Friday, January 24, 2020

Crustacean Beverly Hills, Beyond the Garlic Noodles

Even though I've been in LA for a while and have even had the An family's food at AnQi in Costa Mesa and even the famous garlic crab at the original Thanh Long in San Francisco, I actually have not made it to Crustacean until recently. Sure, I've had the garlic noodles at food festivals, but that's not quite the same.

Luckily, I was recently invited for a tasting menu so I made my way there for the first time. It was the middle of the week but the Beverly Hills restaurant was hopping. It was quite crowded both with dinner guests and people drinking at the bar (after-work drink crowd, I presume). There was a live music performance going on, which takes place on Wednesdays from 4-7pm.

Our tasting menu for two started with these tuna cigars, with quite the eye catching presentation. A cigar box was presented to us and smoke wafted out upon opening.
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The tuna cigars were made of feuille de brick, tuna, avocado silk, Vidalia onion, and tobiko caviar.
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The smoky presentation continued on with the cocktail I ordered, the Hightea Penicillin. The Penicillin traditionally consisted of scotch, ginger, honey, and lemon juice and here it's topped off with black tea and lavender cloud.
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Artichoke yellowtail, yuzu pesto, meyer lemon, mortar and pestle herbs and young ginger
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Hearts of palm “crab cake”, spicy aioli
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First I need to mention, how cool is this plate? Plate aside, hearts of palm make for a great vegetarian substitute for crab cake, as it can mimic the texture pretty well. Reminded me of the first time I had it at the now-shuttered Willie Jane.

Maple Leaf Farms duck potstickers, Luxardo cherry agrodolce.
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The sweet cherry agrodolce went really nicely with the duck potstickers.

Of course, we got the famous garlic noodles and the famous garlic roasted crab!
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Because this is Beverly Hills, at Crustacean you can get the whole crab either in the shell or de-shelled for you. They de-shelled it for us and you can see all the meat underneath.

For dessert, we got the signature table-side ice cream (made using liquid nitrogen) with warm chocolate cake, raspberry, and vanilla wafer.
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Before this meal, all I knew about Crustacean was the garlic crab and garlic noodles. You have to try the garlic crab, of course, but I was pleasantly surprised by their other dishes! This also made me curious to try their high end tasting menu restaurant Da Lat Rose upstairs.
Crustacean is participating in dineL.A. this time around and they're offering a 7-course tasting menu for $99. The tasting menu is not exactly the same as what I had but some of the dishes make an appearance. In case you want to check it out for dineL.A., you have until Jan 31!

Crustacean
468 N Bedford Dr
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
https://crustaceanbh.com/
Crustacean Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

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