Tomat Dinner

Highlights from our collaboration

The surf & turf

I first ate at Tomat last October, when I was out in LA cooking for Fun House. The meal made an impression, as did Natalie & Harry the owners. They ferment all of the things, as I do, and they share my conviction that food should be constructed entirely from scratch using unimpeachably excellent products, and that byproducts need to be used in imaginative ways to create new building blocks and condiments. Above all, the flavors cohered beautifully, with all the depth and detail that I look for—and there’s not a shred of pretentiousness present anywhere on the premises.

Harry and I began talking about a collaboration a while back, and since I was coming out to do the residency at the Ecology Center we scheduled it for the weekend before that. The idea was that we’d take their regular menu and modify it based on some ferments that I brought from home and some whims that seized our imaginations. We ran it down on the Tuesday morning, sketching out all the changes, and then met at the Santa Monica market the following morning to buy a bunch of gleamingly fresh produce.

Thursday and Friday I showed up and prepped, assisted by their wonderful team, making a couple of moles, a special XO sauce, a big batch of paratha-scallion pancake hybrids, a pot of ricotta, and a few other things. Saturday it all came together in the special one-time menu. I shot some phone pictures at the pass, but I missed a bunch of dishes. It’s not easy to fully document the output of a restaurant kitchen when you’re also cooking in that kitchen.

You can find my series about laminated flatbreads at the following links:

• Scallion pancakes

• Paratha

• Msemen

This was Harry’s smoked salmon terrine with a dashi gelée (made from a dashi he whipped up using local kombu and a fish carcass that had been hanging over the fire for a week or so). He added some pickled grapes and amazing rye-fennel short crust crackers that were modified versions of their galette crust.

This is the duck dish, with gorgeous grilled-smoked breast sitting atop schmears of two moles: theirs and mine. I made mine with the 3-year milpa miso I brought (nixtamalized sweet corn koji, kabocha squash & its seeds, tarbais beans) plus tomatillos, scallions, and meyer lemons that I charred in their pizza oven, sesame seeds, dried apple skins, copious spices, guajillo and ancho chiles, and avocado honey.

This made for a fun contrast, and for what it’s worth 100% of the guests who ventured a guess correctly identified which was which. I’m not sure what that says about me except that sour bitterness appears to be my brand. Harry used the solids left after straining my mole to flavor the whipped butter they served with their trademark (and utterly incredible) barbari bread.

Next up, the surf & turf. Beautiful dry-aged tuna and beef—tuna brushed with beef fat, beef brushed with anchovy garum—and four condiments: my 10-year green peaso, my green gochujang, a combination of two things that I can’t remember, and hot English mustard. I’ll be writing about the gochujang later. My claim to fame with the peaso is that I made and named it before the Noma book came out. It’s honestly extraordinary how fresh and bright it still tastes in its tenth year.

Here’s Harry’s jeweled rice topped with a dollop of the XO sauce I made from their pantry & fridge: pancetta, dried whelks, tons of alliums including charred green onions, their scallop gut garum, sherry, black vinegar, avocado honey, and rendered bone marrow fat. This did not suck.

Dessert one was their masa cake: soaked in apricot syrup, frosted with crème patissière, and topped with a mixture of fresh mango and mangoes that we fermented with salt and spices for two days. The mango sorbet and crumble alongside were phenomenal, thanks to Lila the pastry chef.

This is a sublime flourless chocolate situation with candied cacao nibs, whipped cream with mezcal, and a dessert mole that I am very proud of. The whole dish worked incredibly well as an homage to chocolate’s Mesoamerican origins and traditions.

I didn’t manage to photograph a bunch of others, but this should give you an idea. Many thanks to everyone who came to eat (including some old and new friends), and of course to Nat, Harry, and the whole Tomat crew for a wonderful week of great ideas and great cooking.