paradigm: the test kitchen

We are currently rolling out our first Paradigm menu tonight on 4 September, Thursday.  The Paradigm concept is our 'restaurant within a restaurant' or 'chef table' manifestation.  It will feature one 10 to 12 course tasting menu each week highlighting our flavor compositions, technical endeavors, experimental successes, and momentary flights of whimsy.  The menu will roll at a set time every Thursday for no more than 12 persons.  We will set the dinner separate from the main dining floor of Neomi's.  The menu will be a week to week rotation of things that work vs. things we like vs. things that we can improve upon and make better.  It will be the ultimate learning experience for us to date, and hopefully the guests will feel the same (maybe not to the same extreme, but in a food-entertaining sort of way).  The new Neomi's menu is becoming more solid in service and execution and now that the foundation is 'sort of' stable... it's time to roll.  Feets don't fail us now.

The first run will be a 'soft run' to work out the kinks, explore the format, and hopefully evolve into something that we and the guests are both comfortable with.  We are not looking to be an expression of 'molecular' dining (so go somewhere else if that's what you want), but simply to use things we've learned to make simple good food.  Umami will definitely play a huge part in our dishes.  We will pull out things that have worked for us (maybe we've been there, done that, put it aside, but now it's time to revisit and get better) and as I said... there will be the ever present whimsy (or some would say 'corniness') that represents us so well.  One can say that by this theory, this will be the worst Paradigm menu ever... considering that each successive one should show some degree of improvement from the preceding ones.  Since this is the first, we only have our previous experiences to guide us.  I'm not sure if that counts for optimism, but it pumps me up!

Download paradigm_menu_9408.doc

Comments

[uwe]

The new menu reads as a manifest to you as a creator. I’ll let Joseph Campbell take over from here, "…if you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you.” Cheers to Paradigm and her creators! Uwe

[Sara]

Hi Chad,
Great meeting you last night and congratulations again on a job well done! The meal was truly fantastic with plenty of whimsy and some surprising combos and textures. Great fun. I look forward to seeing how Paradigm develops.