(Bloomberg) -- Over the last decade-plus years, sea urchin on toast, or some fantastical version of it, has become a staple on fancy tasting menus worldwide.
In Bangkok, at the acclaimed Stage, chef Jay Sangsingkeaw brushes toasted brioche with honey, crowns it with uni and finishes it with a quenelle of caviar. At Copenhagen’s famed Alchemist, avant-garde chef Rasmus Munk has made a specialty of toasted brioche-scented meringue topped with sea urchin. And at Birdsong in San Francisco, chef Chris Bleidorn’s signature bite is a butterscotch-filled pastry puff anointed with two giant sea urchin tongues.
The source of all those dishes traces back to 2009, when New York chef César Ramirez of Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare introduced a version that has since become “legendary,” according to Bleidorn: Toasted brioche heaped with double-decker layers of Hokkaido uni capped with a black truffle purée and a single truffle slice.
Since its debut, there’s been “a global proliferation” of uni toasts, says Bleidorn, “with subtle and bold variations created by chefs everywhere.”
When Ramirez opens César, his globally minded fine dining restaurant on Monday, July 15, will the uni toast—an umami explosion in one bite— feature on the menu?
The answer is yes.
Ramirez’s uni bite lands as the sixth dish out of around 13 courses on the $365 tasting menu. Bloomberg Pursuits got a first look at the menu and the restaurant as Ramirez was fine-tuning dishes at the 333 Hudson Street address in Soho.
Amid the ongoing questions about the future of fine dining, a new, unabashedly ambitious, high-end restaurant is noteworthy. The current trend is for high-end chefs and operators to open casual restaurants: Acclaimed Mexican chef Enrique Olvera has a new taqueria Esse Taco, for instance; the relaxed French bistro Chez Fifi, a family-style neighborhood spot, is from the team behind the two Michelin star Sushi Noz, where the omakase goes for $550.
Ramirez was at the helm of Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, the counter-focused restaurant that started in an unglamorous stretch of Downtown Brooklyn when it first got three Michelin stars in 2011. It retained them until his very public exit from the restaurant in 2023, after the dining room had moved to Hudson Yards in Manhattan. According to the New York Times, Ramirez was fired by Chef’s Table owner Moneer Issa for company property theft valued at more than $100,000; Ramirez filed a counter lawsuit against his former partner and the restaurant’s holding company, stating he was “arbitrarily terminated” and was owed millions of dollars for defamation and damages.
The chef has been out of the public eye since then. (Ramirez says that he can’t comment on the split since there’s an ongoing lawsuit; Issa also declined to comment.)
Ramirez is best known, and in some cases infamous, for his obsessive attention to detail. His hyper focused cooking depends on exceptional ingredients from around the world, with an emphasis on products from Japan, like fresh katsuobushi (smoked bonito), which Ramirez will serve sandwiched between two Japanese rice wafers known as monaka. One of his introductory small bites is slated to feature wild-trapped Maryland eel, smoked and piped into a delicate phyllo dough pastry tube. (The chef claims only one person in the U.S. has a permit to trap those eels).
In fact, Ramirez is most renowned for the his sublime, precisely cooked seafood. Like his menu at Chef’s Table, around 75% of César’s savory dishes will come from the ocean. Most of it will be flown in from Japan, such as fatty kinki (rockfish) fish and blue fin tuna, and isakisu (Japanese whiting) with saffron emulsion, a dish that reflects his Spanish heritage. Some other fish, like turbot and sepia will be sourced from Europe.
But a dish that Ramirez is most excited about is quail from California’s Wolfe Ranch, which raises game birds that the chef describes as “creamy and rich” tasting. One treatment he’s planning is for the bird to be grilled and served with stone fruit, mushrooms, and “seasonal accompaniments.” For the fall, the Mexican-born chef plans to offer seared wagyu with mole sauce.
Meals at Cesar could begin with a glass of bubbles. Head sommelier John Mckenna has stocked a Champagne cart with bottles like Moussé et Fils’ Les Fortes Terres - Special Club 2018 and Billecart-Salmon’s Le Rendez-Vous N4. Patrons can order glasses and bottles a la carte or opt for the $280 wine pairing. A concise collection of classic cocktails from a martini to milk punch will be available, too.
At the entrance of the space, a former deli, guests will see a white oak dining counter with 13 seats that encircles a custom matte black and stainless steel Bonnet range—the centerpiece from behind which Ramirez and his team of eight chefs will work. It’s a flashback to the setup at Chef’s Table, an unadorned cream-colored room with a dining counter surrounding the open kitchen and a scattering of tables.
But here Ramirez has a bit more space. In addition to soaring 20-foot ceilings there are more seats, 49 in total. The toned-down, black and cream aesthetic, from Ramirez and architect Martin Vahtra of Projects Design Associates, features polished, honeyed panels running along the dining room’s perimeter. Tiny track lights almost disappear into the pained white panel ceilings, while tubular nickel wall sconces illuminate plaster work.
Ramirez says the dining room is designed so there’s no bad seat: “You can see the whole kitchen from every table.” He favors open kitchens because he believes it adds value to the guest experience, enabling customers to be “part of the action.”
Like the pristine ingredients Ramirez pays a premium for—his kamasu, or barracuda, costs about $70 a pound—the white linen tablecloths and the ivory Italian silk and linen curtains are both made by luxury Italian textile weaver Casarovea. Some service pieces will change seasonally for each new menu.
Among the people looking forward to the return of Ramirez is Eric Ripert, the chef and owner of Le Bernardin, another 3-Michelin star restaurant in New York. He says Ramirez is “a very unique talent that created a dining format that did not previously exist.” Chef’s Table’s large kitchen and small dining room offered the chance to serve just a handful of guests a night.
“He has a particular way of cooking,” says Ripert. The way Ramirez integrates Asian and Japanese influences with French technique and accents from his Mexican heritage is unique, and New York will be a “richer” culinary city now that Ramirez, and his uni toast, is back.
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