If your friend was chef Sang Yoon at Father's Office, you probably lost to him every time. It's not enough that he provides the best bang for your beer, he also bangs out the best burger in town.
Sang Yoon was brilliant, even when it comes to basics. Most people were happy producing a pretty good bag of gas-station pork rinds, but then you crunch on the thick, honeycombed, impossibly light bites of crackling Crispy Pork Rinds and you'll never go back to the bag again.
Every chef should know how to make a good vegetable, but he'll lace your crispy-char Brussels Sprouts with a heart-attack hide of bacon and step it up a notch.
Basics can get boring, but even fish sticks will blow your mind if they have a little Sang-Yoon spin. The Salt Cod Fritters are a testament to creativity (because being a technical paragon just isn't enough for this overachiever), stuffed full of soft, salty fish, coated with just enough batter to flavor the fish and desalinize the salt.
I'm kind of over salads. But even the simplest of salads can turn into a magnum opus. The Duck Confit Salad combines fatty, savory duck-in-its-own-fat with bitter-ish mustard greens and frisee, balanced by sweet figs and a softer vinaigrette.
Sang Yoon's culinary prowess probably made him the kid you beat up for his lunch money, except you'd rather steal his lunch. He may say he doesn't do desserts, but you'd think he was using his grandmother's recipe. The Ice Cream Sandwich changes all the time, and this wintery-themed ginger molasses cookie with pumpkin ice cream and toasted pumpkin seeds makes you want to let your hair down and belt out a few bars of "Let it Go".
A lot of people like to think they're a jack of all trades, and even more people like to say they are. Competent at many things, master of none, I used to think that you could only truly master one thing...until I went to to Father's Office.
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