Marimoto
Last night I tuned in for my weekly fix of Iron Chef. Instead, there was a program titled "Marimoto R.A.W." ... after three years as Iron Chef Japanese, Marimoto left the program to open "the best Japanese restaurant in Philadelphia" at an investment cost of $2,300,000. The program documented the life of the restaurant from planning stages through opening day. Who knows? It may still be open.
The one-time Iron Chef wanted a menu with just one item, basically whatever he decided to prepare, the customer having nothing to say about the meal at all. The promoter who was funding the place thought this unwise, that at most four or five people would risk such a blind choice each evening, the rest preferring to select what they would be eating. Both were wrong, of course. While most people preferred to know what they would be eating, about eighty per night wanted to see what the chef could invent for them (at about $85 per meal).
Everything fell behind at the beginning. Construction was slow and the kitchen wasn't ready for action when it should have been, but finding a staff was frustratingly slow, too, requiring that people be brought in from other areas. They nearly had to postpone opening night.
There were training sessions in which everyone tried to learn the names and characteristics of the plates and all of the ingredients in them. Then there was a dress rehersal in which the kitchen crew prepared all of the planned menu for the servers to try, both to make sure they could do it under "battle conditions" and to get the opinions of the servers on the plates being offered. I suspect several items were removed from the menu as a result of criticism received; certainly some were modified.
Hours away from opening, Marimoto used some torn-up bamboo roll-up shades to prepare a sixty foot long sushi roll to be shared among the staff. Shortly before opening they had another ceremony, using wooden hammers to break open a cask of rice wine, which they served up in square wooden cups, for luck.
Opening night apparently went well, the calm in the eating area contrasting well with the frenzy in the kitchen.
It was a fun and informative show, but I think I would have preferred to watch yet another episode of the inventive cooking I'm used to seeing on the Iron Chef.
Comments (3)
I should think such an eatery would do quite well with the upper crust. Perhaps New York might have been a better choice. Not that Philadelphia doesn't have it's share of overly wealthy. Interesting. More interesting to me than the Iron Chef.
I, too, saw that this was on. However, I, too, prefer watching the Iron Chef, so I tuned to something else.
One of the best restaurants in New Orleans does this. You go in and are served what the chef has prepared that day. For some courses, you can choose between 2 items. The food is yummy and it was packed when I was there.
Would you consider putting links to your novel in your custom module? I would read it a chapter at a time if I could get to it easily. I started it, but now have to go look for the links.