Hello friends,
I took a very long vacation but I’m back. Things you can look forward to in the next couple of weeks include:
Product & Packaging Deep Dive 2.0 featuring kelp and our resident woman in STEM, Leaton
Praise & Analysis of one of the best fine dining experiences I’ve ever had at Pertinence in Paris
A very exciting new Filipino food project with Ben
Things are simmering.
In the meantime, my incredibly talented friend, dear housemate, and badass VC, Mia Diawara, wrote the most beautiful review of the birthday dinner I produced in September, and she has graciously allowed me to share it with this audience.
I often feel satisfied observing people enjoy the food I make in the moment, but as a person whose love language is words — this reached a different level of appreciation. She masterfully wove a cohesive narrative about the meal — recognizing some of the smallest details I put care into. And she further enriched the review with her own personal food memories and connections. Thank you, Mia for making me feel so seen. It’s one of the greatest birthday gifts I’ve ever received.
Let Them Eat Kare Kare
Presence on a Plate at Lara’s Birthday Dinner
by Mia Diawara
On a sunny Friday, inside a red-doored 1930s Craftsman house in Oakland, Lara is cooking. The air is thick with smells of sesame and soy, music plays in the background.
It’s 4pm. Lara has been at it since 10am. She’s a portrait of focus, her limbs coordinated like a dancer as she shepherds ingredients throughout the room with precision and speed. It seems effortless but I know it’s not; her mind is working rapidly, thinking several steps ahead, making quick modifications to account for the many dietary restrictions of the thirteen dinner guests she’ll feed tonight in honor of her 32nd birthday. I am lucky to count myself among them.
Lara has been preparing for this meal for weeks. In some ways, she has been preparing for this meal since she was a child. I’ve heard her reflect on hours spent in the kitchen with her mother and grandmother, building deep intuition and absorbing tactical wisdom. The meal we’ll all get to experience tonight is intergenerational collaboration: when Lara’s grandmother heard Lara would be cooking the traditional Filipino dish Kare Kare, she sent bagoong (the fermented shrimp paste traditionally found in the dish) from the Philippines.
The meal’s cultural decadence is present all the way down to the table settings.
“Did you have a particular vision in mind?” I ask, honored with the task of laying out the table decorations.
“Kind of,” Lara says, and walks over to a stack of frozen banana leaves wrapped in plastic. “In traditional meals in the Philippines, we cover the table in banana leaves. The food goes in the middle, and we eat with our hands. As a nod to that, I was thinking we use the leaves as a runner, with flowers on top?”
I have never seen a full-length banana leaf before and feel like a magician pulling an endless chain of handkerchiefs out of a hat when I unsheath a moist, green square from the small plastic package; I proceed to unfold a leaf that is nearly five feet long. I lay several atop the tablecloth. Outside, I scavenge bougainvilleas and jasmine and arrange them atop it artistically. Soon, we all take our seats.
There is chatter and jubilee as we bask in our good fortune, delicious smells wafting from the kitchen. And then the first dish arrives and, as if a lid is being placed on a pot of boiling water, a collective hush falls over us. There is the sound of chewing and, I kid you not, some involuntary whimpers. The first dish—cubes of ahi tuna swimming in a perfectly acidic marinade of toasted sesame oil and rice wine vinegar and flanked by crispy turnips—brings everyone into a state of blissful immediate gratification. There is, perhaps, no texture as satisfying as raw fish at peak freshness. My teeth move through the tuna with ease as the rich umami floods my palette. “Inhaled” is the right word for the pace of my consumption.
The next dish is a cold gazpacho modeled after Sinigang—a Filipino hot and sour soup traditionally made with tamarind. In the first bite, I’m transported back to the tangy tamarindo candy of my childhood—to the sweet, messy goo my cousins and I would squeeze from colorful plastic tubes onto our fingers and pop into our mouths. The soup is bright and crisp. Fresh pepper and olive oil add complexity to the tamarind’s zest, which flickers in and out of focus, tickling my salivary glands. I lick my bowl clean.
The next dish comes out underneath a small dome-shaped lid. We all uncover our plates at the same time and a collective “ooohh” escapes us. As though we have lifted not a porcelain dish but half of an egg shell, beneath it sits the most perfect yellow-orange egg yolk, solidified by 36 hours of curing in tamari. The semi-solid yolk balances atop an oven-crisped cake of coconut rice and embellished by glimmering salmon roe. All three sit on a bed of roasted hijiki seaweed (seaweed is Lara’s muse these days). Lara walks around pouring a broth of kombu (another type of seaweed) and jasmine tea atop the rice cake.
I pause to admire the beauty, and then my fork cuts through the gooey egg yolk and into the first crispy layer of the rice cake. This is the moment when I lose myself. The whole evening, I have been alternatingly caught up in conversation or the lively atmosphere, or nervously eyeing the lit candles, which are arranged precariously in their crystal holders, holding my breath each time someone bumps the table. But when this course arrives and I take in the smell, make note of the colors, break through the surface tension with my fork, I am fully present. When I take the first bite, chew and swirl, time stands still and I am nowhere but here. Food, done well, is a spiritual experience. I realize I am benefitting from traditions that have taken hundreds of years to form; from decades of fine tuning and creative experimentation.
Our stomachs are reaching capacity by this point in the evening. But there is, of course, that subtle disconnect between the pleasures of my eyes, which say “keep it coming,” my mouth, which says “give me more,” and my stomach, which is groaning and cursing me under its breath. And so, while I physically can’t eat more than a few bites of the next dish, I marvel at the way in which it seemingly unites two familiarities from the cultures of my family. Kare Kare, Lara’s take on a Filipino stew traditionally made with oxtail, peanut butter, and fermented shrimp paste, is reminiscent of Tika Dege, a savory dish from my dad’s home country of Mali, which also features peanut butter and red meat. When I unwrap the steamed banana leaf pouch stuffed with sticky rice and mustard greens, I think back to my Tia Elizabeth’s tamales. It’s beautiful to see the similarities between these culinary cousins, and feel connected to someone else’s culture and upbringing.
By evening, the flowers have wilted and the dishes in the kitchen are piled high. We lean back in our chairs in a stupor. Over the next couple of months, I will go on to literally dream of some of the dishes I had at Lara’s birthday dinner. But mostly, I’ll keep chasing the timelessness, the cultural connection, the things that remind us of our similarities and bind us to the present moment.
I am so inspired by you two. Your gifts are wells of love & connection.