Chef David Santos’s Secret NYC Dinner Club, Um Segredo, at Good Stock
I’ve followed my favorite NYC chef from his West Village restaurant Louro to his taking-the-city-by-storm soup venture, Good Stock, but what made me first fall in love with Chef David Santos‘s cooking were his secret home supper clubs, which he called Um Segredo (“a secret” in Portuguese). Well, they’re back, and they’re not so secret anymore! In that they take place right out in the open at the Good Stock on Carmine Street.
But the same secret feel is still there: just you and five others in the tiny store front, gathered around a table while Chef Santos cooks directly in front of you, offering insight about each of the ingredients and just shooting the breeze like he doesn’t need to concentrate while shaving $100 worth of summer truffle onto your plates.
The fresh herbs and flowers were a beautiful compliment to the late afternoon sun warming the front windows. The roast duck with fresh cilantro and lamb with cumin-flavored squid ink were so good it seemed like a crime that this guy doesn’t have a tasting-menu-only restaurant. The cold peanut butter dessert was so comforting and just plain old yummy that you couldn’t believe he had the guts to serve a warm dessert after it, and then that was just as outstanding. I left feeling like I can’t go to any dinners that aren’t Um Segredo dinners. It’s such amazing food, topped off with an experience you can’t get anywhere else.
Follow Chef Santos on Instagram for the link to buy tickets to the next dinner!
Bien Cuit bread with bacon marmalade
Swimmer crab
Watermelon
Avocado pudding
Turmeric pickled rind
Shiso
Lime and olive oil
Bluefish pate
Pickled pearl onion
Biscuit crackers
Herb salad
Carrot dog:
Carrot cooked in olive oil and smoked paprika
Buttered bread and mustard puree
6-month-fermented beetkraut
Amaranth
Examining bitter:
Roasted porcini
Charred breakfast radish
Cocoa nib
Elderflower
Charred onion tea infused with elderflower stems and porcini
Pouring the onion tea
Schmaltz-cooked kohlrabi
Milk and aged creme fraiche pudding
Flowers
Summer truffle
Shaving the truffle
Red wine braised Portuguese octopus
Puree of its braising vegetables
Hazelnuts
Crispy shallot
Chives
Roast duck
Honey sous vide apricot
Goose tongue
Puffed rice
Cilantro
Sous vide lamb
Royal corona beans
Fermented vegetables
Squid ink cumin eggplant puree
Wild garlic flowers
The Elvis:
Honey roasted peanut pudding
Steel cut oat and sorghum crumble
Bacon and banana ice
(This picture does the dessert no justice, I’m sorry; I just got excited about the Good Stock cups.)
Warm strawberry and rhubarb jam
Roasted rhubarb
Biscuit crackers
Vanilla goat’s milk ice cream
