Notes from Dave Chang’s episode w/David Schlosser
These notes are directly from Dave Chang’s podcast show notes from his email newsletter. I couldn’t find it anywhere online, and didn’t want to save the email, so I’m posting here for me to reference later. This episode was great, but more than that, I loved hearing them geek out on all things chef/restaurant. Tons of chefs and restaurants that I didn’t know about but felt like I should know.
In the latest episode of The Dave Chang Show, chef David Schlosser shares the career trajectory that led him to open his sublime LA dining bar, Shibumi. Schlosser trained at the finest restaurants in France before falling in love with Japanese cuisine. “I had real sushi for the first time, and basically, I cried. It was insane,” he says. “The seriousness of the chefs, the cleanliness, the variance — 28 kinds of fish! I couldn’t stop thinking about it. This was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” Schlosser went on to train with many of the top chefs in Japan before opening his own restaurant, which serves authentic, lovingly crafted kappo-style food.
“People ask, ‘Why is Japanese food culture better?’ It’s because they take it way more fucking seriously than anyone else,” says Chang. He and Schlosser describe the varieties of Japanese cuisine beyond sushi, and the Shibumi chef outlines the finer points of the kappo cuisine he serves. Schlosser also explains the vital importance of eating fermented delicacies while you drink sake, the proper way to consume miso soup, and why the wagyu and kobe beef you’re shelling out top dollar for is probably fake.
Playing Inside Baseball
Whoa. This was a reference-heavy episode. You’ll be excused for not knowing every single chef and dish reference that Chang and Schlosser make. Here’s a quick glossary of terms for your reference.
Kappo: A Japanese style of dining that lies somewhere between the highly seasonal, intensely formal world of kaiseki and the more casual, good-food-with-beer-and-sake izakaya model. Schlosser’s restaurant, Shibumi, specializes in kappo-style dining. The food is still very refined and changes with the seasons, but it’s meant to be ordered a la carte and eaten with ice-cold adult beverages.
101 Gold list: The annual list of Los Angeles’s best restaurants assembled by the late, great Jonathan Gold.
Kikunoi: Run by chef Yoshihiro Murata, Kikunoi is one of the preeminent kaiseki restaurants in Kyoto (and therefore the world).
umami: The taste of savoriness. Umami was first identified and named by the Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda in the early 20th century.
Troisgros: An immensely important and influential family of French chefs. Brothers Jean and Pierre helped define nouvelle cuisine from the family’s flagship restaurant, La Maison Troisgros, in Roanne, France.
Claude Bosi: Formerly the chef of Hibiscus in London, and now Claude Bosi at Bibendum.
Sat Bains: Chef of the eponymous Restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham, England.
Mauro Colagreco: Chef of Mirazur in Menton, France.
Michael Anthony: Chef of Gramercy Tavern in New York City.
Paul Bocuse: Legendary French chef who passed away earlier this year; credited with spearheading the nouvelle cuisine movement in France. His main restaurant, L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, is still operating.
stage: A French term for a kitchen apprenticeship, often unpaid.
Ludo Lefebvre: With chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, Lefebvre operates Trois Mec, Petit Trois, Trois Familia, and Ludo Bird in Los Angeles.
Pierre Gagnaire: Iconoclastic French chef known for his experimental, thought-provoking cuisine. He has over a dozen restaurants around the globe, and many of them bear his name.
CIA: The Culinary Institute of America, a chain of cooking schools.
Spago: The flagship restaurant of Wolfgang Puck.
Pascal Barbot: Chef of L’Astrance in Paris, France.
Ferran Adrià: With his brother, Albert, Ferran ran the restaurant El Bulli in Roses, Spain, and pioneered modernist cuisine.
Georges Blanc: As chef of his eponymous restaurant, Blanc became one of the most respected faces of 20th-century French cuisine.
Marc Meneau: Chef of L’Espérance in Saint-Père, France.
Alain Passard: Chef of L’Arpege in Paris, who famously and controversially eschewed meat from his menu in the early 2000s in favor of vegetables and fruits from his gardens. (Meat has since made its way back into the menu.)
Lucas Carton: The restaurant in Paris run by the recently deceased chef, Alain Senderens. He had bought the restaurant and renamed it Senderens. It has since reverted to Lucas Carton.
Masayoshi “Masa” Takayama: Chef of the sushi restaurant Masa in New York City. Before opening Masa, Takayama opened and ran Ginza Sushiko in Los Angeles.
Miyamasou: A two-Michelin-star kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto.
Kitcho: One of the most famous kaiseki restaurants in Japan, now a chain of several throughout the country.
Chinmi: A delicacy. Often some kind of pickled seafood.
Karasumi: Japanese salted, dried mullet roe.
Bottarga: Italian salted, dried mullet roe.
Ikura: Cured salmon roe.
Joshua Skenes: Chef of Saison in San Francisco, California. (For clarification: In the episode, Dave is saying Josh is an acquired taste, not Saison. Saison is delicious.)