Arrivederci!

Arrivederci. Lots of Italian and French influence is lost nowadays with the economy being so bugged out and all. Who has the money to pay for the fancy shmancy food? Well Julia and I have had some really great food experiences over the last couple weeks and one of them was meeting Chef Ron Seigel. He is the executive chef of The Ritz carlton in San Fransisco but some of you may know him from Japan where he became the first U.S. chef to win Iron Chef title, or maybe you know him when he was Thomas Keller's right hand man as sous chef at The French Laundry. In any case, it was an honor to meet and work with him. Below are photos of a dinner he did for the Food and Wine Festival.

Sous vide lamb chop, garden pesto, tomato risotto

Crispy pork belly, pineapple, pineapple reduction, green onion slaw.

Kampachi Sashimi, yuzu, ponzu, powdered soy, rice cracker

Hawaiian Snapper, oyster mushrooms, corn puree

And speaking of the Kapalua Food and Wine Festival!
  The annual festival held at The Ritz-Carlton for the past 31 years. It was a 3 day festival which included a grand buffet, a plated dinner hosted by guest chef Ron Seigel and a final day of a seafood festival including 12 local restaurants, all putting their best foot forward to show off what they've got.  Below are pictures of the fruit of our labor.

Mushu beef with a Korean BBQ glaze and pickled carrots

Fried Tofu in a Shiitake Broth

Myself playing on the flat top with the pork bulgogi

Seared Opah atop a bed of Furikake Udon with baby anchovies and Parmesan crisp

Here is just a little of the wine available at the festival

Here's the office!

 

Our night time view :)

Lamb Sliders on the flat top

Delicious! Pork tenderloin bulgogi with pickled watermelon and red cabbage slaw, topped with diakon sprouts.

Rock Shrimp Dynamite on shrimp shoimai  with a lobster emulsion.

These are cool little baby anchovies! Thousands of em!

Corn Blini with house smoked salmon and Cilantro-Lime vinaigrette,

 garnished with Kula Greens

Kompachi with Ponzu and Furikake

You can tell that we have been quite busy! It was so great getting to taste all of the food and to be a part of something like this.

Apart from work, we managed to find time for ourselves to seek out new foodventures! We visited The Ritz Carltons sushi restaurant called Kai Sushi which, let me tell you, was BOMB! Julia even just had to take an extra shrimp tempura roll home for later.

Shrimp Tempura Roll

Spicy Tuna Roll

Braised short rib gyoza

Bananas Foster

Another passtime we love is searching for scholarships and recipe contests. Julia found an awesome recipe contest for kids to win a trip to the white house. Its for a healthy lunch by Michelle Obama and Julia entered her little sister malorie into it. For the dish, she made a grilled asparagus and ham panini made with spinach and swiss and garlic mayo, on the side she made a chilled strawberry soup. Yum!

On a hot sunny day, we managed to drag ourselves out of bed to the dreaded beach! We had lunch at The Sea House restaurant for pupus and drinks,

Back at The Ritz, we've seen some pretty neat things and snapped some photos to show you :)

Watermelon shooter with balsalmic, mint, and blackberries

Wasabi Pineapple push pop!

New potbelly piggies that our work adopted!

chilled Strawberry soup, kaffir lime granita, toasted almonds

Kalua pork shoimai

We still have plenty of time for more foodventures while we are here on externship! and we hope to share them all with you guys. So until we see you again, or Arrivederci!
-Brandon