I woke up with a dish developing in my head and can't post it where my customers will see it, so I'm sharing it here. We're closing our restaurant in the upcoming months and I want to go out on a bang. Here's the text from a card I'll give our customers on their last course on New Years Eve.

How does one end such an blessed run?! The Curious Kumquat morphed into a restaurant from our gourmet grocery in the fall of 2009. Dinners started in March of 2010 to empty tables of skeptical neighbors. But through the enthusiasm of numerous food writers and bloggers such as Zora O’Neill (Moon Guides, New York Times, Saveur), Ari Levaux (Outside, Slate) and Andrea Feucht (ABQ Journal, Food Lovers Guide), our culinary voice was heard and diners traveled from all over the country. This spurred us on even more to create even better food. And our food has always had the goal of being amazingly tasty, beautiful to look at, and sourced with local products that most people couldn’t even dream of making into a meal. Finding those ingredients has been a passion of mine through thousands of miles of hiking and relationships with the most eccentric band of farmers, ranchers and weirdos.
 So it is with this that I offer you my most perfect dish ever. My last New Year’s dish ever at the Kumquat. The end of your meal. The pinnacle of my Gila Wilderness foraging experience. The most perfect Curious Kumquat dish ever created.
 Gila Opulence  (photo)72-hour roasted mesquite bean mousse (Ben Lilly pond approach)
16-year Traditional, organic Balsamico (Monticello, NM)
Consommé of aspen bark (Railroad Trailhead, Black Range)
Gold leaf (Kingston, NM)
Gila Trout roe (Hatchery raised, Willow Creek)*
 Like all of my creations it will be gone in moments, but I hope this special dish, created only for tonight, will live in your memories for many, many years.
  *The Gila Trout is an endangered species on its way to a comeback. This roe was obtained by staff at the hatchery who assured me that they had released 10,000 Gila Trout into Willow Creek in October of 2015.