Since I still hadn’t had a chance to take Kat and Rick out to celebrate my Borgata win, I decided to take them to Chubo on Thursday. I had a terrific meal the first time there about a month ago on an empty Monday night. This time it was just as empty even though it was a Thursday. I arrived a little early for our 8p reservation and the only other customers were at a single table of about 10 people, mostly tall thin modelish women, at least two of whom Ricky later pegged as lesbians. Since I was early, I ordered a glass of Prosecco and perused the menu while I waited. Rick showed up a few minutes later as Kat texted me that she was going to be half an hour late because she was out for drinks with co-workers. Rick ordered a glass of wine and we decided to order a couple apps. I tried ordering a dozen kumamotos but unfortunately they only had three left. Apparently those models had been ordering them up all night. Only one other table in the restaurant and they managed to jack all my oysters, goddam models. So I took the last three oysters, and also ordered the hamachi app which came as three small preparations, all good, but only the tartare stood out enough for me to remember as I write this.

When Kat eventually showed up, I ordered three of the foie gras app to start, followed by the featured tasting menu which featured venison that evening. The seared foie gras sat atop a mound of something the consistency of stuffing but made with sweet corn, and dressed with a sauce of cranberry and white grape. The whole thing worked marvelously together and I thought the sweet corn accompaniment to foie gras was pretty ingenious. The wine pairing was something almost port-like but lighter in body, although I didn’t catch what it was (I actually didn’t bother to ask or rmember what any of the wine pairings were that evening). Onto the main tasting where the first dish was a kind of maki featuring raw venison as the wrapper in place of seaweed. The filling was a mix of thin noodles and some type of sprouts. The venison itself was remarkably delicious and not in the least bit gamey. Unfortunately, Rick wouldn’t eat more than one piece because his palate picked up something that mine did not- the taste of fried ginger, which is something he hates. Kat and I cleaned up his plate and we moved on to the next dish, a kind of surf and turf plate featuring a hunk of venison loin aside a fantastic little mound of thinly sliced raw scallops with some type of greens. The confounding thing was that this dish was paired with a glass of some type of Rose which was not big enough to stand up to either the surf nor the turf. Even alone that wine was not particularly interesting, but after a bite of food, it ended up tasting like water with a slightly astringent aftertaste. The final dish was a pairing of venison with Hudson Valley duck breast. As Rick pointed out, the duck stole the show, perfectly medium rare with good flavor without being excessively gamey.

We skipped dessert there in order to head over to Chikalicious where Rick was treating because he had lost a bet of some sort to Kat. When we arrived, Don had to scratch his head a little bit because he knew Rick and Kat, and he knew me, but since I had been going there so often with other people, he had to ask whether the three of us had ever been there before together. I ordered the pear dish which consisted of a whole poached seckel pear along with ribbons of Asian pear. It was paired with the now ubiquitous Essencia orange muscat. It was precisely the light and refreshing kind of dessert I wanted to end the evening with. While the last few times at Chikalicious I had ordered the panacotta, Rick did the honors on this night. I don’t even remember what Kat had although I’m thinking it may have been the signature chocolate tart, but I do remember that she skipped the wine pairing because she had been tipsy since before even arriving at Chubo. In any case, when you can have a killer dinner with good friends and can end the night at Chikalicious, life is pretty good, isn’t it?

To round out the weekend, on Saturday a bunch of us played poker at Rog and Lisa’s until 2am and then Gar and Rog decided to treat us to food in K-town because they were the winners of the big last pot. We went to Gahm Mi Oak which was my first time ever but it seems that it’s a fave of most of my friends, especially as an after-drinking meal. Their specialty is a soup of rich cloudy oxtail broth with noodles, rice, and a few thin slices of beef. We started with a platter of beef tongue and tripe served with thin shreds of scallion which was really awesome, and then a fritatta like thing which I thought was just ok. I do have to say though, that the kimchee there was outstanding. Really really good. Fresh, crunchy, spicy without being over the top, and just enough of a hint of sweetness which Kat says is because they use 7-up to make it. They also served these long curved green peppers which had a medium but very persistent heat. Not hot enough to make your eyes water, but a heat that would linger on the palate for a long, long time. The brightness of the spicy food contrasted with the richness of the oxtail soup made for a really comforting balance. I can’t think of a better thing to have at 4am after a night of drinking.