Crumbs in my 'Stache: Of sea-urchin flan and late-night pizza

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-It took the occasion of Valentine’s Day to finally get me to Mizu Sushi, out in that lawless province widely known as the West Bank.

With Mizu’s limited seating we were only able to reserve a seat at ‘the bar’ on such a popular date night. But this had an upside: we sat within arm’s reach of chef Ryan Roadhouse, who I’ve heard good things about.

Roadhouse came to the valley a few months ago from Denver’s popular Sushi Den. He speaks passable Japanese and has actually worked in Japan, where he picked up a few things he probably wouldn’t have learned in Colorado. He knows a lot about seafood, and is versed in different styles of Japanese cuisine.

Anyhow, I got the sense that Roadhouse is on a trajectory to true culinary mastery, and that this valley is merely a passing stop for him and his young family.
So what exactly did we eat at Mizu? I’m not sure I can entirely answer that question. Different kinds of raw fish, of course, and a couple of creamy raw oysters doctored with a little Japanese mojo.

Everything was incredibly fresh tasting and much of the sashimi was so delicate and expertly cut as to begin to disintegrate on the tongue.

I asked the chef, as I’m increasingly prone to do, what he recommended we, as adventurous eaters, try. The end result of this conversation was an off-the-menu sea urchin tofu. I don’t recall ever having actually tried sea urchin and this seemed like a reasonable place to start. Served cold and covered in salmon roe – pea size eggs that burst a mildly fishy taste in the mouth – the texture and taste of the tofu could be described as something similar to a sea urchin-flavored flan. My companion set her spoon down after one bite, but I, wanting to join the sea urchin tofu clean plate club, soldiered on.

The special, some fish whose provenance I’ve now forgotten, was sliced razor thin and garnished with monkfish livers, which have a rich taste similar to the delicious yellow fat found inside boiled crabs.

We left sated and happy, feeling as if we’d momentarily been carried away from this mountain valley in midwinter for somewhere far, far away.

Still, there was plenty of night left to work up another appetite, and it was thus that we found ourselves in the newly reinvented and reopened Café Ponza after 1 a.m. Sunday.

I’m not even going to open a can of worms over who has “the best” pizza in town, but Ponza’s slices were pretty delish. Ponza proprietor Alex von Salad, whose very name, when it has appeared in this column in the past, has incited harsh criticism against yours truly (player haters), might be on to something here.

An art opening earlier in the weekend was catered with a couple of boxes of cold Ponza pizza, and I had a slice. But that pizza was an entirely different animal when the pre-cooked slices were thrown in the oven, and came out a deliciously chary crust. A few revelers came in while we were there, and I envisioned a vibrant late night pizzeria with banquettes full of people having laughs over good pizza.

Wait: Japanese-speaking sushi chefs and late night pizza – where are we again? PJH
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Crumbs in my 'Stache: Of sea-urchin flan and late-night pizza | Planet JH News Article: Restaurants And Dining

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