Lord Jius

The ongoing viral pandemic has been devastating to restaurants. Those that are able are converting to take-out operation to continue bringing in some money, any money.

Unfortunately, the fancier your restaurant the less amenable it is to becoming a takeaway type of operation. So much of the experience depends on the ambiance and the service and yes, the skill of the people assembling your dishes.

However, people are still interested in celebrating birthdays and having nice meals without spending an entire day doing it, if they even have a shot at pulling it off. It is no doubt challenging to balance the difficulty of assembling the meal with the quality of the final result. Two restaurants in San Francisco, Lord Stanley and Mr. Jius, have joined forces to meet the challenge and bring you Lord Jius.

Lord Jius features a five course menu for you to assemble at home that changes each week. You get a shopping bag full of deli containers and vacuum bags along with a menu and instructions. Everything is precooked, you just need to heat it and assemble it. Everything is also delicious, of course!

First up for our meal during the first week of April was warm carrot cake with black garlic, alliums and chives. This was really good, not too sweet, and an interesting way to start. All that was required was to warm up the cake and carefully spoon the mixture on top.

Next was a smoked duck breast salad. This one was a lot more difficult to make pretty.

The fish course was the most difficult to prepare. The snapper came in a souse vide bag and you're supposed to crisp up the skin in the pan. This takes some skill and it helps a lot if you remember to dry the skin very well before placing it in very hot oil. I did not and so my attempt to make the skin nice and crispy was a failure. The dish still came out well. The flavor of the kohlrabi and sorrel with the snapper was wonderful.

The final savory is the beef course, with black trumpet mushrooms. The beef is already grilled and packed in a vacuum bag, handy if you have a sous vide setup.

Finally, chocolate. While this looks like a solid piece of cake it is actually a very fluffy mousse dusted with some magic coating that keeps the shape intact until you put your fork into it. We actually had this for breakfast the next day as we were fairly full of food and wine after the beef course.

Michelin star take out. Strange days indeed!