photo courtesy of Yvonne at Design SHINDIG

We’ve finally hit a little bit of a lull in our booking schedule (thank you sweet Jeebus!) so you’ll probably be seeing more of these post dinner posts coming you’re way (I know, promises promises).

I have a few sets of photos waiting in the wings to be posted but I wanted to start by looking back on a couple of our favorite dishes from Esque. We’re always trying to be creative and sometimes we fly too close to the sun on wings of wax, and our ambition gets the better of us. Having said that . . . there was something about a couple of items on the Esque menu that just ended up working well.

photo courtesy of Yvonne at Design SHINDIG

The first was a shrimp mousse tortellini with a saffron cream sauce made from the shells and heads. I liked the simplicity of this one. When it came together it read like a deconstructed shrimp (is “deconstructed” stuff played out? is the phrase “played out”, played out? should I get my acid washed overalls airbrushed?). Simple but intense and tasty, a hit in my book.

photo courtesy of Yvonne at Design SHINDIG

The other Esque success is one of my favorite courses to date, an uni bánh mì. You’ll definitely be seeing this sammich on a greatest hits menu. I’m especially stoked about the house made pretzel bread that we used in place of the standard baguette. We also pickled our own carrots and radishes to cut the fattyness of the uni. To us, this was a success on a couple of different levels. Not only did we succeed in baking our own mini bread loaves (and churned our own butter, but that’s old news), we also succeeded in infusing a Vietnamese concept with one of our favorite of all Japanese ingredients (is it fusion? I think so). We’ll probably spike future versions of this dish with some monkfish liver pâté. Yeah . . . monkfish liver. Definitely monkfish liver.

photo courtesy of Yvonne at Design SHINDIG