daily tasting

430pm. Tasting new specials for our staff daily to get thoughts,feedback and opinions...before we print menus for the evening. This plays a large part in my thinking that everyone has a voice and the more opinions and tastes we can get before a dish goes to the diner the better! 

Uchi menus

Here's the challenge with Uchi: menus. We coordinate three menus every day. Daily specials of seasonal ingredients (usually 10-12 composed dishes), a permanent tasting menu of hot dishes,tempura& grill...and also a full service sushi bar and sushi menu of cold tastings,sushi,sashimi and rolls! 

The beauty in this is the flexiblity. Everything that comes in fresh through the back door has many possibilities. My mantra to our customers lately: Uchi is so busy because our food is so fresh...Uchi's food is so fresh b/c we're so busy!  Product arrives and is sold as quickly as we get it. This allows us the ability to consistently bring in new and different items all year long because we know people are going to try them. In turn, this process gives our staff of cooks and servers the ability to learn more about food and wine as each day passes. 

 Multiple menus of cooked and raw dishes, we take pride in customizing the Uchi experience to each person that walks in the door.  It's good to be in Austin as a chef! 

Uchi kitchen

This is a picture of our service kitchen. Small space with 3 stations: saute,grill and tempura/fryer.  This area has changed and evolved over the years to many different set ups...the current being great with the ability to run 3 stations with 2 people when necessary. Stainless table in the foreground is our expo, and grill is off picture to the right. The tempura is fryed in a Japanese copper/brass pot to the left, and our Montague stove is off photo far left.  Permanent menu items and composed specials come off  these stations. This photo was at 5pm before things got too busy. Imagine these 2 guys knocking out food for 300 people by night's end! 

Our grill station in the Uchi kitchen uses a grill that was built in Japan and runs off of compressed Japanese oak charcoal called "binchotan". The binchotan burns at 600-800 degrees and hold a temp just below that for hours. The secret to these long charcoal bricks is a hole drilled lengthwise through them to allow air to circulate inside the charcoal and let them take full effect and add longevity to the burn. 

To start each batch going before putting them into the grill we use this deluxe chimney; purchased off of Brodie lane at a place called BBQ's galore. ;0)

Uchiko will use a similar grill with binchotan. We plan on building it and installing ourselves before opening. 

kampachi nabe

This dish is called "kona kampachi" and is part of our permanent menu at Uchi.  It's steamed koshi hikari rice with fresh kampachi (baby yellowtail) sliced into small pieces and topped with scallion,bonito flakes and a raw farm fresh egg. The key to this dish is the bowl/nabe is screaming hot when the rice is placed inside, and gets the rice very crispy by the time it hits the table. Sweet soy is poured table side and everything is mixed together before eating. The raw kampachi cooks with the egg and crispy rice to make for a wonderful Uchi "rice bowl".  I eat at least 2 of these a week! 

Acid and fat

Pacific saury arrived yesterday from Tsukiji. This is the dish we made with it yesterday: Crudo of saury with vin of lemongrass,thai chili,kaffir lime, myoga and tomato. Fattier flesh fish like this are such a natural bride to anything acidic like tomatoes and vinegar. Delicious! 

From a photo shoot last week for a book on Texas chefs.  Torch seared striped bass tataki with citrus,fennel,coriander and olive oil. I think this pic is a nice representation of my food at Uchi and it's ever present focus on clean,crisp flavors and textures. 

Dishes like this will play a large role in the menu at Uchiko and continue our focus on combining the freshest possible fish and seafood products with various seasonal fruits and vegetables. 

 "Hamachi cure". Sugar+salt cured Japanese yellowtail. We cure this fish daily for 2 hours, then smoke with applewood for 8-10 minutes. There are cinnamon, juniper and peppercorns in the cure to add depth in flavor.  These loins will be kept whole and sliced to order throughout the night. Delicious with pear,almond,fried yucca and candied garlic.

339pm. Tasting FOH staff on specials in 45 minutes and open at 5!  New specials today include lobster with nectarines, seared scallops with kikurage and horchata sorbet with sour cherry.  All specs are listed at Uchiaustin.com daily. 

dried wagyu

Beef fat and scrap drying in one of our food dehydrators. Paul says he's going to grind it up when it's done to add to some new dishes. Instant umami. 

I did an interview about the Austin dining scene for the WSJ last month. One of the dishes they loved was this one of melon,jicama,scallops and radish. Look for this coming out soon in the next few weeks! 

Also on the food forefront, financing and publisher are finally in place and we are getting ramped up to start the process of putting together our first full length cookbook for Uchi! 

To start we're reviewing all of the daily specs we've made most recently over the last 3 years, the we'll revamp them and see what we can come up with as the best overall representation of what we do at the restaurant. Look for some fantastic specs over the next 6 months while work is in progress! 

Japanese love notes about fish arrivals and directions from chef to chef.  These are spines with fins of just filleted horse mackerel from Tsukiji market in Tokyo. We'll use these in presentation of sashimi, or fry them to order to eat with salt. 

Uchi 1:33pm

Tuesday afternoon in Uchi's prep kitchen. It's tight. Very tight.  2 small rooms including the service kitchen, we make the most of the space we have. At the back of our prep kitchen is also the pantry station for service. Included on pantry are a paco jet sorbet machine, immersion circulator(s),vacuum sealer, a coffin freezer to hold all sorbets and bases, rice cookers, and a microwave. The aray of storage you see labeled above the station are all various dry spices and chemicals. The back door to the restaurant is directly to the right. Dish is just right out of the photo. This room is the heartbeat where everything gets distributed from in the restaurant. Later i'll take some more pics to give some views of our coolers, service kitchen and sushi bar to give everyone a better idea of what we're working off of going into opening our new space Uchiko.  Cheers. 

goodness

  One of my favorite recipes at Uchi is our fish sauce tare, which we lovingly refer to as "fish caramel". It adds an instant sweetness and savory deliciousness to anything grilled or seared. We use it mostly on cured/roasted pork belly. After the meat is roasted, we cool it down in our walkin....and once chilled we cut and portion and keep in vacuum sealed sous vide bags to hold. Based on pars, we prep as many bags as needed for that day of service...and each portion is grilled to order. The fish caramel comes in to glaze the meat on the grill, or to finish post grilling on the plate. 

The tare starts with sweating seasoned shallots,thai chilis,garlic,lemongrass in pork fat until well caramelized. We then deglaze the pan with sherry. Next we mix well to coat and add h2o,vietnamese fish sauce, and sugar...reducing by 3/4 till a light syrupy consistency and hold at room temp for the day. Picture is of the first step of the recipe during caramelization. 

Uchiko, 9/16/09

Lots of work happening on all fronts getting ready for Uchiko, with focus primarily on Uchi and maintaining it's consistency and super ninja trained staff.  Key leaders and people at Uchi will stay in place and Uchiko will be 90% new hired staff. A couple chefs and managers will likely jump to the new space to help instill the same culture and systems we have in place at Uchi currently.

 We went ahead and hired a third party expert almost 6 months ago to help us grow into a more high performance organization. His name is Joel Fleshman and he's incredible. One by one he's taking all of us up to the next level. Commitment vs. compliance....trying to help us become a place where everyone is committed to excel, and not just complying to set systems,checklists, etc. Joel's help has been priceless. 

 On the food side of things we're trying as always to edit and simplify; keep fewer things on the plate and make sure what's there is done as well as possible. Toying with different cuts of meat and techniques. Got in this gold label wagyu flat iron today. Paul is going to sous vide in it's own fat with various spices and/or aromatics and hold overnight. Tomorrow we'll portion and sear off on the binchotan grill to order. Rest of the composed dish forthcoming. 

Tasting of daily specials for FOH in 2 hours.....including foie terrine with yukari and watermelon...sayori from Tsukiji....Japanese aji with ginger gel and plum...cuttlefish tataki with pickled Texas peaches...and paco jet grapefruit sorbet with crunchy olive candy and yogurt caramel.  

 

uchiko progress, Sept. 2009

 This is the site for Uchiko at 4200 N.Lamar. We will be the anchor tenant of what will be a completely renovated building. Our location will be this NE corner, and it will extend some 30ft out off of the existing structure to give us more presence and a residential feel. We should receive an empty shell before year's end; after that we will go in and finish the space.  

Uchiko blueprints

 Welcome to the Uchiko blog site. Uchiko is the second location for Uchi here in Austin,Tx. I'll be updating this site over the next year with current news on it's progress. 

 We've been working on design,layout,and overall functionality of the space since the beginning of the year. I secured a space for Uchiko this summer after looking in a very narrow swatch of land for almost 2 years. I want to maintain focus on keeping Uchi a local/neighborhood restaurant.  Now we have a space where i was looking and construction has began! The address is 4200 N.Lamar; 3.9 miles away from our current location on S.Lamar. Current ETA is May/2010. We'll see how it goes from here.....

Blueprints show basic idea of the space. Pick up Uchi and drop it on a new site, add an eat-in bar with 50+ seats, and a PDR to accommodate private parties and functions. The restaurant will be mostly reservations, and the bar will accept walk-ins. Overall feel will be basic, comfortable and inviting; not overly designed. Quality materials. Uchiko, meaning "child of Uchi", will play on everything that has made Uchi such a success.....and more.