This is another awesome Tasting Collective dining club event we attended. (You can read about the previous posts about Tasting Collective events here: Fish Cheeks, Win Son, FOB, Xixa, Huertas, Bessou, Maharlika, Traif, Lalito, Noreetuh, Traif #2, Txikito, Oka, and Xixa2 ). 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- or more course brunch/dinner created specifically for Tasting Collectives.
With holidays and busy schedule, we haven’t been to a Tasting Collective event in a few months… It was about time we get back to the fun dining scene! This event was held at TabeTomo, six course Dreaming of Tokyo Dinner Series. They just opened in December of 2018, offering traditional ramen, including tsukemen, and other Japanese dishes.
The inside was small, but yet cozy and warm. The simplicity of the interior with clean lines and vivid colors makes the space to be very relaxing atmosphere. But they know where to add a little sense of humor… They had funny beer handles for Sapporo beer, in a shape of samurai sword!
The chef, Tomo Kubo came out to greet us and told us a few things about his background, hopes and dreams. He worked at a ramen restaurant in Tokyo, before moving to LA as a head chef at its LA locations. Now that he has his restaurant here in NYC, he wants to spread the knowledge, culture and flavor of tsukemen to the ramen-lovers and alike in the US.
The first course was Salmon & Ikura with crackers and homemade tartar sauce. We each received one cracker with the salmon concoction. Salmon was very fresh and plump, ikura was great with popping sensation in your mouth. Tartar sauce was great with perfect amount of seasoning. It was comforting yet fun item. Just the right amount of salty flavor, a great way to wake up your taste buds!
To be honest, I was thinking this first course is sooooooooooo small! And I started to wonder and worry if the rest of the course was going to be like this… But then, I soon realized that the first course was actually a two-parter. They brought out Mackerel pieces to share among two of us. The mackerel was soft, glistening with its natural oil. With one bite, it almost melts in your mouth… Had a bit of smoky-ness to it that I really enjoyed. Totally loved this!
The second course was Dashimaki Tamago, a traditional Japanese omelet with special ankake sauce. The omelet was fluffy and quite substantial. The special ankake sauce was sweet and velvety. The sauce is made with seafood dashi base, which I could taste the wonderful earthy favor, both in the sauce and in the omelet. Very comforting item, taste of home to me…
The third course was Tori Kawa, which is crispy chicken skin, served with assorted homemade sauces. This dish was to be shared among two people, and I tell you, quite large portion! It was super crunchy! I usually don’t eat fried chicken skin, even in Japan. But, they might’ve made me a fan… They had a very special sauce with it too. I heard that the chef just whipped it up that morning, so no one really knows what ingredients are in it… It was really flavorful and very zesty! It had a bit of kick from maybe grated radishes??? It was tangy and refreshing all at the same time, went nicely with the tori kawa.
The next course was somewhat similar to the third course. It was Karaage, which is a Japanese-style friend chicken, served with assorted homemade sauces. Again, among two people, we got two large pieces of fried chickens each. We received the same special sauce, plus ponzu-based sauce which was more liquid-y. They were both really great. The chicken was juicy and tender, lightly fried so that it is not greasy. Chef said that this fried chicken received complete approval from his gourmet son (LOL), so he is very proud to present this dish! Simple yet super tasty!
Then the main item of the day, Chashu Tsukemen! It is a Japanese dipping ramen with signature 60-hour pork broth, with slices of chashu, marinated soft-boiled egg, and veggies. Oh yeah, that is a mouth full. And guess what else was mouthful? The amount of tsukemen we received!!! We each received a big bowlful of broth and noodle… It was a meal on itself!
Even though most of everyone now knows what ramen is, but not so many people are familiar with tsukemen. The way Chef Tomo described it is that the noodle and the broth are served separately, with cold noodle and very hot, very rich broth. You dip the noodle into the hot broth as you eat them. The noodles are made much thicker than regular ramen noodle, so to be able to get as much of the rich broth onto it as possible.
Chef Tomo takes more than 60 hours (yes, you read it right) to make his special broth. That is some commitment! He won’t rest until the broth is good enough to be served. Wow! The noodle is fat and chewy, so fresh and awesome! Broth was nice and garlicky which was great! If you want to up the garlic flavor even more, they have the garlic condiment that you can add on top of that. Just make sure you are not on your first date if you are hoping to get a kiss at the end of the night… The broth was so rich and comforting and packed with flavor, a bit on a salty side, which is normal for tsukemen. Chashu was so tender and melt in your mouth… And the egg, ah, the egg… It was cooked to perfection, total egg porn and party in your mouth! Could I take a few (or a large bowlful) to go?
But tsukemen comes with one challenge – temperature of the broth. Especially, if you are having it in NYC in the winter. BUT, here is where chef Tomo’s creativity shines… He knew of a tradition from Northern Japan, where they put SUPER hot stones into the broth to heat it back up! WHAT! How awesome is this??? It was so fun to see the broth sizzle around the broth…
Let’s see that again, shall we? It actually gets a lot more steam and bubbles than my photos, which is really fun to see and hear! This dish was excellent, a total noodle heaven!!!
At this point, I was completely stuffed. At the beginning, I was worried that the portions would be too small and that I will leave hungry… But now, I was hoping that the dessert will be small so that I can eat it! LOL. Thankfully, they heard my wishes and they brought out small dessert. The last course was Japanese Crème Brûlée, a rich Japanese milk custard with caramelized sugar topping. A staff brought out saying it is a Japanese tea
Crème Brûlée. I was hoping that meant a hojicha Crème Brûlée…and it was! Yay! This dessert was great, not overly sweet, and creamy with great hojicha flavor that was not overwhelming. A perfect ending to an amazing dinner.
They had two unisex bathrooms, and they were nice size, clean and well-lit. I liked the hand-written signs here, one for no-smoking and one for washing your hands. Usually, the washing your hands is more for employees, but here, they added “so should you.” True that!
We had a great dinner here, what an awesome event! Tasting Collective and TabeTomo team have outdone themselves! The staffs at TabeTomo were great, very friendly, polite and efficient. They made us feel welcomed, and we were very well taken care of. We shall return soon for more of their tasty dishes!
For those of you who are interested in joining this great dining club, Tasting Collective, 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
TabeTomo – 131 Avenue A, New York, NY 10009