KAI 1 ON!!!!
- Skinny 12-29-2002 7:19 am

We did the Iron Goddess menu of 10 courses (but we tried 12 different dishes as there were 2 soups and cooked fish options), it was enough but there is an larger menu we will try next time, must be ordered in advance, with this the chef cooks special for you....all the course's were highly aromatic, visually stunning, long lingering flavors and not heavy....a tea to start, than chef's assort of treats, stunning soup, a raw fish course, the most amazing tofu, a small salad, cooked fish course, shaven ice and herbs, beautiful steak, fantastic desserts with tea, more dessert treats
- Skinny 12-29-2002 3:43 pm [add a comment]


can we organize a DMT outing? sounds amazing!
- big jimmy 12-31-2002 12:26 am [add a comment]


I plan to go back with some customers in late January and do the bigger menu, I cant do anything before due to travel's etc....I also fear that if one go too many times w/o menu changes it will loose some of its magic, so I think that will be all for me at Kai till late 2003....please go!!!!
- Skinny 12-31-2002 2:29 am [add a comment]


ok anyone else wanna go?
- big jimmy 1-02-2003 6:34 am [add a comment]


Yup.
- jim 1-02-2003 5:33 pm [add a comment]


For the tea, of course.
- alex 1-02-2003 5:40 pm [add a comment]


tell Jane (she runs the front) that we are friends, and id MB goes that you are in the bizz.....we drank a Hirsh Alter Reben and a Burgundy and some sweet wine....its not inexpensivo...
- Skinny 1-02-2003 7:10 pm [add a comment]


or i can make the rezz.....
- Skinny 1-02-2003 7:13 pm [add a comment]


it looks expensive as hell, in fact

potential dates -- jan 13, 14, or 15?






- big jimmy 1-03-2003 1:12 am [add a comment]


o hell yeah
- big jimmy 1-03-2003 8:31 pm [add a comment]


Janet and Bruno might want to join us if we go on the 15th.
- jim 1-03-2003 10:30 pm [add a comment]


Kai we up?? Kai me down?? This guy's full review was not all great, Japanese food is sometimes as much texture and look as it is flavor, but we found so many high note/aroma's etc.....
- Skinny 1-04-2003 5:38 pm [
add a comment]


let's try for the 15th...mike, can we get you to make the call for us? party of 6? (mb, jmb, bruno, janet, rr,nb)

only neg. thing i saw in the review was that the roasted lobster was tough. roasted lobster usually is...
- big jimmy 1-05-2003 3:51 am [add a comment]


  • Make that seven.
    - alex 1-05-2003 2:40 pm [add a comment]


  • there was no roasted lobster on our Iron Goddess menu!! and I dont love that reveiewer anyway... 8pm??
    - Skinny 1-05-2003 3:18 pm [add a comment]



yes I need to call her on monday.....what time??
- Skinny 1-05-2003 6:06 am [add a comment]


Good news for your dinner which I will make the rez asap ,(Restaurant was closed last week and Jane was away today), is it will be 8 as Jacob Halper is your #8 so you will add some Wine Bizz star power (he is VP at Skurnik which supply's they vino, so I suspect some free vini like we got:>) to your Restaurant Bizz and Rock Star power....i hope you love it like we did....i bought some tea there the other day and they were selling some of the dessert treats they brought us after dessert (candied orange rind with tea, tea crusted almonds:>)
- Skinny 1-07-2003 3:31 am [add a comment]


Excellent. We love Jake.
- jim 1-07-2003 5:41 pm [add a comment]


can we try to make it on the later side (8pm or after)?

nb
- big jimmy 1-08-2003 4:10 am [add a comment]


You are in at 8:00...Nicholas can you give me you phone #...I just made the rez under Nicholas and they asked for a number (I explained whom you all are).....If you want to call Jane thats cool, if you want it later advise me so I can advise Jake....
- Skinny 1-09-2003 7:17 am [add a comment]


wheel - in core
- big jimmy 1-10-2003 8:15 pm [add a comment]


ok delete now if you like, you might want to call them to confirm, or they may call you....
- Skinny 1-10-2003 9:22 pm [add a comment]


let me know asap how it was:>):>) may the Iron Goddess be with you:>):>)
- Skinny 1-15-2003 5:20 pm [add a comment]


I really enjoyed Kai. It's an extravagance dependent on subtleties, (which can be confusing to the average American,) so you have to pay attention to all details of the presentation, right down to the hand crafted utensils and slate placemats. It might be best for a couple, since a large group with lots of conversation could distract from the experience, and if you absent-mindedly wolf a couple of bites you may miss something important. We had the 10-course menu. It started with a plate of tiny appetizers, which was amazing. Crunchy herring roe, buttery monk fish liver, tiny oyster topped with caviar, some sort of root, well, I can't remember it all, but it was a crazy range of tastes and textures which pretty much set the tone for what the place is up to. If you didn't get off on that, you wouldn't be overly impressed with the rest of the meal, which recapitulated the premise on a slightly larger scale. Dishes included a sushi plate, a beef plate, gelatinous tofu, et al. You got to choose between two soup courses and two main fish dishes. I went for the clear fish broth, which was wonderfully smoky. It would have made a fine vapor bath, and the same spirit infused the black cod wrapped in bamboo and steamed under a dome of salt. The alternate choices of lily bulb puree and Chilean sea bass with buckwheat risotto were heartier fare. Everything was good, but it was the combinations and contrasts that made the whole experience something out of the ordinary.

I guess Jim thought we might have pushed the wine envelope a bit more, but he was being generally disgruntled. I remember a Hirsch Riesling to start, and something red to finish, along with a couple of saki samples, which were interesting, but a bit too alcoholic for my taste. All in all, I thought it was a great experience. Yes, it was expensive, and not the sort of place you would be running right back to. From a certain viewpoint it was totally ludicrous, but if you could adopt the premise it was a real treat.

- alex 1-16-2003 7:52 pm [add a comment]


I hereby hand over all duties of the sustenance page to my esteemed friend and fantastic reviewer, Dr. Wilson. -wheel
- linda 1-16-2003 8:07 pm [add a comment]


Thanks, but I basically knew nothing about food before knowing you. Eating does seem to be important, though I've never been very good at it. Having learned a little bit I'm willing to give it a qualified recommendation. Hope everyone's looking forward to Lent, and a forty-day fast. If it's come down to me writing food reviews we must be getting close.
(Oh yeah, eating raw tea and gold leaf is surprisingly tasty.)



- alex 1-16-2003 9:27 pm [add a comment]


the root is burdock (sp?)!!, did they bring out the little tea crusted almonds at the end??
- Skinny 1-17-2003 4:45 pm [add a comment]


Yes, the almonds were great, first the xanthine bite of the raw tea, which then melts into the chocolate, which then crunches into the nut. Yum. They used the raw tea in a couple of other dishes, but I guess the tea came before the restaurant. The jasmine oolong was noteworthy. I'm happy to eat burdock root, but I'm waiting to see what preparation could make the burs edible. (Did you know that burs were the inspiration for Velcro?)
(The previous sentence is a link, but you can't tell because everything in this thread is underlined, probably because an earlier link was not closed...
- alex 1-17-2003 7:04 pm [add a comment]


burdock is a scourge in my neighborhood. is it tacky for me to ask what the above mentioned meal costs? it all seems so exotic and so far away, and i so rarely go out to dinner. i'm curious to compare my idea of an expensive meal here in montana to your idea of an expensive meal in nyc.
- pam 1-22-2003 5:42 am [add a comment]


Human nature is probably tacky. Mostly it's a matter of saving the splurgers the embarrassment; if we bragged about the cost we'd just be obnoxious yuppies and this ain't the 90s anymore. But it was some serious consumption any way you look at it. *This* was the menu we had, with price discreetly indicated at bottom. That's more than I typically pay for what I would consider a very expensive dinner, but doesn't include drinks, tax, or tip. Double the figure and you're in the ballpark.
- alex 1-22-2003 6:20 pm [add a comment]


Pam, do you eat out a lot? In Livingston? Bozeman? What's it like?

And what does burdock look like before it's delicately prepared and served to me in a Japanese restaurant?
- jim 1-22-2003 6:50 pm [add a comment]


We don't eat out much but when we do it's either the Crazy Coyote, a totally inexpensive and inauspicious Mexican restaurant with killer spinach enchiladas smothered in a lovely chipolte cream sauce, or the Livingston Bar & Grill. I think some of the summer party may have eaten there. Before it (LB&G) was bought and revamped by Russell Chatham, it was a burger/steak joint featuring rocky mountain oysters on the starters menu. I saw (and tried my hardest not to gawk) Tom Waites there in the early '90s!
Burdock starts out looking a bit like rhubarb, but then grows quite tall, say 5-6 feet tall, and it has little velcro balls about an inch in diameter that stick to everything, especially dogs. One brush up against a burdock plant and you might be covered in a several dozen little balls. Picking burdock off 5 dogs after a walk leaves little time for dining out. So were you served burdock root?
Alex, I clinked on your link but got connection failure after connection failure. Maybe you could email me privately with a figure. pajamadoc@montanadsl.net.
- pam 1-23-2003 5:38 am [add a comment]


From a close friend and "ex-chef to be" currently in the high end wine bizz...."""Your right!!. Kai = absolutely incredible. I haven’t had anything like that in a very long time. Can’t wait to go back!! They have 2 special soup dishes they just started this week as options on the menu. An incredible beef sukiyaki and a fish soup with crab legs, scallops, oysters, etc. Perfect on a freezing nite. Go back soon if you haven’t had them!!"""

- Skinny 1-27-2003 2:08 am [add a comment]





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