From Rome to Canal St
August Junzi Chef's Table
In the beginning, more than 2,000 years ago, Romans built aqueducts and snacked on bread, vegetables, olives, and fish sauce.
Meanwhile, Chinese courtsmen were inventing paper, cultivating fruits, eating domesticated birds and making soy sauce. The two empires sat on opposite edges of the earth, but philosophers and eunuchs alike had already begun to sing the songs of food as medicine, food as decadence, food as civilization.
Since the two cultures came in contact, sometime around 97 AD, Italian and Chinese cuisines have evolved in wildly, often disparate but sometimes overlapping manners. This August, over 5-7 courses, we take a look at the lattice of those intersecting cuisines and how they complement each other, beginning with the Romans and ending in the literal intersection of Little Italy and Chinatown, here in Manhattan.
- Menu, August 2018 -
antipasti
LOTUS, MISTRANSLATED
lotus root, red dates, moretum, barley
primi
MARCO POLO & THE MYTH OF THE NOODLE
semolina noodles, minced duck, peppercorns, chinese ham
secondi
SACRED SPACES, IN DIALOGUE
white fish, farro, olives, black sesame
insalata
WESTERN RED PERSIMMON
pat chun tomato, apricot kernel, almond custard
dolce
WHERE CHINATOWN MET LITTLE ITALY
zabaione, wafer, tapioca cake
WHERE CHINATOWN MET LITTLE ITALY
zabaione, wafer, tapioca cake
MARCO POLO & THE MYTH OF THE NOODLE
semolina noodles, minced duck, peppercorns, chinese ham
