5 Slides
Anzu
You don’t always need to go crazy to develop a compelling new menu item. Take a look at Molinas Cantina, an 85-year-old institution in Houston that has embraced the birria taco trend. To mix things up, Maira Avalos, kitchen manager at one of the restaurant’s three locations, decided to make birria enchiladas instead, and a new star was born.
Or take steamed clams. Kaitlyn Smith, chef of Marisi in La Jolla, cooks them in a quite traditional fashion, and then adds her own touches with ingredients such as calamansi vinegar and sea urchin butter.
Fried catfish is nothing new in Tennessee, but Wesley True, chef of Inman Social, hits it with something new in the form of a variation on gribiche sauce: He swaps out hard-boiled eggs for smoked trout roe.
At Anzu in San Francisco, chef Jason Francisco replaces the fish in the leche de tigre for his hamachi dish with pineapple, creating a brighter taste balanced with pickled melon.
And a Martini gets two tweaks at Ferguson’s Country, a new Southern restaurant in Brooklyn, New York, where the vodka is fat-washed with corn, and instead of adding vermouth, bartender Galen Maclennan uses sake.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
