Chef at Home

“Eighteen Flavors of Winter” is the dish, but the original idea was green. It was spring time and when I started seeing so many green vegetables, that created a focus on the color. I wanted the feel of the dish to be intensely green with couple of spots of brightness, but different color to dynamize the visual aspect. 

Acrylic can be tinted to pretty much any color you want. Acrylic also captures light and reflects it. Small scale production does not interest most companies, so finding someone for the fabrication become a long term project. When the design was done we were able to source the acrylic though our restaurant architect. The company who designed our lounge tables, which have an acrylic top, connected us to their vendor. Picking out the color with the right green, calculating the percentage of that color applied to the acrylic to  get to the right one was another several weeks. In a couple of weeks the finished pieces arrived at the restaurant just after labor day. We already had the crystal base with a sanded finish to hold the acrylic. So we started the dish later in the year, with the first plater going on the menu in early October. 

The different components are: beetroot and wasabi, honeydew and peppermint, lettuce and lemon, carrot and black sesame, fake cucumber, daikon and soy, zucchini and green olive, rapini, green apple and jalapeno, avocado and spices. 

The good thing is that we will be ready for spring this year. 

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