Moosh

Today, we celebrate the 3 year anniversary of one of our nearest and dearest partners. We've been inspired by the dedication and work ethic of Zahra Tabatabai since the first day we met her. She single handedly built up one of the most successful beer brands New York City has ever seen through @backhomebeer . She is constantly a support and advocate for both our Iranian community and our greater immigrant communities throughout the food, beverage, and art industries here in America. Through deep inspiration from her grandfather's beer brewing from back home in Iran, she's lifted our anthropology and helped us reclaim Persian beer as something fundemental to our Iranian culture inspite all odds and has used her brand as a tool to bring the best of us together in celebration and at times in protest so that through unity we can continue to be a massive change in the narratives that help shape a more diversified community here in New York. It's been our outstanding pleasure to share her beer across our programs and we welcome you to join us this evening at 10pm for an anniversary celebration party for both @backhomebeer and @masqueradebrooklyn , which is our newest partnership in an effort to share more from our world of food and culture with the greater public. RVSP through the link in our profile, and we hope to have the opportunity to serve and celebrate with you!

Our relationship with Material Kitchen has been at the foundation of our work even before Moosh started back in 2018. We've had the privilege of creating the most meaningful community spaces across programs, dinners, demonstrations, classes, and shoots over the years. Their kitchen objects from pans, cutting boards, utensils, and knives have enabled us throughout everything we've cooked to date. We take inspiration from their work in cultivating confidence and education for everyday cooks, which is the benchmark for our ethos in wanting to make a difference in the daily experiences of bringing people together over meaningful moments with food and company. Our kitchens and programs would feel less meaningful and less intentional without the pleasure of working with their objects every day. Our endless thanks to their dedicated team, who keep us well equipped to take on the culinary challenges through of studio in hopes of inspiring more cooks to cook in more intentional and pleasurable ways. Photos By @boisjoli.nouveau @nschinco @aryanseyedin

Of our greatest inspirations, and with a foundation for food and philosophy which drives us each and everyday, we owe an unmeasurable amount of gratitude to Atef and Adam of SOS Chefs, which since 1995, have helped some of the cities most groundbreaking chefs keep up with the joneses through a specialty curation of ingredients from all across the world. They are beyond our partners in the kitchen, they are of a certain kind of family that would leave us without the capabilities to be as daring as we could hope to be in this world of food. They offer a world of knowledge from lived experiences traveling, learning and cultivating experiences from all across the world. The food community at large, here in New York and all across the country would not be what it is if it were not for the unfailing efforts of SOS working to put into our hands the most ground breaking and inspiring ingredients possible. Over the years we've had the pleasure of working on dozen of programs and hundreds of dinners and we continue to ride their shoulders hoping to reach new places with our cooking and the community we are constantly working to forster through Moosh.

To work with the ceramics of Jono Pandolfi is to work with the earth. There is an enigmatic energy to his plates and wares that have become the backbone of the hospitality industry since he first founded his studio back in 2004. We've had the unbelievable pleasure of sharing thousands of dishes across these plates, as well as collaborating on several projects and programs together over the years. The New Jersey studio is one of our most favorite places in the world to visit, and the tenor of our cooking would fail to sing if it were not for the quality and integrity of these canvases that we're so fortunate enough to work with everyday. "I was 16 when I first trialed at Hawksworth in Vancouver, I saw @david_zilber plating dishes on some Jono Pandolfi dinner plates during his last day of service before he left to join the team at @nomacph - I nervously found myself at the pass at the end of lunch service, I slipped my hands onto the heavy frames of those round clay plates. I peeled them over and saw Jono's mark on the back and told myself that I'd earn the opportunity to cook with something that beautiful one day. I put that energy in my back pocket, and it would be only about a year later when I'd find myself in New York for what was the beginning of my career, practically asking people on the street if they knew Jono Pandolfi and how I could go about finding him." @behzj

Spices over any other ingredient have the most incredible capacity of translating the human experiences of our countries and cultures along with the deep-rooted identities of entire peoples from a particular expression of nature and palate. From our earliest days, we've always been abundantly armed with the most incredible single-origin spices from across the world by way of @burlapandbarrel . The prolific vision of founders and friends Ethan Frisch & Ori Zohar to fix a long time broken and undeserving system behind our modern spice trade has had ripples through our organization and inspired some of our most fruitful travels and programs, where we'd seeking out small farmers from across the world in the hopes of making a measurable difference in these places and for the people who matter most to our global food ways. We naturally jumped at the opportunity of developing a Persian advieh, as a food organization with Persian culture at its roots, it fulfilled a huge promise to ourselves that we made when Moosh first started, that we through this platform are dedicated to creating representation for people and culture where ever and by whatever means possible. These spices are the bedrock of our programs, a modern spice trade of sorts, and hope that you all have the opportunity to try them for yourselves. Thank you infinitely to the team at @burlapandbarrel - our Persian Advieh collaboration blend is available through the link in our profile, along with some recipes to get you started. In the coming weeks we'll be sharing more profiles and stories from this community space of vendors who are at the heart of our most meaningful cooking and sharing.

There is an old Confucian proverb used in Japanese culture that says you must "ask old things, to know new things" / "On-ko-chi- shin." Over the last few years, @aryanseyedin and I have uprooted our lives in the pursuit of old and forgotten knowledge around good food and living that is often tucked deep under the facades of what we recognize and know about other cultures. Our choice to take on this work was rooted in a lack of harmony within the people of the world we hoped to serve. We felt it fundamental to our lives and to our work to seek out beautiful ways of living wherever we could find them. We then felt even further implored to share everything we found in these remarkable places in the most compelling ways possible. Humanities started with this field journal whose emblem was gifted to us by our good friend @charlie_dalu_konno who also singlehandedly facilitated the most meaningful adventures we could have hope to have across our time in Japan last spring. It asks that we love and respect the earth and that we love and respect our fellow people. And it would come as no shock that what we discovered, traveling countless countries from Costa Rica, to Japan, Italy and Turkey, that the common denominator that made certain communities within these countries the happiest, the healthiest and the most beautiful pockets of humanity throughout the world were through the sensibilities of a few talented and working people, sustaining themselves through collaboration and comradery with each other all while preserving and celebrating the natural gifts and environments they were afforded; working with people and nature, and not just through them. I will be sharing more stories from the community in Japan in the coming weeks who helped us pull together the body experience and knowledge that we hoped to represent in this very first journal. Our hope is that this first journal can land in the most meaningful hands possible, and that these stories of humanity can uproot and inspire these same sensibilities around comradery and sustainability that we need the whole world to be acting on together right now.

We would be remiss if we didn't firmly share our opinion that Chef Yuki of Eikichi is nothing short of the greatest chef we've ever met. At his 8 seat tasting bar, he is a prolific one man show, prepping, serving, cleaning and moving through his meticulous coriagraphy and rhythms with an apt display of detail and care that would make anyone's heart swell. Outside of obvious pre-preperations such as marinates and dashis, everything is otherwise prepped and cooked to order. Puffer fish is turned into an edible delicacy right before your eyes, tempura vegetables are meticulously peeled, cut and turned into perfect golden and crispy morsels, a perfect tomato dressed with a pasta made from ground sesame will leave you dumbfounded and inspired, and all the while the next group enjoys an entirely different menu that is uprooted from the same attention to detail and passions. In a very personal reflection, watching chef Yuki cook changed our lives. We could never measure the desire we had to push ourselves to a certain level of skill and humility in our cooking. Through some of our hardest days, we think of him and his service and feel implored to work harder, to give more and to stay prolific about our business of feeding people food. Cooking is often a sports performance, there is both dedication and discipline required to do most anything well, and there will always be certain chefs and their outstanding gestures that help to further commit ourselves to always affording to give more of ourselves to this work. With all that said, thank you to all our friends across Japan who helped us define what is the beginning to the rest of our lives cooking and sharing with you all in the most meaningful way we know how. It is our most outstanding privilege to celebrate and share with you all.

"The three chefs from Kyoto" is a chapter in our journal dedicated to the stoicism and perseverance of three chefs with whom we had the privledge of both dining with, but also finding good friends in. We found many common principles across the disciplines of food in Japan, many to do with integrity, consistency, humility, and perfectionism. At Sakaba Ikura Mokuzai in Yabunouchicho, Ikura San serves a handful of small seasonal snacks at his informal eatery. One particular bonito tataki, which made several passes across straw burning over a butochan charcoal fire, would leave a lasting impression on us. In a densely formal neighborhood, as well as a city known for its historic culinary customs, standing at Ikura san's bar, exchanging conversations, toasts and pours of perfect sake while his Harley Davidson Chopper boasted outside, and a generous fire rolled and swooned, propped up by several upside down asahi crates. The experience at Sakaba Ikura Mokuzai was understated and perfect.

Daisuke Okukura of Tauruya Yujyu in Tokyo dubbed "Rockstar" from both his ethos and performance behind his grandfather's Omakase counter he inherited gave us the gift of one of the most pitch perfect meals we could have imagined. In particular, a kyoto style sushi made with wild Japanese saba would leave us stuck in what was perhaps the best bite of our lives. We exchanged deep and long conversations about the responsibilities of a chef, the statutes of passion and integrity that help define the people we are in this work and how after over 20 years, everyday is a day that inspires him to just be that much better in his craft, and these changes, and adjustments towards not just being a better chef, but a better person in his life, for his family, his girls, his colleagues and his friends. Domo arigato Daisuke san for the privledge of sharing an evening with you at your counter 🙏

In the tight alleyways of Koto City are a hidden after-work dining culture accesible only to the residents of Monzennakacho who have the proficiency of navigating them. One particular Izakaya would capture us entirely, having frequented it more times than we can remember, an still-yet not nearly enough, the seasonal home cooking and hyper local vibe of Izakaya 845 (to the point where they were ever hesitant to let us in in the first place) satiated us with dishes of fresh hotaru-ika (firefly squid served with spicy karashi mustard), stewed tripe and tofu done with miripoix and gravy, among potato salads, asari clam misos and other bar snack revelations left us fulfilled in one of Tokyo's most inspiring gastronomic neighborhoods that even Tokyo natives were skeptical towards us about. Among other outstanding mentions are - Ramen Kōkaibō Bar illud Mikawa Zezankyo Hontōni Oishii Coffee Torifuku Nice Idea

As the earliest adopters of the natural wine movement, which was pushed to the frontier by growers such as Jules Chauvet since the early 1950's, the sprawling streets of Shibuya are home to some of the largest selection of both local and imported natural wines in Japan. In one unruly evening, through our Shephard and James Beard Award Wining Wine Director Billy Smith, preiously of the The Four Horseman, and accompanied by industry socialites and events producers Zach Ligas and Amanda McMillan, we drank our way towards Studio Mule, a retro sonic sound space created and curated by world touring DJ Toshiya Kawasaki. Selecting bottles from Kawasaki San's own personal grabs while traveling abroad, as well as curations from outstanding local growers from all across the island of Japan, our evening took turns across inspiring history and education around natural wine's most celebrated growers across the globe, as well as it did at some point melt into an evening of provocation and delinquency as one would expect from any off hours industry-persons spending extended periods of time together around alcohol without adult supervision.

In a small village just east of Echizen in Fukui, is @yu_kurosaki_ one of the most celebrated, youngest, and skilled knife makers in all of Japan. Spearheading a small and intimate studio, compared only to the neighboring Takefu Knife Village which produces a huge scale of artisan knives in comparison, his team of young men work at a detailed and focused pace, producing knives that are up to the standards of the world's greatest chefs, such as regular NY local Naomichi Yasuda. To seek out Yu Kurosaki san is to take a pilgrimage, to own and use one of his knives, which we are honored to work with several, is an oustanding privilege and life changing experience in the kitchen. Combining both the historic elements and detailed principles behind Japan's knife craftsmanship and techniques and driving new standards for steel materials and shapes for the modern kitchen, the only thing that would be fair to compare the stellar details of these knives to would be a Ferrari.