I went to Ode last night. We did the wine pairing and tasting menu and if I’m being honest, it was mid. For $600 ($300 a person) I expected some incredible French cuisine.
Here is where I felt bamboozled – they aren’t doing French cuisine right now. Because the chef was in an accident (I think I read he was driving drunk and hit someone? I didn’t fact check and don’t know if this is true) and won’t be back for 1.5 years, they switched to Japanese cuisine for their omakase.
It started off not great, the dishes were bland and the silverware honestly wasn’t fit for the dishes. One in particular (photo above – bowl with edamame) required more than just chopsticks, and I’m not just saying that because I’m white. I can use chopsticks for anything but this dish was a soup with a congee like rice cake and edamame and cutting into the rice cake was impossible with chopsticks – all the edamame fell off and it because two separate items to eat.
The tuna – photo 3 – was good but the pieces of sashimi were too big and the grated onion overpowered the dish in my opinion.
The blue crab croquette tasted mostly like shrimps – not blue crabs at all. That’s the photo of the fried ball.
Last photo was of soba noodles sushi – this was great. Eel, egg, soba, this I loved.
The waygu dish (not pictured) was fine, the eggplant on the bottom was cut way too big to eat with chopsticks and the waygu was huge chunks too – you were choking a little on it.
Also the soba noodles (not pictured) – it was SO COOL to see the chef hand cut soba in the back, but after eating so much food to be served two separate soba dishes was too much. We left almost all of the warm soba on the plate.
The nectarine dessert (also not pictured – I was jet lag and forgot to take photos) was so good and the wine pairings were great – but overall I’d probably give this a 6/10. Don’t advertise as French if you are serving Japanese dishes!!!
by BikeGoblin
Dining and Cooking