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Taste of Tokyo Dinner with Ivan Orkin at NYCWFF

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Taste of Tokyo Dinner with Ivan Orkin

Taste of Tokyo Dinner with Ivan Orkin

The Taste of Tokyo Dinner with Chef Ivan Orkin was the perfect way for us to conclude our weekend at the NYC Wine & Food Festival.  After two days of being on our feet eating great food, drinking great wine and other beverages, meeting amazing culinary professionals and talking to lots of topnotch foodies, it was nice to sit down to a dinner and – well, eat more great food and drink more great wine, in this case, sake.

Taste of Tokyo Dinner Table

Taste of Tokyo Dinner Table

The dinner was held in the International Culinary Center, but in a very different place than where we had been the previous afternoon for our Tartine Masterclass.  This was on the 5th floor in what is called the Studio, but to me it just resembled a simple but nicely laid out medium-sized restaurant.  There was a small room when you first got off the elevator where you checked in and then enjoyed the first wine, a nice prosecco, with the appetizers brought around by servers – a 100 year old deviled egg, pork belly grilled with ponzu and pickled herring on top of sushi rice.  Already we witnessed the theme that would keep coming back throughout the night: a combination of Chef Ivan’s New York Jewish upbringing and the Japanese cuisine he loves so much and has been serving in Japan for many years.

After the appetizers, we made our way down the hall to a modest but nice-sized dining room, where we would enjoy the rest of the dinner.  The place settings, with glasses for four more wine and sake pairings, were quite elegant.  A representative of the Food Bank for NYC, the sponsor of the Festival, introduced Chef Orkin, and he gave us an introduction into what we would be eating that evening.  Then we heard from Chris Johnson the Sake Ninja – whom we had met earlier in the day at the Grand Tasting when he made us sake cocktails with sorbet from the Sorbabes – and he told us about the sakes that would be paired with the various courses.

Then came the food.  The first course was a typical salad with carrot ginger dressing and shrimp.

Taste of Tokyo - salad opener

Taste of Tokyo – salad opener

The salad was nice, but nothing extraordinary.  We were surprised at how large it was.  Halfway through, I felt like I had gotten what I wanted from it, and was ready to move on.  By contrast, the second course, ox tongue in dashi broth, was too small.  Therese gave me her ox tongue pieces, since that is not on her diet these days, and asked the waiter to bring her more dashi.

Finally there was the incredibly rich, very satisfying main course: mazemen with triple garlic and triple pork.  While a fan of noodles, I am not big on ramen usually because in the midst of the slurping, broth drips everywhere, and the broth stays hot so that it takes forever for the food to cool to a temperature where I can comfortably eat it.  Mazemen, with its thick sauce, solves these problems for me.  Plus, I love the thick sauce coating all the noodles so nicely rather than thin broth.  In any case, my preferences aside, I loved it.  I would’ve liked maybe a couple more pieces of the pickled garlic – that provided a needed crunch in a dish that was otherwise soft and succulent.

Taste of Tokyo - Mazemen with triple pork and triple garlic

Taste of Tokyo – Mazemen with triple pork and triple garlic

All through the dinner, I had been ecstatic that everything served was dairy free (believe me, I checked ahead of time).  But with the dessert, as so often happens, I met up with my old nemesis.  It was a milk chocolate parfait with yogurt.  Oh well.  Domori Chocolates, who had donated the chocolate for the parfait, had also provided a number of small squares of packaged dark chocolate, so I noshed on those for my dessert, paired with my favorite sake of the night, the cloudy Nigori.

 

Taste of Tokyo - traditional cloudy nigori sake

Taste of Tokyo – traditional cloudy nigori sake

I enjoyed the dinner immensely – while a sit-down ramen dinner is something of an oxymoron, since ramen is traditionally fast food, the food presented was all filling, hearty and straightforward.  Hearing Chef Ivan’s story was interesting too.  He was born and raised in Syosset, Long Island, got his first job washing dishes in a Japanese restaurant as a teenager, and from his first piece of pickled ginger and slurp of ramen, he was hooked.  After studying at the Culinary Institute, he got his start in Japan, and now owns a very successful ramen restaurant, Ivan Ramen, in Tokyo.  This dinner was part of his announcing that he is now opening two restaurants in the near future in New York City.  I asked him how he is going to manage keeping restaurants running in both NYC and Tokyo, and he laughed and said “it’s going to be interesting.”

Taste of Tokyo - Chef Ivan Orkin with the Dairy Free Traveler

Taste of Tokyo – Chef Ivan Orkin with the Dairy Free Traveler

The post Taste of Tokyo Dinner with Ivan Orkin at NYCWFF appeared first on The Dairy Free Traveler.


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