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.