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© 2008 Dan Perlman
Casa SaltShaker
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Chef: Dan Perlman
Host: Henry Tapia
May 11, 2008
One of the things I get asked about most with Casa SaltShaker is “do dishes ever just turn out terrible?” or something similiar to that. After all, often, especially when I’m in the kitchen playing around with a cuisine I don’t know well, it’s total experimentation. To a certain extent that may be mitigated by using traditional recipes, but then there are those weekends of whimsical themes, like this last one, where we celebrated the 120th birthday of the famous composer Irving Berlin. I hadn’t stopped to think about it when picking the theme, sort of building on our past Carmen Miranda, Bette Davis, Anna Magnani birthday dinners, but they have recognizable personalities and something that could be played on for a dinner theme. Good old Irving was more of a behind the scenes guy, even if well known. It was his work, not his personality that shone through.
My first thought was to look through many of his lyrics and come up with a dinner theme from that, and indeed he mentions many thing in various songs… but it just didn’t feel like it was coming together. In the end, I decided to look back at the year of his birth, 1888, where I was able to find inspiration in the “new foods” that were introduced in the U.S. that year: tomatoes, grapefruits, Thomas’ English Muffins, Log Cabin syrup, canned pineapple, canned corned beef, Cream of Wheat, Fig Newtons, Coca Cola, Dr. Pepper, and Oysters Rockefeller. I didn’t use all of them, but picked out a few that led to ideas for a dinner, which was, overall successful, but at least from my perspective in the kitchen, left more room for improvement than what I’m happy with. So, away we go…
Thoughts from some of our guests:
"Thank you very much for a gorgeous evening, it was thoroughly enjoyed by all. We thought the food was delicious and the company was great! We are looking forward to returning very soon. Thank you again, we thought the evening was fantastic and flowed very very well, you and Henry did a wonderful job!" - S.C.
"We had a very enjoyable evening, the food was very interesting and option of the wine matching was great- things that are hard to find normally.. The oyster mushrooms /english muffins and the duck were the highlights for me.. It was a bit disappointing that there were no people from here ( Buenos Aires) but I guess you are not in control of that.. thank you very much again, we will be keeping an eye on the next menus." - I.K.
