OUR ETHIC, PHILOSOPHY & METHODOLOGY FOR CAVIAR IS MORE OF A RITUAL OR A CEREMONY THAN IT IS A “TRADITIONAL CAVIAR SERVICE”.
As bold as it may sound to say, what we do for our guests with caviar is singular and, very often, life changing. It’s a result of our rather a-typical business model and a happy accident…what we discovered when we began to operate, offer caviar bumps and discuss ways to best experience fine caviar with our guests. This all allowed us to compare our experiences with each other, in real time. Over time, we polished the technique and learned how to guide the experience beautifully. We didn’t invent the Caviar Bump. What we did was use it to create a process and a technique that for most (really, nearly all) turns into an extraordinary moment…even an epiphany.
HEADER COVER PHOTO CREDIT: @andrewhitaker
WE LIKE BIG BUMPS
WE CANNOT LIE!
Bringing the A-Game for Nails & Jewelry strongly recommended!
To be clear, we are talking here about FINE caviar. The $1600-$2500 or more a pound kinds of caviar. And that’s what we serve.
We experience the incredible eggs as the professionals who produce it and trade in it unanimously prefer to do. Naked! That is, “Sans Accoutrement”. Absent are the blinis, crème fraîche and other items which handicap your ability to enjoy all that it has to offer. So we do Caviar Bumps, not to be cool, feed the hype or whatever, but because this is the most efficient way to share 2 oz of fine caviar with 12 guests to its greatest effect.
You see, when caviar is put on or in things it becomes less of a delicacy and more of a food. Delicious, sure. But yer simply not getting the entire picture when its PART of a bite. Sorry, yer just not. Looks great on Instagram but to a professional who produces it or trades in it, that’s a bit of a waste.
Fine caviar deserves your full attention and rewards you for it. Just like fine wine does. She needs no makeup. She’s perfection, A Capella. When given your full attention it delivers an experience well beyond any “food” ever could. Through the methodology we use, it becomes a transcendent experience, if you allow yourself to take the trip.
If fine caviar isn’t the most dynamic food on earth, we don’t know what is. Over 60 (or more) seconds a fine caviar will go through 5 distinct phases, if you let it, by holding off on your wine until it comes to is conclusion. Not even the finest of wine can dance on your palate for that long. Evolving the whole time, there are things you can taste and feel in our caviar ritual that you’d certainly miss avec accoutrement. With al little guidance, attention and patience, one can easily perceive the phases starting, ending, blending, evolving, peaking, yielding and coming to a conclusion. It is like listening to a song you love…to the very end…in a great sound system.
How do we know? Well, we’ve done it for 700 groups of 10-12 guests. We’ve studied the reactions. We’ve conducted an experiment over 3 years with a strong control and the result is crystal clear. When you use our technique, fine caviar is A LOT more rewarding and dynamic. Our unique service style, seating layout and business model made this experiment possible and this epiphany reveal itself. We didn’t design for it, we discovered that the design and model we created, made it possible. What a gift!
What caviar can do is seldom realized, especially when we handicap our palate with dough, starch, salt or acid found in potatoes chips, blinis, chives and other accoutrement. If you wanted to experience the power of a painting, song or sculpture you’d free yourself of distractions, barriers and noise. Only when you allow yourself to be present with it (and only it) can you truly appreciate it fully. Caviar is no different. Given the fact that what we serve runs $1600 a pound retail, we figure it begs as much attention and appreciation as a $1600 bottle of wine. Wouldn’t you treat a $1600 bottle of wine with care and attention? The tools and tactics and techniques a Sommelier could share with you would certainly allow you to enjoy it and appreciate that $1600 bottle of wine more, right? Well, this is kind of what we are able to do with caviar.
Like grapes, these tiny and powerful eggs have delicate, subtle and interesting differences from fish to fish, farm to farm, season to season. Just like wine has Terroir, caviar has Merroir, and characteristics driven by the species and the diet of the fish…etc. There are a million variables and varieties. It takes 7 years for a sturgeon to come to maturity and produce a fine caviar. This is a science and and art which requires a lot of husbandry and expertise to shepherd a fish to that age and moment. It takes still more care and expertise to cure, age and deliver the caviar to the professional who’ll be able to guide you though what to look for and how to evaluate the value of that caviar based on industry standards and the accepted metrics of quality. To understand your preferences for caviar you’ll benefit from perspective, objectivity, expertise and experience of a professional who can point out what to look for without TELLING you what you see or how to feel about it. THIS IS WHAT WE DO!
We create a safe space for you to be open to the experience. With your trust and permission, we take each dinner group on a tour or a trip with the caviar we feature. Those who fully commit can experience it on another level, like a mild trance. It can (and should) be a kind of meditation which will lead you to find every nook and cranny, every delicate flavor and sensation…like...hearing every instrument and vocal track in a song, the melody, harmony, lyrics and meaning of it all too. Once given the tools, technique and tactics to evaluate the various characteristics of caviar and the metrics of quality you’ll then have the tools and knowledge to be able to find your favorites…just like you’ve likely done with fine wine, music and maybe oysters too. We are NOT going to tell you that you should prefer this caviar or that caviar, rather we are going to give you and understanding of the means to make up your own mind by guiding you through the tools, tactics and techniques used by professionals for eons. So, as you experiment with caviar going forward, you’ll know what you are doing, looking for and find…and how it compares to other caviar.
We are not, in this medium, able to duplicate the magic that occurs in the room when our guests fully commit to this process. So we have chosen to leave it to these words rather than get to detailed with photos or videos lest we create spoilers. We’d just recommend you ask someone who has experienced our service to tell you about it. They’ll light up, for sure. We hope, however, that you’ll come and experience fine caviar with us yourself. You’ll find that in the presence and with the trust of the other guests there is a magical epiphany that our techniques, rituals and ceremony creates. We are certain that it will change you forever.
We HEART big bumps.
“JUST SAY ROE”
Please stop putting cheap Chinese Caviar on good foods. Or, stop wasting good and fine caviar with accoutrements that handicap your palate (dough, starch, cream). Finally, Chefs & Restauranteurs….PLEASE stop labeling Paddlefish Roe, Bowfin Roe, Trout Roe and Salmon Roe as CAVIAR. It’s NOT. Hackleback, ok, maybe…the red-headed step child of the Sturgeon Family, but it is a Sturgeon. It is NOT, however, fine caviar, its in the mid to low end range, at best. Also, stop MISLABELING your caviar, or playing dumb about how your suppliers are MISLABELING it. And please stop feeding your IG by combining it with oysters and uni. You know you cant tell where one starts and the other ends when you do this. You might as well make a soup with it.
Lovely idea on the left. Waste of good or very good POLISH caviar on the right.
Great example here, illustrates a lot…
MISLABELING AND MISREPRESENTING IS RAMPANT AND DELIBERATELY TAKING ADVANTAGE OF CONSUMERS MISUNDERSTANDING OF CAVIAR
On the right you have a very good caviar being wasted on a very fine biscuit. As per the caviar in this recipe, it is NOT fine Siberian caviar, from Siberia. This caviar comes from a caviar farm in Poland. It’s farmed, Polish Caviar which is great. The species of fish they are farming there is Acipenser baerii aka “Siberian Sturgeon”. So that’s the species, yes. But it was not born in, raised in, harvested in or processed in Siberia. This is why it retails for $105 an ounce. If it were Siberian Caviar you’d be paying $1000 a ounce for it and you’d be in China, Iran or Russia, where you can actually get Siberian / Russian product. This kind of manipulative labeling and packaging is rampant in Caviar.
Easy analogy: Champagne comes from the Champagne region of France. Not Alsace. Not Provence. To call a wine that is NOT grown, made and aged there Champagne would be incorrect. Charging a premium for it as such would be fraud.
For the most part, the place the fish comes from (born, raised, harvested and processed) has a greater impact on the quality of the caviar than the Species they grow. Especially when you take in consideration what the fish eats and what whatever its living in. These things (especially with wild fish) affect Merroir. With farmed fish, water matters but most farmed fish are fed a feed that is not make of plants or animals coming from that water so we don’t have that impact on Merroir with farmed sturgeon. Any species of the Acipenser genus is going to be a Sturgeon (literal scientific facts) and produce a fine caviar when farmed, fed, harvested and processed well. Part of what makes “Siberian Sturgeon” so desirable was the this species, living in certain rivers in Siberia, would be exposed to certain minerals and other characteristics for that water, feeding on certain plants and animals in that ecosystem and thereby creating a caviar with a distinct (and arguably) superior Merrior. This is not the case in this example.
On the left you have Trout Roe, not caviar.
The recipe is lovely and makes sense with inexpensive roe. Makes NO SENSE with fine caviar. To make this at home with Caviar you are gonna need 1 oz for 4 of these making 4 of those sandwiches cost $25 each. In a restaurant, if your food cost is $25, you’ve GOT to charge $75 for it. So, if you are getting this in a restaurant and it’s priced below $75 each, well, then you KNOW it’s not caviar of this quality…its something else. If you see “caviar” on anything in a restaurant and it’s not VERY VERY VERY expensive, it’s either NOT caviar or cheap//toxic Chinese Caviar.
Just say ROE when you see impossibly cheap “caviar” on foods.
BOTTOM LINE: There is maybe as much to know about caviar as there is to know about wine. Training to become a Sommelier is intense and scientific. There are cornerstone principles, accepted norms, agreed upon tools, tried and true techniques and industry standards for comparing wines, finding your preferences and ascribing value to them. We apply the same kinds of principles to caviar for the same kinds of reasons and, most of the time, it delivers to our guests the means by which to understand, compare and appreciate fine caviar much more than they ever imagined.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CAVIAR WE FEATURE HERE AND SEE PHOTOS AND VIDEOS FROM OUR RECENT VISIT TO THIS MAJESTIC PLACE.
Photo @AndrewJWhitaker
Yer FIRED! Get out of my kitchen!
And the winner, for the all time dumbest use of caviar (if it is caviar) OR the most egregious use of roe labeled as caviar goes to this guy: https://www.food.com/recipe/oysters-millionaire-381679 Oysters Millionaire? Ya, as in “10k millionaire”. And this is also why food media is (mostly) a joke.