One of many new Spring Recipes: Baby veg­eta­bles from MA’O Organic Farms, hand selected dur­ing an in-field tast­ing with chef de cui­sine Kevin Chong, each one cooked in its best fla­vor­ful way. 

Click here for Chef Mavro’s Let­ter on the new Spring Menu

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs013/1102026593933/archive/1103219227744.html

Chef Mavro will be cook­ing up the very best of Provence and Hawaii!

Fresh Truf­fles flown in from France, Caviar & Big­eye Ahi in an updated Chef Mavro clas­sic, sautéed Foie Gras, Lob­ster with a chorizo puff, a great­est hit from a recent menu, 100% Wagyu, and for the grand finale a Fan­tasy of White, Milk & Dark Chocolate.

Pre­mium wine pair­ings selected by som­me­lier Todd Ash­line includ­ing Ries­ling Auslese, Cham­pagne Rosé, Sauternes, Morey St. Denis, the rare Bor­deaux Château Chasse-Spleen, and the unique Hun­gar­ian Tokaji with your dessert.

Bou­quets of gold and black bal­loons float above each table cre­at­ing a mag­i­cal effect. Also a civ­i­lized and lux­u­ri­ous ambiance away from la “foule,” the smoke and the cacoph­ony of fire works.

This is exactly what you’ll get on Decem­ber 31st for Chef Mavro’s New Year’s Eve Gala Dinner.

Where: Chef Mavro Restau­rant, 1969 South King Street, Hon­olulu on the beau­ti­ful Island of Oahu.

Cost: $170 with­out wine pair­ings; $90.00 for our som­me­lier selec­tion wine pairings

Reser­va­tions from 7:30–9:30 p.m. Call (808) 944‑4714 or chef@chefmavro.com

MENU

FIRST WINTER TRUFFLES FROM HAUTE PROVENCE
cod bran­dade, coun­try bread crou­tons
JOH JOS CHRISTOFFEL, 2004 RIESLING AUSLESE, URZIGER WURZGARTEN

AHI TARTAR WITH CAVIAR
big eye ahi, pad­dle­fish caviar, taro chip, ponzu sauce
HENRI BILLIOT, BRUT ROSÉ, CHAMPAGNE

SAUTEED HUDSON VALLEY FOIE GRAS
oven dried grapes, raisin bread, foie gras jus
CHATEAU GUIRAUD, 2005 SAUTERNES

KEAHOLE LOBSTER CHORIZO PUFF
kahuku cream corn, essence of lob­ster
LIGNIER, 2005 MOREY ST. DENIS

100 % WAGYU BEEF
strip loin and braised short rib in bur­gundy, cel­ery root purée
CHATEAU CHASSE-SPLEEN, 2000 CRU BOURGEOIS, MOULIS-EN-MEDOC

pre-dessert
per­sim­mon kanten

LE GRAND DESSERT 2010
a choco­late fan­tasy, mint white choco­late ice cream cone, rose­mary milk choco­late malasada, dark choco­late flan
GROF DEGENFELD, 2000 TOKAJI ASZU 5 PUTTONYOS

Mahalo for another good year
AAA Five Dia­monds again for 2010
18/20 Gayot’s top rat­ing in Hawaii again for 2010

One more Christ­mas in my new home town.

I was born in Mar­seille, cap­i­tal of Provence.  Mar­seille is a big city (on the French scale) more than 1 mil­lion inhab­i­tants.  Grow­ing up in Mar­seille is like grow­ing up in a small vil­lage, every­body knows you and you know every­body.  If you haven’t seen a friend for a while you think “maybe is dead!”  Nobody (except me) leaves Mar­seille, born, grow, work and die some time in the same house.

Peo­ple from Mar­seille are very wel­com­ing, always smil­ing and jok­ing. Nobody (except in the restau­rant busi­ness) works very hard. When it takes one year in Paris to cre­ate a new road; it takes 10 years in Mar­seille to do the same road. But nobody really cares or complains.

In Mar­seille busi­ness is tough we always say “this is the price of the sun.”  We are not rich but happy. On bad times we think about the “pôvre” (mis­er­able in Mar­seille dialect) inhab­i­tants of Paris and Lyon and we feel better.

Now, replace the word Mar­seille by Honolulu…Is that not amaz­ing?  I am home guys.

23 years in Hawaii and I don’t take any­thing for granted. I am, like the first day, still enjoy­ing the morn­ing run around the Punch­bowl as well as the Mon­day swim at Kaimana Beach fol­lowed by a lunch at Ono Hawai­ian Foods. Every time I eat ogo I cel­e­brate like this is the best thing I have tasted in my whole life.  Same for local mango, water­cress, lilikoi, guava, papaya, ahi, gin­ger etc.

Day-Boat Catch
Provence herbs, black olive, con­fit lemon & capers, caramelized fen­nel
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Hol­i­days are here and we are ready.  The Hol­i­day menu is offered through Jan­u­ary 2nd (7 days a week).  We will fea­ture a spe­cial dessert to cel­e­brate Christ­mas Eve and Christ­mas Day.

Our Day-Boat catch is the cel­e­bra­tion of Provence.  Crusted with Provence herbs cured black olive, con­fit lemon and capers, it’s served with a caramelized  fen­nel bulb and a bub­bling lemon thyme emul­sion.  This recipe is a very good bar­gain.  It is going to make you fly to Mar­seille with­out leav­ing your seat.  The wine, very crispy, cit­rusy, peachy, apri­coty with long acid­ity (all the words in “y” even the one doesn’t exist).  I am talk­ing about the Domaine de Chatenoy, Menetou-Salon from the Loire Val­ley, selected by our wine pair­ing committee.

What is espelette and how good is the Tamarind Roasted Sable­fish?
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Back to Hawaii with the Tamarind Roasted Sable­fish.  It per­haps looks like a mis­oy­aki but­ter­fish but it is not.  Tamarind glazed, the fish is gar­nished with salad of cucum­ber, red radish and cel­ery, tossed with a yogurt-cilantro extra vir­gin olive oil dress­ing.  The sauce: a puree of gar­lic fla­vored with espelette.  What is “espelette?”

Thank you for ask­ing.  Before this menu I was myself not sure exactly what it was.  Kevin Chong dis­cov­ered the espelette while vis­it­ing years ago the Basque Coun­try between France and Spain.

Basques are won­der­ful peo­ple, they don’t want to be French and they don’t want to be Span­ish either.  They are Basques…The cui­sine is won­der­ful, Chicken Basquaise, Piper­ade etc. What hap­pens in Basque coun­try stays in Basque coun­try. Next door in Provence we don’t hear about it.

Sorry I for­got; you ask what espelette is?

Espelette is a dried basque chile, not too hot with very spe­cific fla­vors some­thing like maybe cayenne and paprika.

Chal­lenge for the wine? Not really; we all picked up a Pouilly-Fuisse from Chateau Pouilly which was cre­ated for this recipe with dried-fruit fla­vors that work very well with the espelette.

Fois Gras “au tor­chon,” mar­cona almonds, fig bal­samic, Por­tuguese sweet­bread
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I talk too much and I have almost no more room but I want to tell you about the new Foie Gras.

The foie gras is poached “au tor­chon” (inside a towel in order to squeeze the foie after cook­ing to remove the excess of fat).  The foie is topped with spiced mar­cona almonds (from Spain).  The dish is gar­nished with a mar­malade of granny smith toma­toes (not apples), accented with baby mus­tard cab­bage leaves.  Then served with a fig bal­samic vine­gar, toasted house Por­tuguese sweet­bread on the side.

The wine is not a Sauternes which makes me happy because I think that as fan­tas­tic as this wine is, it is too sweet for Foie Gras ter­rine. The wine is a Ger­man Gewürz­traminer Spätlese from Fitz-Ritter. This is a per­fect bal­ance of sweet­ness and acid­ity that doesn’t over­shadow the foie gras.

Our Win­ter Menu will start Jan­u­ary 5th fea­tur­ing new dishes such as Lamb, Date Tarte, Big Island fresh Goat Cheese…But this is for my next letter.

Please check our com­plete hol­i­day menus and our New Year’s Eve gala dinner.

Aloha,

George Mavrothalassitis/Chef Mavro
Chef Mavro Restau­rant
1969 S. King Street
Hon­olulu, Hawaii 96826
(808) 944‑4714

Big Island Goat Cheese

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Our som­me­lier and restau­rant man­ager Todd Ash­line is also a fea­tured colum­nist for The Hon­olulu Adver­tiser. Read his Raise a Glass fea­ture story on gift sug­ges­tions for wine and food lovers (scroll down to pre­vi­ous blog post).
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Truf­fles, Lob­ster, Wagyu Beef on New Year’s Eve Menu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Of course the high­light of the Hol­i­day is our New Year’s Eve gala din­ner with gold & black decor and favors.  This menu spot­lights the ingre­di­ents that you dream about for this occa­sion:
fresh truf­fles, caviar, foie gras, lob­ster, wagyu beef and the grand dessert of 2010!
We cre­ate a fes­tive oasis and a civ­i­lized way to dine for New Year’s Eve, yet close to Waikiki if you plan to fin­ish the night with fire­works and dancing.

For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, Chef Mavro restau­rant is the only inde­pen­dent restau­rant in Hawaii, and one of only a hand­ful nation­ally, to earn the Amer­i­can Auto­mo­bile Asso­ci­a­tion (AAA) Five Dia­mond award. Other notable inde­pen­dent restau­rant win­ners nation­ally are The French Laun­dry and Gary Danko in Cal­i­for­nia; Aure­ole, Daniel, and Jean Georges Restau­rant in New York.

The con­sis­tently out­stand­ing food, ser­vice and décor of Chef Mavro restau­rant was con­firmed by the anony­mous vis­its of highly trained AAA inspec­tors. The Five Dia­mond award is “reserved for those out­stand­ing restau­rants that exem­plify the high­est level of excel­lence in every facet of operation.”

George Mavrotha­las­si­tis, chef/owner com­ments: “To get Five Dia­monds is dif­fi­cult but the chal­lenge is to keep it! Bravo to our kitchen and din­ing room staff.”

Chef Mavro received another cov­eted award recently as the only Hawaii restau­rant to earn the Gayot restau­rant critic rat­ing of 18/20 (three toques). Mavrotha­las­si­tis is a found­ing mem­ber of Hawaii Regional Cui­sine and won the James Beard Award, a one-time life­time achieve­ment award and the top culi­nary honor in the U.S. 

The menu at this restau­rant is rein­vented each sea­son as the culi­nary team works hand-in-hand with local farm­ers to bring new prod­ucts to the table, and to develop inno­v­a­tive tech­niques that enhance the nat­ural fla­vors of fresh local prod­ucts. Chef Mavro is rec­og­nized as an all-around inno­va­tor includ­ing his intro­duc­tion of food & wine pair­ings in 1998 when the restau­rant opened.