Moto last week
For the first time in a long while, I've posted a new dream in the dream blog. There's two actually. One from last week and one from yesterday's fitful morning.
Last week I went to Moto, this very she-she restaurant here in the city. I've been wanting to go for about a year. It's gotten tons of accolades from the press since it opened. All I knew about it was that the food had a sort of sci-fi flare and that the waiters wore lab coats and walked around with syringes injecting stuff into your food. It combined science and food for unique things, but that the chef was well-trained from a big restaurant, so that the food was also very good. So, my ex, Claude, had asked me if I wanted to go to dinner and I was all like, "sure." Usually when we go to dinner, I'm pretty indifferent to where we go. I'm not much of a food snob and I like everything and I figure whereever we go will be better than the mac and cheese or ramen or even slightly fancier thing I might cook for myself. Moto occured to me, though, so I said, "Have you heard of Moto?"
"That place on Fulton Market?" He said. I didn't even know where it was. I said sure. He's like, "well, call and see if you can get a reservation in twenty minutes." Though it was a Saturday, it was only like 6 o'clock, so I thought it could happen - and it did.
I had expected either an ultra-modern or an industrial motif, but it was surprisingly subdued. Sea-foam green walls with bamboo and candles. It looked like a typical upscale modern restaurant. I did notice that there were like a million waiters and only about 40 seats or so. It was smaller than I'd expected.
So, we sit down and a waiter asks us if we'd dined here before or if we were familiar with how it worked (the woman on the phone when I made the reservation told me that it was price fixe and there was no ala carte ordering). We told him we were new diners and didn't know enough to treat us as though we did. Two menus were set before us. The menus were on plates and decorated with puffed rice, garnish, sprouts, and some chopped nuts. We had three choices: a five, ten, or twenty course meal. Each meal had an item or two that was unique to its meal, I think, which is probably incentive to come back (that, and the fact that their menu changes a bit, since most of what I'd read about was not served to me this evening). I told Claude I'd be fine with any choice, but that it seemed unlikely that we'd ever come back, so we might as well go for it. And we did.
20 courses? Yes. Bear in mind that some of these courses consisted of a single shot glass filled with a liquid, a couple of spoons with something smeared on them, or a single roll of sushi maki (along with a piece of edible flavored rice paper, but I'm getting ahead of myself). Other interesting dishes included a lobster with "champagne grapes," but these grapes derive their name from the carbonation process they use to make them fizzle. Another course was "doughnut soup," which was a white, warm viscous liquid (I know what you're thinking Topher and that's gross, yet somehow appropriate) that tastes exactly like a liquified Crispy Kreme doughnut.
With the 20 courses we took on the Grand Tour of wines, which consisted of 14 different varieties. The pairings were perfect. Needless to say, I was bloated and a little drunk by the end of that meal.
Little did I know that was just the beginning of my night.
I had yet to visit Dee for her birthday. They had planned on going to get Margarita's as big as your head or whatever. I obviously didn't make that, and instead met up with them and the super-fratty bar, Sheffield's. The staff at Sheffield's is really cool. Too bad it's clientele usually isn't. Anyway, I meet up with Frank and Rodney and Dee and some of Dee's other "straight" friends and a couple of the Homo ones. The straight ones seem gay to me but maybe I'm just losing perspective. I have a couple drinks there. Frank suggests Stoli Vanilla and diet, so that's what I have. Dee's pretty trashed and we're all starting to get tired of the breeders, so we tell Dee we're heading out. We head first to The North End, then to Cocktail, then to Buck's (I think?), then to X/O, then to Sidetrack, then to Circuit (Frank leaves between these two I think) then we head to the Closet, where we're supposed to meet John and Jason (I think that's his name...?), but they're just leaving the Closet because John's drink was taken and he didn't like that and felt slighted, but it could've happened to anybody. so we go to Melrose and have breakfast and I think about how different this meal of Chicken fingers is so much different than my 20 course meal from earlier, but no less good.
Well, that was my last saturday. I'm so behind. Ah well, maybe I'll catch up one day.
Last week I went to Moto, this very she-she restaurant here in the city. I've been wanting to go for about a year. It's gotten tons of accolades from the press since it opened. All I knew about it was that the food had a sort of sci-fi flare and that the waiters wore lab coats and walked around with syringes injecting stuff into your food. It combined science and food for unique things, but that the chef was well-trained from a big restaurant, so that the food was also very good. So, my ex, Claude, had asked me if I wanted to go to dinner and I was all like, "sure." Usually when we go to dinner, I'm pretty indifferent to where we go. I'm not much of a food snob and I like everything and I figure whereever we go will be better than the mac and cheese or ramen or even slightly fancier thing I might cook for myself. Moto occured to me, though, so I said, "Have you heard of Moto?"
"That place on Fulton Market?" He said. I didn't even know where it was. I said sure. He's like, "well, call and see if you can get a reservation in twenty minutes." Though it was a Saturday, it was only like 6 o'clock, so I thought it could happen - and it did.
I had expected either an ultra-modern or an industrial motif, but it was surprisingly subdued. Sea-foam green walls with bamboo and candles. It looked like a typical upscale modern restaurant. I did notice that there were like a million waiters and only about 40 seats or so. It was smaller than I'd expected.
So, we sit down and a waiter asks us if we'd dined here before or if we were familiar with how it worked (the woman on the phone when I made the reservation told me that it was price fixe and there was no ala carte ordering). We told him we were new diners and didn't know enough to treat us as though we did. Two menus were set before us. The menus were on plates and decorated with puffed rice, garnish, sprouts, and some chopped nuts. We had three choices: a five, ten, or twenty course meal. Each meal had an item or two that was unique to its meal, I think, which is probably incentive to come back (that, and the fact that their menu changes a bit, since most of what I'd read about was not served to me this evening). I told Claude I'd be fine with any choice, but that it seemed unlikely that we'd ever come back, so we might as well go for it. And we did.
20 courses? Yes. Bear in mind that some of these courses consisted of a single shot glass filled with a liquid, a couple of spoons with something smeared on them, or a single roll of sushi maki (along with a piece of edible flavored rice paper, but I'm getting ahead of myself). Other interesting dishes included a lobster with "champagne grapes," but these grapes derive their name from the carbonation process they use to make them fizzle. Another course was "doughnut soup," which was a white, warm viscous liquid (I know what you're thinking Topher and that's gross, yet somehow appropriate) that tastes exactly like a liquified Crispy Kreme doughnut.
With the 20 courses we took on the Grand Tour of wines, which consisted of 14 different varieties. The pairings were perfect. Needless to say, I was bloated and a little drunk by the end of that meal.
Little did I know that was just the beginning of my night.
I had yet to visit Dee for her birthday. They had planned on going to get Margarita's as big as your head or whatever. I obviously didn't make that, and instead met up with them and the super-fratty bar, Sheffield's. The staff at Sheffield's is really cool. Too bad it's clientele usually isn't. Anyway, I meet up with Frank and Rodney and Dee and some of Dee's other "straight" friends and a couple of the Homo ones. The straight ones seem gay to me but maybe I'm just losing perspective. I have a couple drinks there. Frank suggests Stoli Vanilla and diet, so that's what I have. Dee's pretty trashed and we're all starting to get tired of the breeders, so we tell Dee we're heading out. We head first to The North End, then to Cocktail, then to Buck's (I think?), then to X/O, then to Sidetrack, then to Circuit (Frank leaves between these two I think) then we head to the Closet, where we're supposed to meet John and Jason (I think that's his name...?), but they're just leaving the Closet because John's drink was taken and he didn't like that and felt slighted, but it could've happened to anybody. so we go to Melrose and have breakfast and I think about how different this meal of Chicken fingers is so much different than my 20 course meal from earlier, but no less good.
Well, that was my last saturday. I'm so behind. Ah well, maybe I'll catch up one day.
posted by Brian at
12:18 AM
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