I am always hoping that top chef would do a kosher challenge

Dan,

I’m down if timing works out. I haven’t been there in awhile (used to work next door!).

How about Iron Chef with the secret ingredient being…drum roll…matzo meal?!

Now, THAT would be entertainment!

I am talking to a friend who has some Solo VIP Membership connections. If anything comes of it, I will let you know. In the mean time, I think that we should try to get an Iron Chef to come in as a guest chef at Le Marais.

So my wife and I had dinner at Solo last night. They had printed up a new menu for this month with little Top Chef knives printed by the dishes that were created by Chef Hung. Of course we decided to sample only his creations, so that came in handy.

To start, my wife had pan-roasted sweetbreads with roasted carrots and black truffle in a honey citrus glaze, while I had Hung’s recommended kamachi two ways (raw sashimi with fennel puree and olive oil poached and chopped into a salad). Both dishes were excellent, but the sashimi with the fennel puree was the hit of that course. For the main, my wife had lamb with chick peas, eda mame, olives, and peppers (as well as some other ingredients that I’m sure I’ve forgotten) with pickled red onion in a lamb reduction. The lamb was tender and tasty and quite enjoyable, and if I wasn’t set on steak, that would be my next choice.

But since I WAS set on steak, I went with the black angus in a red wine–beef reduction, with a butternut squash puree and 3 carmelized whole cipollini onions. The steak was a lean cut and was extremely tasty on its own, but the red wine-beef reduction added a great flavor to the dish that really pushed it to new heights. I found myself wiping my plate clean with a piece of bread just to taste more of that reduction.

Even though Hung isn’t the pastry chef, we still decided to sample the dessert offerings. My wife had bananas flambé with brown sugar sauce and rum ice cream and I went with the orange cardamom roasted pineapple with tahitian vanilla ice cream and candied orange peel. It was a perfect ending to a great meal.

Just after we finished our meal we spotted Hung coming out to greet some diners who had asked to meet him. We took the oppportunity to say hello and thank him for the great food.

As a note on Hung… during our meal, my wife would spot him in the kitchen (through the wall of the private room) going back and forth and really taking charge. When he came out to the dining room, he was always quite modest and willing to pose for pictures with fans in the restaurant, but he would always head back into the kitchen to make sure everything was on point so that the kitchen wasn’t running without him for more than 2 or 3 minutes at any given time. It’s good to know that Hung is really involved in his own menu and not just allowing the kitchen staff to make his dishes while he sits back and gets the credit. I hope that will continue to be the case during his tenure as executive chef at Solo.

I didn’t follow Top Chef, and I wasn’t familiar with Solo, so I’m not sure I truly appreciate the significance of this. But for those of you who do, local NYC tv channel WB11 did a Chef Huang segment on his kosher cooking at Solo on this a.m.’s show. The link’s below, look for the appropriate segment on the list of displayed videos.

http://cw11.trb.com/news/local/morningnews/