what are your favorites?
Any opinion on Sterling Caviar, and if so, which product do you prefer?
thanks
@CFu you still in this space?
pretty sure cfu is running around burgundy at the moment…anyone else have any caviar opinions?
thanks
I know @Charlie_Carnes eats plenty of caviar and he definitely prefers Astrea
Only buy Astrea from Fu. Schrenckii.
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I know we are in minority, but we do not like Astrea (sorry!). I’d rather have caviar less often and have great stuff, so we pay up for Petrossian. Have tried dozens of others, including a brand owned by a friend, and Peteossian is consistently the best.
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That’s very interesting. I specifically did a Peyrosian versus Astrea tasting at my house one night just my wife and I were the participants. I thought the Fuviar stole the show. I’ll have to look back and report later which caviar were compared.
That’s great. I wish that were the case for us.
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No insult taken. Everyone has their own palate.
Just to clarify - Not sure about the “pay up” part of it though as Petrossian’s cost is really just based on time in market and marketing. We are all basically negotiants and at the top end we all source from the same places. How we age is really the main differentiator.
I’ve definitely switched more chefs from Petrossian than the other way around. I’ve done enough side by sides where i am pretty happy where we are.
They do have a very fancy tin and some nice shops though. I’m very envious of their business model.
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We just opened a new packing facility in LA last month!
processing hundreds of kilos a month there :D. It’ll allow me to do some fun aging experiments in the coming months.
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My friend from Russia doesn’t like Astrea because he says it doesn’t taste like caviar - too smooth and subtle. He grew up eating super fishy, salty caviar and that’s what he prefers. They would just spread it on toast for breakfast. When you say “the good stuff” are you also looking for more true caviar flavor?
I don’t like super fishy salty caviar, no.
Some fun food porn - Katie Flannery and Charlie Fu running dry-aging experiments on the socials!
Must be why @Charlie_Carnes prefers it so! He likes his caviar like his buddies!
i’ve gotten this complaint from a few chefs, they want more salt. They like it briny. Not what we are going for, as the longer we age the caviar, the less salty it gets, the more umami. I like it that way, but everyone has their preference which is fine with me. We onboarded a new osceitra last year that was saltier and we aged it for shorter periods to enhance the salt, but i really didn’t like it.
All i’m here for is to break down the marketing gimmicks of caviar sales and be as transparent as possible.
I realize in looking back at what I wrote that it reads as the conflation of two ideas. My comment about the good stuff wasn’t meant to say that Astrea isn’t the good stuff, but I see now that it does. The good stuff comment is another thought line entirely harkening back to when we tried getting things like paddlefish and hackleback so we could get more/more often. It didn’t work for me.
What I like is buttery eggs with a smooth texture with pops of brine that remind me it is a product of the sea.
It is why the only caviar I don’t care for is salmon. It has every feature don’t like.