Chef Kevin Meehan (winner of 2011 Food Network’s Extreme Chef competition) messaged me this morning to come by Kali Dining kitchen and see what we could do to put wild seafood and game on the menu. The intimate, 8 person a night dinner takes place in his recently renovated garage-to-one-table restaurant in Culver City, California, a stone’s throw away from my place. It highlights locally foraged mushrooms and plants (anyone can go to the Farmer’s Market, but it takes a real man to go find the mushrooms…and a pair of scissors…and cut them from the ground :p), and locally farmed, chef-killed ducks, silky chickens, and pheasants.
Not giving any notice, I rang the doorbell four times.
K: Fuck, man you don’t call before you come? There’s something you should know. I’m a chronic masturbater you could have caught me in the middle of one my sessions.
E: Man i’m sorry. But hey, get back to your business. What’ll it take you, 30 seconds?
K: I heard you’re from Long Island just like me, but what the fuck? Why do you sound like this, you don’t sound like a fucking Guido.
After disjointed, friendly banter, I talked to Kevin about his new business, the Asia trip he just returned from using the money he had won from the competition, the sperm that he ate (lol, from various fish, not people). Whale meat. Dog. 1 to 3 star rated Michelin Restaurants (Japan has the most Michelin-Starred restaurants in the world, even more than France).
I knew we would share a lot of the same adventure spirit when it came to food. And so I asked, a little sheepishly, wanting him to say yes, as if asking a girl out for a date.
E: Kevin, would you like to hunt a pig or exotic sheep for your restaurant’s main protein?
K: Fuck yes.
E: I’ll book the reservation for next week at the hunting property.
And we ended with that.