After one week:

Tomorrow I want to change our cold potato soup to a chilled tomato coulis that we are going to make with tomatoes from Sid Wainer. They have vine ripened yellow and red. Also we will use some of our opal basil as a garnish. Salmon should replace the cod at some point this week or into early next week.
The pork that is coming in tomorrow is going to get confit 'd in duck fat. The pork that has been being served is good, but needs to be more tender, and there also has been an issue with the fat "burning" on the plancha. Since we really want to serve a crispy skin we cant' use sugar on the marinade so I need to adjust the way that I am cooking it to begin with, and I think this will resolve the issue. I know for sure that I want to stay away from braising the pork like we did years ago at fillips, even though the results were good the effort was not worth the result.
Once we get these resolved, it's on to desserts...

Other new things...

Marinated strawberries and this awesome purple asparagus that we served with creme fraiche and caviar.

New Dish's

These are a couple of the new scallops dish's that we've been trying out during our Friends and Family week. They are both served with "marinated tomatoes" that have been seasoned with two types of basil, champagne vinegar, salt, pepper and olive oil. The second dish is served with a small salad of asparagus.

Entree's

These are both "reruns" from the past. Cod fish with Cockles, Artichokes and Mint. Roasted Chicken with Pomee Puree, Baby Fennel and Natural Reduction. Again we want to source out a better bird for our chicken dish, this one's a bell and evans which is a great bird but I'd like to find something much more interesting. Going to get Brian onto looking into 4 Story HIll Farm and their birds, I hear that they are amazing. And this cod dish is a winner, always has been. This dish is so nice because it works in both the summer and the winter. Baby turnips, arugula and piquillo peppers are also in the dish.

Steak

This is our steak dish as of now. It's a good start. I like Murphy's idea to use an aioli this time rather than a traditional sauce. He used smoked paprika which works really well with the beef, and the asparagus. Not sure where this is headed, the cut of meat for sure, next stop will be with a Ribeye and try to work our way up the ladder from there. Price points are very important to us here so that limits us somewhat to the cuts available. Also today we used a choice cut and I think we can get to prime if we look around.

Asparagus Salad

This is a OLD dish we have begun to revisit. We did this dish at Fillips and are going to try and refine the dish just a touch. I do not want to change much, it all works so well together. Asparagus Salad with grapes, cured ham and parmesan. Also in the salad is a dijon vinaigrette, arugula, shaved fennel/asparagus, salt and pepper.

Staffing

Heres a couple of pictures of some of the new kitchen staff. Brian, the Sous Chef and Barbara the extern from F.C.I. Today was our first day in our new kitchen cooking with each other!

The Mott

Now that we are getting close to opening, one week away, we are going to try and start posting again, our progress, recipe's, and press as it comes to us. Heres the first one: (just scroll down the first couple of pages, you'll see it)

Google up: Brian Bieler Grub Street

Heres the text:

Yesterday, the construction paper came off of Emma Cleary’s much-anticipated endeavor in the recently whitewashed Double Happiness/Palais Royale space. As you can see, there’s still work to be done on the upstairs restaurant, but we can now confirm that it will be called the Mott (no relation to the Eldridge, the Delancey, or the Suffolk). The executive chef will be Brian Bieler, a Kansas farm boy who showed off French and greenmarket influences at the short-lived Fillip’s (he was also chef de cuisine at Bouley for a year). Bieler hopes to start serving a “Soho seasonal” menu by early next month. Sometime after that, the downstairs lounge, Lucky’s Eleven (no relation to Lucky 13, Lucky Eight, Lucky Jack’s, or Lucky Cheng’s) will open in the basement, which of course was said to be a former speakeasy and a mob-run gay bar before it became Double Happiness. And now we go back to waiting.

The picture they got through the window...