Restaurant Review: Josper Counter Experience at Rouser 

• Alex Springer
• A bowl of Rouser’s Josper ramen

It feels good to bid adieu to one more choking gray winter, and welcome another ebullient spring. Sure, a lot of that has to do with seasonal depression, but this season of renewal always brings some great foodie events along with it.

We already kicked things off with a great chef collab at Urban Hill a few weeks ago, and now the team at Rouser has started up a spectacular barside event known as the Josper Counter Experience. It's an impressive look at the Josper rotisseries, grills and ovens that represent the restaurant's beating heart.

As the restaurant represents the dining arm of the popular new Asher Adams hotel, Rouser has made some serious culinary waves over the past few months. Under the leadership of Chef de Cuisine Emilio Camara, Rouser's menu has used the Josper equipment to marvelous effect as he finds new and creative ways to implement charcoal cooking. The Josper Counter Experience is ideal for anyone who is interested in taking a deep dive into Camara's culinary mind—or feeling the immense heat of the Josper first hand.

When you belly up to this particular bar, it's the Josper charcoal grill that immediately catches your eye. Filled with hexagons of clean burning charcoal and revved up for the four-course meal to come, it's truly a beautiful piece of machinery. Each menu item on the prix fixe menu has some tie to the Josper charcoal, as do the accompanying cocktails. It's a testament to both Chef Camara's creativity and the versatility of the Josper.

The evening's menu started off with a charcoal-torched hamachi, served with a Kiku-Maisamune Taru Sake if you're doing the additional beverage pairing. Chef Camara and his team use the hexagonal shape of the charcoal to add just a touch of sear to the buttery hamachi right before your eyes. The completed dish comes in a brightly acidic charred cucumber aguachile, and is supplemented with some pickled mushroom and sliced avocado that also have a charred kiss from the Josper. Both the dish and the sake did wonders for waking up the palate; that sharp acid of the aguachile and the dry sake worked very nicely together.

Next up was the karaage fried chicken with Japanese pickles, and holy moly do I need to rethink everything I thought I knew about fried chicken. Chef Camara let us know that he employed a bit of charcoal dust in the buttermilk used to marinate these succulent pieces of chicken, and the fry that he gets on them is absolutely unreal. They look like they're going to be a bit on the sharper side when it comes to mouthfeel, but the breading crumbles at just the right time to reveal the tender chicken within. Throw this on a buttered bun and consider the chicken sandwich war officially won. The dish is served with a light, breezy Japanese highball complete with charred lemon peel; this may have been my favorite cocktail of the evening.

At this point in the meal, the taste buds are primed and ready, though I didn't know how the menu was going to one-up that fried chicken. Once I set eyes on the heaping bowl of Josper ramen that arrived next, however, I totally understood. It's the type of ramen whose savory aromas precede its presentation, much of which comes from the burnt onion broth that comprises this ramen's foundation. From the very first slurp, it's almost an overwhelming prospect to fully explore the depths of those flavors. Richness layered upon savory layered upon char, it's the type of flavor that you just allow to hit you while your higher brain function tries to keep up.

It's also adorned with a tremendous porcelet pork belly, charred leeks, shiitake mushrooms and a soft-boiled egg, and none of these ingredients are wasted. The pork belly adds a luxurious flavor and texture, the leeks add another layer to the charred veggie notes, the mushrooms are almost shockingly sweet and the bit of egg yolk is the savory cherry on top. It's a tall order to craft a cocktail that could hang with all of these bold flavors, but the Josper Smash does just that. The gin base, lemon, ginger beer and angostura slice right through with sightly spicy ribbon of flavor.

For the dessert course, the menu included a matcha pot de créme topped with some grilled strawberries, charred cream and black sesame. The matcha trend is lost on me, so I thought this dish was going to be a bit of a dud, but the grassy flavors of the matcha work really well with the cream and strawberries. The cocktail was also a great complement in the rose and bergamot agricole daiquiri; its super sweet notes went very well with the slight bitterness of the matcha and charred cream.

Rouser came in hot when it opened, and this four-course counter event has definitely kept the temperature toasty. The opportunity to see how some of Rouser's signature items are crafted using that great Josper equipment was truly memorable—especially when you get to eat everything you see.