The Banyan Tree

Last night, Brandon and I had an outstanding dinner at our hotel's finest restaurant "The Banyan Tree". Run by Chef Jojo Vasquez, once Chef Morimoto's sous chef.
Jojo Vasquez, Sous Chef to Morimoto

Sitting up on the hill right across the beach, The Banyan Tree had a drop dead gorgeous view of the sunset as we went on a 3 hour tasting adventure.

Every month, Chef Jojo creates a new wine menu, a 4 course tasting menu each paired with a different wine. This month was paired with ZD wines. Along with the wine menu, he has his standard menu and a vegetarian menu. Chef came out and told us our options so we decided that Brandon would have the wine menu, and chef would create my own tasting menu.

Now usually when a restaurant gives you bread, you expect butter or even oil and balsalmic right? well we received bread and dukkah. yeah, exactly what i said...

Dukkah is traditionally from Egypt. As they traveled, they carried with them loaves of bread and ground spices to add flavor to the bread. Chef Jojo's recipe for dukkah is:
1C Caraway seed
1C Cumin seed
1C poppyseed
1C black sesame seed
1C white sesame seed
1C fennel seed
1C coriander seed
1C macadamia nut meal
3Cpanko
toasted and ground in a spice grinder and you have yourself some dukkah!

Our first course was by far our favorite of the entire meal! Brandon, from the wine menu, had Ahi tataki with sous vide egg white, egg yolk marinated in miso for 2 weeks, and spicy peas. Unbelievable. Marinating the yolk made it pliable enough to shape it on the dish, pretty cool.

My first course was Hamachi Crudo with red pepper leather and cilantro. The hamachi has a wonderful marinade that really brings out the flavor of the fish.

Next we had seafood sausage. Not something i would normally order, but he brought it out specially.
The sausage is made of scallop, shrimp, and lobster and had ikura, sauce remoulade, crushed pumpernickel. Pretty darn good if you ask me.

The fish course was awesome. Brandon had Halibut with chorizo, apple, and celeriac puree.

  I had roasted Hapu with salsify puree and truffle. yum!

Pineapple sorbet for a palate cleanser.

Meat course: Colorado lamb rack, eggplant puree, and chickpea cake. 

 Muscovy duck breast, broccolini, plum, basil, pistacchio.

Dessert is always my least favorite course, i dont really like sweets. Still, Chef Jojo works wonders with food!

                           Nougat parfait glace, orange tarragon cake. pretty cool concept.

This dinner was great and im glad we finally made it down to The Banyan Tree. We only have 2 weeks left so we'll see what we get in to next!