michael mina

dinner: 6 courses with wine pairings

1a. started with foamy oyster (very good) and decent tomato soup
1b. some crazy mexican vegetable that is supposed to be a delicacy but instead is fairly bitter. the one good part about it is that it had cured ham as well on it

2. wahu fish: super good cooked perfectly, definitely the best dish of the night. cooked with asparagus and light mole sauce

3. sonoma duck: duck breasts with a healthy portion of foie gras. duck was very good and had a nice savory sauce with mushrooms. foie gras was very good, i don't think i could have done a trio of three, so one was nice.

4. veal: good. a nice touch with little pieces of friend fat and potato. this dish was a bit too salty especially as everything else to this point carried similar flavor

5. forgetting what this was, so it must have not been that great.

6. cheese. not sure what i got, but it was a very nice cheese
- in addition half the wines were extremely good choices, the other were fairly good.

overall i thought i should be blown away by a six course and wine pairing from michael mina. while many dishes were amazing (wahu and duck), other were so-so (soup, mexican vegetable, veal) and overall no tastes were all that unique nor creative as i would have hoped. still, the meal was great. but so were the expectations.

rating: yum+ (wish it could have been YUM)