I haven't really taken many Paradigm photos for this week, since many of our dishes were things we've already played with or demonstrated. There was just so much going on, and something incredible happened as well... we actually got really busy! There has been such a lull in our area for the past couple of months or more... the economic impact on our industry. For the first time, in such a long time, it seems that the American dollar has perked its ears up a little. It began with a little push from the pool & beach area a few days ago (holiday weekend + nice weather + northern migrants), then continued into our restaurant dinner service, then a great Thanksgiving holiday when we did over twice the covers we had on reservation (nice story behind that one... I'm sure it will be funny many many years down the road... but, not now), and just seems to be continuing on even further into the weekend. Take that run-on sentence to the bank.
Shaking off rust has been great. Our Thanksgiving menu wasn't exactly designed to be the most comprehensive, but we learned a couple of lessons that we're going to keep in mind and re-evaluate our Christmas dinners with.
For Paradigm, we worked more on our ideas for the Taste 5, the crabcake, the chicken noodles, white chocolate and caviar, a turkey dish (hopefully the last one for awhile), and also a nice duck charcuterie plate served with sun jewel melon compressed with a lemon curry leaf syrup that came from the market. Chef K did a study of Heston Blumenthal's fish & chip recipe. Fabian waited until the last minute, and came up with some interesting items...
creme fraiche cake, lemongrass semi-fredo, coconut bubbles
sake lemon sorbet, berliners with chocolate, yoghurt chamomile tea powder
Jayden came in on Tuesday with a party of five. It was great meeting her. We did a special Paradigm style dinner for them.