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[MUSIC]
It's kinda hard to label yourself.
You call yourself an artist and
all of a sudden you sound like an asshole, or
you know, pretentious.
But I like to think that to have some maybe
slightly interesting skill sets, and at
the end of the day, I'm just trying to make food
that has an emotional connection to myself.
And something that is you know, beautiful so
you can take that however you want.
[MUSIC]
[SOUND].
[MUSIC]
My name is Jordan Kahn.
I'm the chef/owner of Red Medicine Restaurant in
Beverly Hills.
It's a modern, progressive restaurant.
We try to make our food as beautiful as we can.
And taking natural ingredients, and
turning them into things that, you know,
are really spectacular.
[MUSIC]
This is our newest edition to
the dessert menu.
I've actually been
a pastry chef my whole career.
Red Medicine is the first time I've
actually done savory professionally.
I mean, I've been cooking since I was very young.
My first cooking idol was Thomas Keller, for sure.
I got a copy of the French Laundry Cookbook
for Christmas one year when I
was in high school and that pretty much was
the day when everything changed for me.
Right when I went to culinary school I
wrote Thomas Keller a letter.
It was like an absurd, like,
eight-page letter professing my great love
for him and you know, all of these things.
Man, if I had a copy of that right now I
bet it would be hysterical.
He responded through email
like six months later.
When I opened my email that day,
like, that was a big freak-out moment.
I started there at the French Laundry when I
was 17.
I'm sure there's probably some nine-year-old
prodigy in there today, but it certainly,
at the time, what I was told by the chefs then is
that I was the youngest to start there.
This is actually
the second course on the tasty menu.
The base of it is a custard.
This is walnut marzipan, cuz we don't have
enough pastry techniques in our food already, and
we are rolling them in purple cabbage powder.
Color was always a big inspiration.
There's a lot of times when I want a certain
flavor or an ingredient or a texture in
a dish but I am not happy with the color so
I will change the color of it.
A walnut is not supposed to be purple.
A brown walnut didn't make sense in
the dish aesthetically so we made it purple so
that it would fit and
also you know, it bridges the taste as well.
This is the first course on our tasting menu.
It's based on trout roe.
You're eating raw snap peas with the trout roe.
The dual texture of the two sort of
spheres are kind of neat.
Because these are crunchy and these pop as well.
These are sort of pickled onion petals.
This is lemon curds.
So we're just gonna take our mineral oil,
all the area in there we just worked so hard for.
We're gonna cover it up,
try to make sure that everything is layered.
When you look at a Jackson Pollock painting,
probably the most fascinating parts of it
is, is the layering.
And like, you know that the first,
second, third, fourth,
and all the layers in-between that have the,
same amount of care put into it as
the final layer.
Which is the you know,
the one that's most in your face.
So we kind of try to make it similar where
you know, even though we're covering it up,
we don't just, we still care about
placing everything really properly.
That's the first course.
Next is a dish of mushrooms.
The finished dish version of this is actually gets
a glass close over it so
it actually looks like a living terrarium.
Nature certainly is a theme in our dishes.
When we first opened, my sous chef and I would go
to the farmers markets in Santa Monica, when we
were driving by it's like, holy shit, look at
that whole hillside is covered in you know,
fennel or, or nasturtiums or whatever it is.
And so we'd get out, we'd pick some, bring it back,
and then eventually we'd spend more
time picking and less time at the markets.
And then eventually we just cut out the markets
altogether and we just went foraging.
It's kind of a show-stopper, I suppose,
at the table when it drops cuz a lot of
people will just continue with their conversation,
whatever, which is totally fine.
But this one generally stops, so whatever.
[MUSIC]
>> You guys ready?
>> Yes, hey!
>> Oh, hey, what's up!
>> [LAUGH] >> How's it going?
Gloria and Mike
are really great to go out with.
Gloria is my girlfriend,
she's a sommelier at Spago.
Mike, oh man, he's a ball of fun.
It's kind of impossible to not fall in
love with Mike
the first five minutes that you meet him.
He's like a professional eater and
he likes to think of himself as a,
as a chef, but he's not a chef.
>> I'm a professional third wheel.
>> He even wore his button down shirt today.
>> It's a little too small [LAUGH].
It looks good.
>> No it's true.
But it. >> Powder blue is
a nice touch.
[MUSIC]
>> All right, so what's the plan for tonight?
Where we going?
>> First place is La Cevicheria.
Mike, I'm gonna order a special dish for
you called Bloody Clams.
Tastes like somebody microplaned pennies over
the clams.
>> Why would you want to eat that dish?
>> Some people love them.
>> Some people think they're amazing.
>> I like blood.
>> You may be one of those people.
>> Is it clam with like blood?
Seems like
there's something wrong with that clam.
>> Something like we should throw these away.
These are the people that save all those clams.
>> All the rejects.
>> All the discarded, rejected clams.
Who's ready for some blood?
>> Oh, they're closed.
Oh, they're open.
>> They're open.
[MUSIC]
We started with La Cevicheria and I chose to
go there because it's a small restaurant,
literally mom and pop.
It's owned by a husband and
wife, Catalina and Julio.
They're really, really sweet people, and
beyond that, the food is really delicious.
They don't make anything bad.
Everything there's really good and dishes that
you can't really get at most places.
>> My restaurant, La Cevicheria is open
since since 2002.
We opened at the end of the year.
And we've been you know, rocking all these years.
>> Are you ready to order?