MODERN JAPANESE OMAKASE

Quack. Little duck head. We took his brains out. Took all the meat off of his neck. His tongues. Turned it into a meatball. We're gonna serve it inside of his mouth. At Matsu, we like to change the menu almost weekly. Slight variations in herbs and seasonings throughout the week. Different fruit. Whatever's at peak season. Especially if we know the guest, or if it's a returning guest we try to give them something new and exciting so there's always something different for them. We like to follow the seasons and the different flavors that are coming out from all of our local farmers and our fishermen. For tonight's tasting we have 11 courses. Typically we do anywhere from 8 courses to 11 courses. For now, we operate Matsu inside of Mission Avenue Bar and Grill. Three days a week, serving only one table a night until we find a solid location and are able to open up a brick and mortar. The first course is seasonal fruit. We have some late season apples, pears, a little bit of persimmon starting to move into winter citrus. Some grapefruit, tangerines and oranges. We top the fruit with a little bit of salt that's been infused with pine needles and sansho peppercorns. We then garnish it with a little bit of konome, citrus fern, various flowers. We add in sesame oil that's been imported from Japan and finish it with a few sprays of sudachi juice. For the second course, we have agebitashi, which means fried and soaked. At the bottom of the plate, you have fried eggplant that's just been seasoned with a little bit of sea salt. On top of that, you have blanched spinach that's been soaked in a kombu dashi that's been seasoned with cherry blossom soy sauce, koji, and various herbs and flowers. On top of that, we have a dry-aged tuna that's been seasoned with sesame, togarashi, and cherry blossom soy sauce. We top it with caviar and pour a little bit of the kombu dashi table side. For our third course, we have locally caught mackerel. We treat it like eel and grill it, glazing it with kabayaki sauce. On the plate, we finish it with a little bit of yuzu kosho. For our fourth course, we have braised artichokes that are then seared in sesame oil and glazed with mirin. We start with a sudachi gel, add in grilled negi that's been soaked in whiskey barrel-aged soy sauce. We add a chicken dashi gel that's been thickened with modified tapioca starch, raw green onions, and place freshly shaved katsu bushi on top. Course five is wild mushrooms that are seared in sesame oil, deglazed with a little bit of mirin, and then quickly cooked in chicken dashi. There is dashimaki tamago. The way we do it is a little bit closer to a French omelet than a traditional tamago. We plate it with a little bit of sudachi gel, hoshigaki, konome, and place caviar on top of the tamago. Course six, we have a meatball made from duck neck, duck tongue, and duck brains. We grill it and then glaze it in a duck fat tare and season it with sansho peppercorns, serving it in its roasted head. My guest tonight is another chef that likes to focus on no waste, so this dish is really geared towards him. For course seven, we have a tempura course. It's called kakeage. We used salmon belly and scallops. In our tempura batter, we mix in a little bit of sun-dried tomato truffle aioli, fry it, and then place on top house-made furikake and artisanal togarashi that's been imported from Japan. Spray it with a little bit of yuzu juice and finish it with some Maldon sea salt and sesame oil. Course eight, we have a chawanmushi that's made from the leftover braising liquid from short ribs. We steam the chawanmushi while warming up a house-made milk bread. We finish the chawanmushi with a penang curry chicken fat, green curry oil, and grilled cabbage. Course nine, we have a grilled squab that's glazed in our matsuyaki sauce. Matsuyaki sauce is much like our own version of teriyaki. We have sudachi gel, grilled negi that's been soaked in whiskey barrel-aged soy sauce, turnips that are just lightly roasted in a pan with grapeseed oil and salt, a little bit of Japanese raisin tree, which has the texture and flavor of a raisin, but looks like a tree branch, segments of apple. We put a little bit of sancho peppercorns and sesames on top of the squab and finish it with a little bit more of our matsuyaki sauce. If you want to see a more in-depth video on this dish, click the card on the screen. Course ten, we have an American wagyu from Mishima Reserve. We marinate it in red miso paste and then coat it in panko breadcrumbs. Once fried, we season it with a little bit of Maldon sea salt and sancho peppercorns. We place horseradish that's been dehydrated and then rehydrated with whiskey barrel-aged soy sauce and mirin. Onions that are cooked down in koji and mirin for four to five hours. Then we top the wagyu with grilled cabbage, fresh green onions, and finish it with a little bit of sesame oil. Our eleventh course and final course for this evening is a white chocolate mousse. It's made with a custard base to replicate the texture of ice cream without having it melt. We finish it with sesame oil, fermented honey, bee pollen, honeycomb candy, matcha powder, pickled mustard seed, and spray it with sudachi juice. Tonight's menu was all about pushing the limit as far as Japanese flavor profiles and using ingredients that you don't typically see in most restaurants like duck heads.