Dan: "The other night, Morimoto cooked for us, and he also gave us a proverb, 'live in the moment'. And I think my whole menu is just about being in this moment. For my first course, we have a little tuna tartar, ruby red grapefruit, caribbean pepper puree, garlic chips, black garlic labneh on the bottom."

Judges, behind the scenes

"I like the lebneh." 

"There's something going on with the tuna. I don't know whether he's sous vided it at a very low temperature. The texture of the tuna, you can't differentiate between the grapefruit." 

"I like the spice, though. I keep going back to it. There's something addictive about it."

Judges Table

"Let's start with the first course, Dan's tuna dish." 

"I thought the flavors were good. I liked the heat. The question I have is the texture of the tuna. What did you do with that?" 

Dan: "We bagged it with lemon oil, and we cooked it at 40 degrees celsius. It sets the texture and makes it almost, like, jammy." 

"You wanted that texture?" 

Dan: "I did." 

"It was a weird texture, but flavorwise, it was a really bold way to start. That labneh for me, was the star of the plate." 

"I was really surprised on how much heat that you really brought to the plate. The flavors, Dan, were just really incredible."