I read somewhere that Kemo Sabe was closing at the end of the month (September). Their lease had expired and the owners were looking to relocate. Since Bert and I had a Cohn's Restaurant Group gift card as well as a super super old Kemo Sabe gift certificate, we decided to give Kemo Sabe one last go before it went out with a whimper. I remember when this place was new 15 years ago. Fusion was the "in" thing back then. Now, as a decade and a half has passed, our taste buds have changed as well as the culinary landscape.
I had a virgin drink - a blueberry lemonade which I liked. Bert had a drink as well - something with a lot of rum. I forgot to upload the photo, so ergo, it's not pictured.
We got the fried calamari appetizer - the squid rings were sitting atop some greens, Kemo Sabe's ubiquitous frou frou beet and carrot strings.There were two different types of sweet and sour sauced in the fried won ton cups; the difference between the sauces was that one was spicier. It tasted like that Chili Sauce for chicken you can get at Ranch 99.
For old time's sake, Bert go Kemo Sabe's signature dish, the Skirts on Fire. This was skirt steak with a spicy marinade served with black beans and mandarin oranges. I thought this was a huge ass plate. He really liked the meat - I had a bit of it. I'm not a fan of black beans (or most beans for that matter) so I left that untouched.
I had the coconute fried shrimp with udon noodles in a peanut sauce sesame based dressing. It was garnished with a very pubey looking tangle of carrot curls and seemed to have that same sauce that our appetizer had. The shrimp was a good size and I really liked the noodles. The noodles also had stir fried vegetables in it - batons of carrot, as well as green and yellow squash. It was too big of a portion to actually finish, so I took about half of it home.
For TC, this was a rare outing for her to be out and about with her progenitors on a schoolnight. There ain't no kid menu here and thank goodness for that. She ordered the Anasazi Ravioli - stuffed with goatc cheese, served with a side of roasted corn on the cob with mango salsa (that was really tasty and had a kick to it) with roasted corn kernels.She didn't really like the multicolored corn chip garnish. There wer three big round ravioli on her plate and she only finished about 1 1/2 pieces.
So long Kemo Sabe...hope you reopen elsewhere! I hope you also revamp your menu because Southwest/Asian fusion is pretty passe now. I also hope they stop using beets and carrots (they used to do shaved cucumber curls too but seemed to have stopped] as garnish because even though you can ooh and aah over the presentation, if you take all this shit away, the bottom line is this, "Does the food taste good?". In some case, the food was just meh. Despite all that, we still wanted to go here for old time's sake...
4 comments:
I remember when Kemo Sabe was the sh*t a few years back. Now with the restaurant scene at full swing, it can't keep up with the newer, trendier ones. But I'm pretty sad to see it go even though I have never been there.
Funny about the ravioli. I have always made it an effort never to order ravioli because the most they ever give you is four on a plate because each one is (hopefully) handmade. In this case three for TC.
Oops forgot to add this: Happy belated Birthday Bert!
Our best belated Birthday wishes to Bert. The problem I had with Kemosabe, was that they just did things a little(actually a lot) too over the top. We tried the place three times, and was just never down with the food. There seemed to be a contest to see how many different flavors you could pile on a protein....
hi darlene - yeah, well, toodle-loo kemo sabe! the southwest/asian fusion thing was hot 15 years ago, but now it's just kinda, ewwww...not so good. the three ravioli's were pretty big. she didn't care too much for the sauce.
thanks for the bday wishes for bert. aagh, we're old, ha ha.
hi kirk - yes, i agree with you. too many flavors going on at once.
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