Eye Candy: Nick Muncy's Desserts at Michael Mina

BY TAMARA PALMER

The Michelin-starred restaurant Michael Mina is one I often recommend for special occasions that you want to remember forever — it’s long been a place to turn to for impeccable food and service, but it admittedly reached new heights and personality once Michael dialed in a menu schematic that really speaks to the intersection of his Egyptian heritage as well as his California life.

Nick Muncy became the pastry chef at Michael Mina in February, and has just published the fifth issue of Toothache, his own independently published food magazine. Positioned as a title that’s by chefs for chefs, the visually gorgeous and technically dense Toothache has immense potential appeal amongst all food lovers, not just the industry crowd.

I’m grateful to Nick for preparing an exclusive tasting/dream sequence of all the desserts that he currently has on the Michael Mina menu for your visual appetites to enjoy. After eating them all for lunch today, I think it’d be hard to pick just one (but I am a sucker for a fine black sesame confection).

And my teeth feel just fine, thank you.

Coconut blancmange, toasted coconut solids, melon O’s, melon broth, melon sorbet and burnt fig leaf oil.

Gougere with hot liquid Harbison cheese, spiced walnuts, honeycomb and frilly mustard.

Strawberries glazed in strawberry and yuzu juices, black sesame cake with perilla, black sesame tuile with fromage blanc.

Chocolate mousse pyramid filled with hot liquid sunflower praline, sunflower seed and feuilletine crust, sunflower praline tuile, gold blackberries and blackberry sorbet.

Michael Mina, 252 California Street, San Francisco; (415) 397-9222.