Chez Rob

My brother invited me over for dinner.  In the spirit of restaurant reviews, I decided to review his dinner as a blog post.

The decor was cozy like a modern dining room kitchen combo that was well lit from an open sliding glass door.

The menu was a fixed price three course meal.  The evening's selections were nicely printed on a one page menu.  The allure for the night was some of the ingredients were modified with molecular gastronomy to change the texture of ordinary ingredients.  This was a BYOB place.  They didn't charge a corking fee.

The first course was a beautiful salad with cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, bacon, chives, dry spices, & feta cheese.  The bacon was crispy and the vegetables were crunchy.  It had a beautiful presentation and nothing was modified to the best of my knowledge.   It was a nice start to the meal.

The second course was a traditional Japanese soup with magic noodles.  The broth was a mix of light beef and chicken broth.  Mushrooms and green onions floated on top.  Then the magic noodles were added after the soup was presented.  Squirted out of a condiment container, the onion paste puffed up into a fried rice noodle consistency as it hit the warm broth.  They tasted like a mild onion flavor and added excellent texture to the soup.  Magic noodles are gluten free because they are only made from onions.

The main course arrive.  The lamb rib chops were a bit lemony with a light rosemary herb flavor.  They were grilled to a medium temperature, crispy on the outside and moist on the inside, set on green onions and rosemary. 

On the plate was two cucumber slices with tzatziki sauce and a tomato slice with tomato basil paste.  I poked the tzatziki sauce. It juggled a little and ran out onto the plate like a sunny side up egg. It tasted of cool cucumber and garlic.  The second one I popped into my mouth whole and let it explode its flavors onto my tongue.  I cut a sliver of the tomato basil and tasted it.  It was overwhelming me with tomato flavor.  The paste was the consistency of canned cranberries.  I didn't care much for it, didn't taste much of the basil, and thought it should have had fresh mozzarella cheese slices throughout it like a caprese salad.  I'm not much of a tomato fan anyways.

All of these courses were prepared gluten free and there was no sign of cross contamination.  Overall, I was pretty happy with the presentation, flavors, and modified textures of this meal.