Inspired by the restaurant Otium at the Broad Museum.
Otium is about community, interaction, and collaboration—the completely open kitchen is essentially the focal point of the dining room. Called a donabe, the Japanese clay pot used for anything from cooking rice to making stews, is as well (our version is used for smoking). Eating out of a donabe is a wholly interactive experience. The food is still technically cooking once it comes to the table, and you create your own bites right out of the pot. This dish is a pastrami-brined and rubbed hiramasa, sliced thin and arranged on a series of grates within the donabe. The hirasama is surrounded by roasted red and gold beets, potatoes, rye crisps, and garden greens. The donabe is filled with cherry wood chips lit to an ember, which causes smoke to fill the vessel—a dramatic reveal at the table. As it’s a play off of the traditional pastrami on rye with Russian dressing, we serve the donabe with a Thousand Island dip.
The Sagmeister & Walsh mural on our wall reads “Inside Out, Outside In,” which is an idea that has been in the foundation of the restaurants culture and design from the very beginning. The Donabe Smoked Hiramasa Pastrami is the perfect representation of that. Once it comes to the table, the smoke billows out of the clay pot, inviting guests in. It blurs the lines between the kitchen and the dining room, and creates an interactive and collaborative eating experience.