Mosaic: Spot Prawn Tasting Menu

It’s May and it’s BC Spot Prawn season! I go nuts since BC Spot Prawns are my favorite thing to eat. I usually got to T&T to grab a few pounds, it’s never occurred to me that I could go out and eat them, especially in a 5 course meal.

Mosaic is located on the 2nd floor of the Hyatt near Burrard station. The executive head chef of the Hyatt is the amazing Chef Thomas Heinrich, who crafts the delicious dishes coming out of the hotel. Mosaic currently has a spot prawn tasting menu till May 29th. I know it just ended, but they always have some special menu for whatever ingredient is fresh in season. I just get all my news from the Chef on Twitter. You can follow him at @CheftHeinrich 

This menu is the 5 course tasting menu focusing on spot prawns. It’s $45 or $65 with alcohol pairings.

The alcohol pairings is a nice touch as you get to try different wines. I had the wine pairings and my friend didn’t. You don’t need alcohol to have fun with this tasting, but if you have a good appreciation for wine, you should do it.

Complementary biscuits come before the meal. It’s deliciously fluffy and comes with butter.

Spot Prawn Terrine came with fiddled head ferns and topped with fried lotus roots and ikura. There are also dots of fermented black garlic gel and lemon fluid gel. I really liked this dish since the spot prawns were nicely presented and their natural flavours shined through.

Spot Prawn and Arugula Salad comes with almonds and a citrus caviar. It was a nice dish, but I felt like there was a little too much dressing so it wilted the leaves a little bit.

Spot Prawn Carbonara has freshly made linguini, peas, geldermen farms pork belly, truffle oil, parmesan, and a 64 degree egg yolk. It is a very rich creamy dish 

Spot Prawn and Spring Creek Beef has fava beans and a pomme maxim which is a ring of fried potatoes. This dish is beautiful but by this part of them meal, I started to wonder why the spot prawns weren’t that star of each dish if it’s a spot prawn tasting.

I had the beef done at medium rare and it was beautifully cooked, but it was quite tough to cut through. Perhaps it was the aging of the beef that made it a tad tougher, but the flavour of the meat itself was very lovely.

Tangerine Consomme was a lovely end to the meal. In the center is the cardamom ice cream.

Overall, the menu was great but since the menu is supposed to showcase spot prawns, I felt like there could have been more cooking techniques used to showcase the versatility of the spot prawn. Whether its serving the spot prawn raw or frying the shell…it just seemed the spot prawn was the secondary item in most of the dishes except the spot prawn terrine dish. $45 for 5 courses and $65 for 5 courses plus wine pairings is a fair price.

Below are a few other item off the tasting menu that we tried.

Asparagus Consomme with gruyere cheese balls was an interesting soup. Never would have thought about asparagus as a soup. As asparagus is fibrous, we did feel small strands of fibres in the soup. At first I thought I was getting my hair in my mouth but realized it was the asparagus.

Besides that, the gruyere cheese balls were so delicious when dunked in the soup. Mmm so good! My friend even said she would eat a whole bag full of these if she could.

Seared Scallops with a stinging nettle puree oh boy, this was really good! The scallops were seared perfectly and the stinging nettle puree was so delicious.  I would eat this over and over again.

Words of Wisdom:

• Follow @CheftHeinrich on twitter, You can be up to date on new menus that he launches at Mosaic
• Steps away from Burrard Skytrain
• Free Mosaic Chocolate Cake on your birthday
• Beef Carpaccio is a must!
• Great service

We Rate Mosaic: 

Address:
655 Burrard St
Vancouver, BC

Website:
http://vancouver.hyatt.com/