Any food-related event that has its origins in New Orleans, my mom's hometown and the crux of my gourmandise thing with food, is going to start out on a good foot with me. Dinner Lab in Austin is just that thing, having started in New Orleans and branching out to Austin a few months ago. It recently started up in Nashville, TN. A $100 annual membership gets you the right to get the emails about the dinners. You have to move fast to buy a ticket or two to the dinners once that email goes out. New Orleans has done much re-inventing and soul-searching post Katrina to be sure: its food scene was rocked to the core when the infrastructure for any type of restaurant dining was almost wiped out--forever it seemed back then. It came back with a vengeance, but still some things were not quite right. For some. Dinner Lab co-founder Brian Bordainick found something lacking in the New Orleans food scene: certain ethnic foods were just nowhere to be found. Dinner Lab was created to meet that diversity challenge.
The idea is getting disparate bunches of people together, for culinarily thematically-themed dinners, with undiscovered yet aspiring talented chefs in a funky surprise venue. As I have over the years never scored a seat at the Paris supper clubs that were all the rage for a time (granted I did not try overly hard), I considered this a great consolation prize. And at $50 or $60 for an interesting meal, plus wine and gratuity, the price per dinner ticket seemed pretty reasonable.
Not until August would the calendar actually work out for my attending one.
Quelle coincidence my first Dinner Lab would be "Regional Mexican Cuisine." The choice of a guest was obvious. That would be my friend of 30+ years Melissa, food history/cultural anthropologist Ph.D., phenomenal cook, and expert on Oaxacan food culture and traditions. I brought a ringer on "Regional Mexican Cuisine."
Melissa, being more kind than I, and open to learning from the diversity of tastes and experiences that lead to people making the food they make, or making the drinks we shall drink, had the sangria (also gratis, included in the ticket price), whereas I stuck with red wine. I did not want to be disappointed with anything less spectacular than Melissa's sangria recipe, which her mother, when living in Spain, received from a gypsy and handed down to her daughters. I call it Gypsy Sangria. It is a sangria that will make you hallucinate after the 8 glasses you will have because it is delightful, but deadly.
She pronounced it good. This is high praise.
We checked out the art. Mexic-Arte Museum on Congress Avenue was our dining venue after all. And then we were summoned to take our seats at whatever seats we had scoped out earlier.
Food events are really about the people behind them. Setting and the set-up for the food makes us feel and act a certain way--whether it's at home or at a restaurant. So what is really fascinating for such events as Dinner Lab is the happenstance of with whom you will be dining -- and trying beef tongue for the first time, as in my case.
Pick one particular seat, you might spend the evening in boring silence or awkward grasps at conversation starters, like a bad date. Pick another seat, and you meet people who seem like you've known them forever, or completely different people with very different back stories. There you are, randomly crossing paths that one night based on what the universe determined shall be the proper dose of serendipity for the day.
The jicama salad was lovely and fine, not exceptional. There were more courses, more conversation starts and stops. (Portions were on the small side, but this is from someone with portion-control issues.)
The music level was a problem at first. Before the crowd really got revved up, it was too loud for the conversations to get going. At least at my table. I went over and almost turned the music down myself over at the speaker disguised as a vintage suitacase. A Dinner Lab helper intervened.
And then something happens that makes all the conversation click, if it's going to click at all.
Some of the bursts of conversation occur with new folks in between the pauses while they are dining with long-time friends. Some bursts occur while others are meeting new friends (Melissa told a couple every inch of Mexico City they should explore (when they asked), where to get the best coffee, and where to find the best spices). I, at some point after the jicama salad, would find out some interesting information about the group of women to my left.
Our chef for the evening, Brandon Byrd, formerly of Lenoir, explaining to the diners his approach, philosophy, and the interview process to get this dinner event and how it relates to his exploration of regional Mexican cuisine
Turns out the woman on my left was a microbiologist looking at post-doc work, who had just had an intereview with a certain prestigious research institution in Paris, one I had had my eye on for tech transfer issues. She knew not much about Paris. I offered to help her out with that. Another woman, across from me, runs event planning for a French cooking school. We should be catching up soon.
The next Dinner Lab I am signed up for is a French-themed one: a culinary "Tour de France." I hope I can be as gracious, when confronted with different approaches to a cuisine about which I have strong opinions, as Melissa was with the sangria and the rest of the meal. But what I am really looking forward to, far beyond the (small-ish portions of) food, are the people with whom I will randomly choose to be seated. Could be a bust. Could be life-changing. I'm fine with either path. So long as the music is at the right level--for an apparently increasingly cranky GourmandeMom.
Comments