http://www.journeymanrestaurant.com/
http://backbarunion.com/
Here's some information about Journeyman:
*The restaurant is located at Somerville, MA, the restaurant will celebrate 4th year this October.
*The restaurant open dinner only Wednesday to Sunday, close on Monday/Tuesday.
*The owner chefs are chef Tse Wei Lim & Diana Kudayarova.
*The menu is currently offering 85 dollar tasting menu(10 course including amuse bouche, pre-dessert, petit "five") and 4 course for 40 limited time, after 8:30pm on Wednesday, Thursday & Sunday.
*The dining room seats up to 36 people, weekday we do 20+ cover, weekend we do around 30 cover.
*According to chef TW, don't know how to describe the style of cuisine at Journeyman. I'd describe it market-driven new American cuisine.
*The kitchen also serve bar food for next door "backbar". Backbar offering some bar snacks such as cheese plate, pork bun, spicy caramel bacon popcorn and... Ramen!(4-6pm on Wed-Sun/when J-man open, 4-10:30pm on Mon/Tuesday) Every Sunday we also offer 3 course Omakase pairing with cocktails by the reservation.
*we have 4 stations in the kitchen, meat, entramet, cold side & pastry. Thursday-Saturday we have one more extra person for focusing on backbar foods & also helping cold side/pastry.
So... as I have mentioned previous post, this is kind of the kitchen I was looking for, small dining room, small team and one degustaion only. Perfect size & format to learning managing restaurant to open P.S.I. in the future. And there're also some cool things about working this restaurant.
1. As I talked many many times, I care about "title/name/tag" on the dish and all other things. Nothing wrong the restaurant name say "ramp", "113 Beaver" "charcoal" or something, but I like unique restaurant names. And here the restaurant called Journeyman.... how suitable restaurant name for 28 countries 172 restaurants staged "culinary metal vagabond"!!!???
2. As I mentioned above, we do Ramen for next door which was something I wanted to do long time! Taking this job, ramen was huge plus in fact. I'm learning Sushi from American chefs@Rm seafood and now learning Ramen from Singaporean(*chef TW is Singaporean), how funny.... officially make me more American than Japanese!/laugh
3. We're market driven restaurant, trying to creating new dishes over locally grown ingredients. Boston's biggest farmer market(according to chef TW), Somerville farmers market is open right off the street from J-man every Saturday morning from May to October. I'll post some pictures some other time.
4. We're getting 90% meat as whole animals. This August chef TW is opening up 120 seat new restaurant, so we could share different parts of whole animals between 2 restaurants and the place probably is planning to do lots of charcuterie. Same as Ramen, I really wanted to learn more about charcuterie, so it's also big bonus. I wish I can do some cheese program for this new avenue, but first focus on Journeyman.....
5. It's also cool to live in Boston where I never live before to keep me fresh and inspiring(flip side I don't know anyone!) Never know if I ever work in the U.S. after J-man, but great plus to leave New York as my fresh "back up" place to work if I ever come to the U.S to work in the future.
Journeyman random web links :
https://www.facebook.com/journeymanrestaurant
http://journeymanrestaurant.wordpress.com/
http://www.zipcar.com/ziptopia/locals-guide/farm-to-table-trip-to-journeyman
http://www.mlive.com/food/index.ssf/2014/01/go_for_the_food_backbar_in_som.html
http://kerngirl.com/2011/02/01/journeyman-restaurant-a-5-course-journey/
I started working at Journeyman on May 16th. 3days I spent time to clean/organize/inventory the kitchen and currently spending one week on each stations. I have done Meat, Entramet and bar so far. Cold side & Pastry to go, then I'll start bringing up my new dishes into the menu! I see lots of things need to work out in this kitchen, but first off I guess I need to get back myself into the shape since I was OFF(backpacking) for 14 months!!/a bitter smile And.... let me hope I can take this restaurant into new level......
Hail, horn & howl,
CJ
6/11/14