At the beginning of this year, to improve and expand our dining experience further, I joined one of the dinner clubs in New York City, “Tasting Collective.” There are several members-only dining clubs out there, but I think this one is the best one, for its value and perks. Tasting Collective is a dining club for food lovers, and they offer brunch and dinner at great NYC restaurants. They close off the restaurants for the club, so we get to have the entire restaurant and chef(s) all to ourselves. So, this is more than just eating food at a restaurant, but you get to have the background story and its passion from the chef(s), eating 8- to 12-course brunch/dinner created specifically for Tasting Collectives. Sounds great, right???
The first Tasting Collective Event we went was held at Win Son in Brooklyn, 9-course brunch. They are Taiwanese-American restaurant where you can enjoy authentic Taiwanese dishes with American twist. From the outside, it didn’t look like much. Truth being told, it was not very attractive looking to me… So, I had my doubts before we walked in for this event that we were really excited to attend…
And that all changed the moment we walked in. The inside was super nice, modern, elegant, and bright with lots of natural lights coming in. It was very clean looking with dark wood floor and white tiled walls. White fluffy light fixture and additional small lights helped brighten up the interior even more. The tables and chairs were arranged to accommodate the event, creating several sections of tables for 6 to 8 people, and a large communal table in the middle.
They also had a small bar seat as well, and from there, you can peek inside the kitchen. I liked that small window a lot for some reason. The interior decoration was kept to minimum, with one large, vibrant wall mural depicting people dining at a long table. Very cool! After just few minutes, the restaurant was full. It seems like their event gets sold out pretty quickly each time. I am glad we got it! One main thing about this dining club is that it is “social” event. So, the smallest table they create is a table for 6 or more. And you are encouraged to sit with strangers and socialize while having the special meal. I really like that.
So, let me explain a bit more about how Tasting Collective works. There is an annual fee to join the dining club, and pay for the course menu for each event. The course menu fee is around $35 to $60 per event plus tax and tips. When you purchase the tickets, they automatically calculate and add the tax and tips, so you don’t have to worry about anything else when you go to the event. And, you are allowed to bring a guest or two or three. Their fee is just slightly higher, around $50 to $75 per event plus tax and tips.
The founder of the club, Nat gave us a card when we walked in, which is used to track your drink orders. The drinks are NOT included in the course menu, and it is optional. You can get anything from coffee, wine, cocktail, juice, whatever they serve at the restaurant, but it must be paid with cash at the end of the event. Another thing that was provided was a feedback card. This is also optional, but we were encouraged to participate. What you do with this is that you grade each course menu item, and write a short comment. It is anonymous and the restaurant is really grateful for any feedback.
The best part of this club for me is the interaction with the chef(s) of the restaurant. At this restaurant, they had two chefs, Josh Ku and Trigg Brown. They come out at the beginning of the event to talk about their background, passion, and story of how they decided to open a restaurant together. Chef Ku grew up eating Taiwanese food, and Chef Brown has passion for China’s myriad cuisines. After taking trips to many Chinese and other specific restaurants, they decided to open up this Taiwanese-American Restaurant. The chefs came out few more times during the event to explain a bit more about the food that we were enjoying. Really cool part of this event!
At this event, we added a cocktail called Taiwan Beer Michelada ($12). It is made with Taiwan Beer Original, lemon, lime, shiro dashi, Sriracha, with cilantro chili salt rim. It is basically their version of Bloody Mary made with Taiwan Beer. And let me tell you, this really wakes you up!!! It is quite spicy, but refreshing with the flavors from lemon and lime. It is also addicting… I am not a bit fan of Bloody Mary, but this one was pretty good. And it was a nice, big size too, and comes with the rest of the beer in the bottle, since it does not use up the entire beer to make the drink. It starts off really powerful and strong, but as you drink them (slowly), you can add more beer to get the flavor to be milder. It certainly was a sip-and-enjoy kind of drink.
The first course was Dou Jiang You Tiao, which is made with house made soy milk, demarara, and fried bread. It was a warm milky soup, sweet and a bit thick. A nice, sweet beginning to the special course meal. It had a slice of Chiese Cruller on the top, that added crunchy texture and extra sweetness. This was the only item that was served individually.
The rest of the course menu did not come in the order listed, but we had no issue with that. Another interesting thing about this club is that almost everything was served family-style. So, you are supposed to share the food with other people at your table, among four to six people. So, they brought out Guohua Street Salad next. It has grilled shrimp, smoked tofu, peanuts, and persimmon. The first photo is a large sharing plate full of the salad. The second salad is a small plate, and what I took from the sharing plate. I had bit more than this after everyone took some what they wanted off the sharing plate. I really loved this salad, plump shrimp, smokey flavored tofu, and subtle flavor of peanut. My favorite part was persimmons, it was really nice. Sweet, fresh, soft without being too soft. Overall, it was really delicious salad!
Then they brought another salad, Citrus Salad. This one has pomelo and blood orange, sesame, and Chinese five spice. Pomelo is a citrus fruit from Southeast Asia, and looks kind of like grapefruit, and it tastes like sweet grapefruit. This one was super refreshing with lots of citrus, with enough natural sweetness. It had a nice kick to it from the spices, which made it unique salad of their own creation.
Then there came the Pan-Griddled Pork Buns, with scallions and chili vinaigrette. They had enough of them to share, two buns per person. And it disappeared quickly, as it was so amazingly good! It was juicy, packed with flavor. The wrapper had nice thickness, not too chick, and good chewy-ness. It was comforting and loved the little burned edges, making it a bit crispy on that particular area. So delicious…!
The next item was Soft Scramble, with white soy, cilantro and scallions. It was really fluffy and very creamy. If you don’t like creamy scrambled egg, it might not be for you, but I love creamy eggs, so it was perfect for me. It had the hint of cilantro, but not much. It was still good to get egg dish during the brunch, little more familiar dish than other ones. I really liked this egg, I would’ve like to have it over a white steamed rice… Yum!
The sixth item was Lu Rou Fan, which is a minced heritage stew pork over rice, with soft egg and chili. I am showing before and after I cracked opened the soft egg. I wish if this dish was served individually, it was so good…! The only issue was that we were all given a fork… It was not easy to get the soupy dish onto your plate using a fork. And even harder eating it… But other than that, it was a great dish. I didn’t want to share with others… And since I was trying to be polite, I didn’t take as much portion as I should have, so I got less than most of the people at the table. Gotta do better next time! The pork had great flavor, and mixing it with runny egg made it even better! I wanted a big bowlful of this mouthwatering dish!
The next up was Water Spinach with sesame and garlic. This one looked simple enough, but it was surprisingly good. It was refreshing, tasty, and I thought it would be somewhat bitter, but it was not bitter at all. It was good contrast to other dishes that had strong flavor from meat. Especially having this after dishes with meat and eggs, it helped cleanse the pallet.
The last course before the dessert was Congee, made with crispy potato, niman ranch pork, and chive buds. The chili had a really strong flavor, great kick to it. I didn’t get too much of the red, chili sauce area, but little bit of it made powerful presence. The pork was so tender, melt in your mouth good. The dish was more like porridge, with crispy potato in it, which made it extra comforting. This would also be good with soft egg too… I can imagine having this spicy dish on a cold Winter day, it would be so perfect. It was really filling.
The dessert was Chinese Cruller. It was a nice size, almost the size of bread stick. It is coated with cinnamon sugar and sweetened condensed milk. It is very similar to Spanish churro, the fried dough pasty. Before this event, I happened to learn a bit about the origin of churro. I heard that it actually originated in China, and brought to Europe by Portuguese when they sailed to the Orient and discovered the sweet goodness. From there, it was brought into Spain, where they modified the technique a bit, and to have the dough piped through a star-shaped tool, which creates that unique star-shaped dessert we are familiar with today. So, this one tasted very much like churro, very sweet, a bit crunchy from being fried, with moist and soft in the inside. Perfect sweet ending to the meal.
At the end, we were completely full, happy and satisfied. We really enjoyed the experience of the club. It is so nice to have the entire restaurant and their chefs to ourselves. It is more than just eating their food among strangers. Usually, at a busy restaurant packed with customers, people are on top of each other, talking loud on top of each other. Here, we are encouraged, or more like pushed to have conversations with strangers around you, sharing the whole dining experience. This whole extra things really enhances the experience to the next level. I am very happy to have joined this club!
If you are interested in joining, you can use this link to get a discounted annual rate of $115 (over 30% off the normal $165/year) for the first year: https://tastingcollective.com/?invite_code=JUN4346
Win Son – 159 Graham Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11206