with tongue instead. It’s very rich and fatty so the sweet and sour crunch of cornichon and that touch of spiciness from the whole grain mustard really rounded out the tongue’s flavor and its soft texture.
chamomile lavender leomonade
Intensely floral with bracing acidity but has enough sweetness to balance it.
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Following pre-dinner bangs at Needle and Birdie G’s bar, I ended up at…
Smorgasbird at Birdie G’s
This particular iteration of tasting menu is a labor of love by Birdie G’s CDC Matthew Schaler. It’s his homage to the food his parents served in their steakhouse during his childhood.
TLDR: This menu feels very much in the R&D phase and needs some work but it shows some promise. More importantly, the restaurant needs more space for Chef Schaler to work with. All night long, he was in the weeds plating our food alone so naturally, none of our food were served hot. This also affected pacing of the dinner. Given that there were only 6 courses, it really shouldn’t take 3 hours long.
8 lucky guests of smorgasbird are seated at the kitchen-facing table
nice touch with each guest’s name written on the welcoming envelop that contains the night’s menu
welcome drink
Matthew Schaler in the flesh
complimentary rolls, green walnut butter & caviar
the rolls by themselves are buttery but the texture’s a bit dry with an overly dark crust. when paired with creamy green walnut butter and briny california oscetra caviar, the salty-sweet combination is out of whack and ate quite sweet even though the intent is a riff on honey butter. the main issue i had was with the chopped green walnuts that are studded in the butter…they were heavy in fruity notes and had a ton of sweetness by themselves.
salad bar: beet french, rancho gordo beans, shu & debbie’s lettuces
lively greens are nicely dressed in a beet french dressing and laced with fried black eye peas, pickled shallots and sunflower petals. when i could get all the elements together on one bite, it worked quite well. the salad had a nice balance of sweet, sour, floral, bitter, and savory notes.
transparent sea farm shrimp, pancetta, treviso, pineapple-bbq sauce
these gorgeous and meaty transparent farm shrimps were wrapped with savory pancetta, cooked, then stuffed with horseradish before they were torched with a searzall blowtorch that created pleasantly smoky notes. given the spiciness of the horseradish, using the sweetness of the pineapple bbq sauce made a lot of sense alongside light bitter notes of treviso. however, the plate, sauce, and shrimp came out lukewarm…almost cold.
there were also too much sauce…perhaps only a third of sauce is needed on the plate given its potency.
farinata florentine, rachel’s artichoke miso, cheddar, perigord black truffle
this is a play on pizza where the chickpea-based “pancake” acts as the crust of the pizza and topped with an immensely savory artichoke miso “sauce” along with grated cheddar that are sharp and tangy. to top it off, an ungodly amount of black truffle is rained over the top. everything worked well except for the truffle where it’s almost completely undetectable by smell or taste. why? this dish also came out barely lukewarm so the truffle shavings didn’t have a chance to release their intoxicating pungent aromas.
peads & barnett’s pork chop, apple sauce, “two sides”
the best dish of the night by far…but once again, this course came out barely lukewarm…aside from this persistent issue, the grilled pork chop had a brown sugar and coriander spice rub that went really well together and it was seasoned perfectly. it doesn’t hurt that the accompanied cinnamon apple puree is a classic pairing with pork! it also doesn’t hurt that peads & barnett’s offerings are basically the a5 wagyu of pork. finally, this dish came with two lovely sides: a melt-in-your-mouth grilled apple and mushrooms that were glazed with a burgundy red wine jus.
hoshigaki blondie a la mode, brown butter caramel, sage infused ice cream
sweet, chewy, hot, cold. chef definitely nailed this blondie. the caramel’s richness and a bit of sage notes from the ice cream rounded out this dessert nicely! the only slight issue i had was that the subtle flavors of the hoshigaki were lost even though the use of its inherent chewiness was ingenious.
Post-dinner bang…
pickle chick | fried half chicken, potato breading, dill pickle hot sauce
loved the brine and bright zesty sauce but the chicken could’ve been more moist and its crust more crunchy
came with a complimentary side of california osetra caviar courtesy of chef schaler
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was sergio in da house? did they ever play your two requested songs?
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no and I don’t know because it was so loud I couldn’t hear a thing.
a bit disappointing regarding sergio since that was one of the selling points for this meal.
An intimate tasting menu full of seasonal surprises and delights, personally presented to you by Chef/Co-Owner Jeremy Fox, Chef de Cuisine Matthew Schaler and lovely Birdie G’s team.
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Review forthcoming?
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My guess it Jeremy Fox is spending more time at Rustic Canyon right now onboarding their new chef. I also noticed the temperature problem with tasting menu meal. Mostly it didn’t matter given the nature of the dishes I had, but my beef dish was not as hot as it could have been. You could tell that coordination of service wasn’t that smooth yet. Especially with a front row seat to the kitchen, you can see components or whole dishes lingering at the pass. With time I expect it will get better. It actually looks like they’re dialing back the size of things a bit, when we went early on Matt mentioned the previous week they had 7 courses and people were not able to finish.
Note on the truffles, it’s too early for Perigords I believe, so these were likely Burgundy truffles or some other variety. The giveaway to me is you don’t see the dark interior you do with Perigords or their related australian winter truffle. The walnuts in the butter are likely the same preserved preparation we had as part of our cheese course on our menu. By themselves they are quite sweet and taste strongly of baking spices. It’s a shame they didn’t use the black truffle condiment we had with our cheese instead. It would have gone well with the butter and caviar.
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Sounds likely. The menu doesn’t specify, the color and translucence look right, it’s easier to be that generous given the lower price, and they’re very subtle and delicate.
Personally I find Perigord black truffles (Tuber melanosporum) lovely when cooked, but raw they smell like Elmer’s glue. The Australian winter truffles I’ve seen to date are also Tuber melanosporum (propagated from Perigord spores).
Alba white truffles (Tuber magnatum Pico) should be raw and shaved as thinly as possible.
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This is actually the first time I ever encountered such persistent temperature problem for hot dishes in a tasting menu format. It would make sense since most restaurants put out all their effort in perfecting their “high end” offerings. Just out of curiosity, which other restaurants had this problem with their tasting menu?
Yup. A bit of chaos really especially when they try to find enough hands to synchronize service after plating. They also tried to heat up the hot courses in the oven or salamander after long plating time which seemed quite odd.
I, too, was not expecting Perigord truffles initially given that it’s November. But when I asked, Chef Schaler said Perigord from France. Now, I’m wondering if I misheard…