Ten Restaurant
Ten Restaurant serves spontaneous, seasonal 10-course tasting menus to just 10 guests at a time.
Food is artistic, experimental, waste-conscious, and emphasizes produce and seafood, each course paired with a typically organic or biodynamic wine.
The 1,200-square-foot former apartment and Brandon Olsen store architecturally designed by Lloyd London is now divided into a front lounge and the back 10-seat Chef’s Counter area.
An entire professional kitchen has been transplanted into the fully accessible space.
There's no menu per se, seeing as it changes almost nightly, though there is a drinks list.
Simply choose between a five-course tasting menu ($65) or a ten-course tasting menu ($115) and let the experience begin. An alcohol pairing with the meal is $55, or you can opt for wine by the glass or bottle, beer, cocktails or mocktails.
Sri Lankan strawberry grouper is long line caught, marinated in a Thai vinaigrette of fish sauce, cold pressed canola oil, lime and scallion.
Torched at the counter, it's plated with pickled cucumber, mustard flower and a nuanced cucumber skin broth.
This might be paired with a glass of local Tawse bottle fermented cider, or opt to start with a cocktail like the Celery Collins ($14), celery-forward with Ford's Gin, lemon and soda.
Pumpkin is roasted, and has the skin removed before basting in brown butter. Plated with a cashew puree, pickled butternut squash and snappy, crunchy pumpkin seeds, the warm, rich, buttery flavours of the starchy veg play nicely against a fragrant rosemary oil.
This is paired with a glass of Kellerei, a Pinot Bianco from a region of north Italy between Austria and Germany.
A bread course is simply a slice of sweet, crispy, naturally leavened house sourdough brioche, made using a three-year-old starter and lots of butter, eggs and sugar, accompanied by a subtle carrot butter and a few tiny tatters of carrot greens.
A mushroom white bean dish is arguably the climax of this five-course meal, white beans cooked with lemon peels and combined with sauteed yellowfoot chanterelles, chives and garlic deglazed with sherry.
Additional butter and water create a kind of earthy sherry sauce soaked up by the beans and spongy mushrooms, the plate finished off with toasted raw buckwheat, nasturtium leaves and a load of fresh truffle that ups the indulgence factor.
A date and thyme ice cream (pun intended) closes the show, flavoured with herby, slightly spicy date, thyme and ginger and topped with toasted pecan, fresh lemon and fresh thyme.
The kitchen is headed up by Chef Owner Julian Bentivegna (Alo, Momofuku) and Sous Chef Simon De Sousa (Awai), with wines curated by Sommelier Jen Hunter (Akira Back, Terroni).
Hector Vasquez