Big Night

I made my debut on the Buenos Aires restaurant scene on Friday night, and it very much lived up to my expectations of exhaustion, controlled chaos, and reward. Before I go any further, you need to understand that the restaurant, Casa Felix, owned and operated by my friends Sanra and Diego, is a private restaurant in their home that hosts 14-18 people in one seating with a set menu. Because it's in someone's home—although in the summer months (now) they serve in their patio—people assume the demeanor of house guest and much as client. They expect good food and service, but they're also respectful of the people who are hosting them in their home for dinner.

So yes, Casa Felix may not share a lot with the high stakes world of a trendy New York restaurant, but it is a business, it does have patrons, and at the end of the day it either works and succeeds, or doesn't and folds. With this in mind, it was quite kind of Sanra and Diego to let a totally novice like me crash their kitchen for a night. It turned out, as none of us knew at the time, to have been a very good night for a novice, or really any extra set of hands, to be there.

The night started off normally enough. I did a lot of chopping, some juicing, and prepared a sauce for the appetizer course, an incredible ceviche. The diners arrived, and Diego and Sanra schmoozed with them overing drinks in their courtyard as Emi, the assistant chef, and I finished the preparations. In a restaurant like this, most of the work is done before the diners come, so as I put the finishing touches on the tomato and fig garnish for the main-course ricotta and squash tamales, I figured my work was nearly done.

It would be an exaggeration to say that then it all nearly fell apart, and in truth, I'm sure they could have managed just fine without my help. The fact is though that Diego called me the next day and thanked me for saving his business, and when I got home after my work at the restaurant, I slept for ten hours—this might have also had to do with little sleep, my final UBA test, and a generally busy day, but let's just say it was all the restaurant.

What did I do, you ask? I washed dishes—lot's of them. In and of itself that would not have been much, I expected to wash dishes. No, it was the fact that midway through the meal, Diego suddenly felt very sick and had to leave the restaurant, leaving only Sanra, Emi, and me. Sanra was waiting tables, Emi was cooking and waiting tables, and I was left to help prepare food and wash lots and lots of dishes relatively quickly.

Casa Felix has plenty of dishes but depending on the meal, some of them have to be washed, dried, and reused later on. That was the case that night, as I tried to get dishes ready for Sanra to use, and generally clear out the kitchen so it wouldn't be a complete disaster after the meal.

Now, had I not been there, it would have been easy enough just to stack up a lot of dirty dishes, wash the few that were needed, and wait until later or the next morning to clean up. The restaurant would have done just fine. What I did though, was save a mess and save a lot a dish washing. For that, I was perfectly happy to help. And for that, I received a free meal.

Quick notes:
If you haven't seen Big Night, perhaps the quintessential New York restaurant movie, check it out. It features an incredible Tony Shalhoub performance and teaches you all about the greatest dish you (or I) have never tried, timpano.

Amazon.com emails recommending purchases work (in their seductive and slightly evil way). I'm really happy they do. Check out the Vandermark 5's new album, Beat Reader. The V5's albums are all of a similar aesthetic, but this one has connected with me more than most. Maybe it's Fred Lonberg-Holm's cello (an improvement over Jeb Bishop's trombone), the more chamber new music sound of the group now with a cellist in full employ, or just plain and simple Chicago nostalgia. If you don't know the V5, this isn't a bad place to start either.