Laughing Together With Salad
For years I've had a running joke-slash-fantasy with Ricardo, my frequent creative partner in crime. In it, we ditch our day jobs and just make sandwiches. If the sentence-completing caliber of our design collaborations are any indication, these would be some badass sandwiches. Sandwiches for the ages. Ever in pursuit of making my pipe dreams come true, for the past several months I've been running a weekly lunch- I call it FiverDay- in my own design studio, kind of like a micro start-up, if you will. I've long been fixated on lunch, particularly as it pertains to the quotidian feasts and famines of the average office worker bee. While I've certainly eaten many a sad lunch al desko, and occasionally been a woman laughing alone with salad, nothing disappoints me more than a wasted meal, and I believe that our daily lunches deserve more attention.
When I joined AllofUs last year, I was immediately struck by the way the team convened every day at our long table to share lunch. Everyone may have gone their own way to grab impromptu salad ingredients from the nearby Waitrose, or just to grab a sandwich from the Pret across the street, but they always came back to eat together. When, in late summer we were planning our move to a brand new space, we decided that we wanted to build out a proper kitchen, with a hob and an oven. The paint was barely dry before I launched FiverDay in October. Our inaugural lunch was an autumn fattoush with butternut squash, shaved beetroot, manouri, pita crisps, and pomegranate accompanied by cumin-roasted cauliflower with almond aioli and dukkah, a platter of spicy marinated aubergine, and bowls of muhammara with homemade rose harissa and sourdough pitta. In fact, the kitchen wasn't even complete until mid-November, on the day I was cooking an epic Thanksgiving feast for the team...the contractors were down to the last minutes before I needed to pop two dry-brined turkey breasts into our freshly-installed oven!
The idea of FiverDay is that not only should you fuel yourself with a healthy, wholesome, and satisfying meal at midday, but you should be able to do it for a fiver or less. It's that simple. Noticeably, the white space of opportunity in this area is beginning to fill up, with businesses like Sweetgreen (I miss you Sweetgreen, but my wallet does not) leading the way. In the arms-race of food delivery startups, David Chang's Maple is a contender, and recently Ox Verte, founded by a former Organic Avenue exec is taking NYC by storm, one hearty grain bowl at a time. Locally, I've even spotted some potential competition with Karma Cans. So lately I'm thinking about what kind of life FiverDay might have in the world outside of my own studio. How could I turn it into a viable business? Is it about lunch-kit delivery? Is it for individuals or businesses? Is the 'fiver' part of the equation even doable? Your thoughts and ideas are welcome here.
What I do know is that what's made FiverDay a personal and team success so far is that basically I've managed to create a dinner party atmosphere at lunch every week. My menus have been loosely thematic, letting me play around with a range of cuisines and concepts - favorites so far have been Day of the Dead tacos done Tex-Mex style, Korean bibimbap bowls with my homemade kimchi, and a Lower East Side delicatessen spread, with borscht (its base a real fermented beet kvass), potato kugel, cucumber salad with sour cream, and homemade shissel rye. It's fun, it's convivial, and it feels like home.
Introvert that I am, parties in general tend to make me cringe with all the mingling and small talk, but a dinner party is the perfect exception, especially if I'm hosting. I love the feeling of gathering a good handful of folks around a table, which is why our wedding lunch back in December was my ultimate dinner party dream come true. Hosted at Brawn on the charming Columbia Road, warm winter sun streamed through the windows as all my best friends ate heaps of breakfast radishes with their hands, salty gougeres kickstarted our appetites, platters heaved with slow-roast lamb, and many, many bottles were passed around, keeping glasses full and laughter alight.
Somewhere between the succulent, eat-with-a-spoon lamb I had at Spring last week, and the memory of the fall-apart lamb at Brawn, today I'm planning a Sunday roast for this brief window of Hamilton being home, before heading off to Amsterdam again for a spell. I'll mash up a recipe from my Brooklyn hero Andrew Tarlow's "Dinner at the Long Table," with one from Skye Gyngell herself- roasting a lamb shoulder rubbed with a heady paste of garlic, rosemary, and anchovies, and basted with some good Burgundy. Just like our wedding lunch, I'll serve it with some boulangère potatoes, if I can get them right this time, and then just some simple greens and maybe some snap peas on the side.
Since our wedding, I've become obsessed with the light but luscious reds of the Loire, particularly those featuring my top grape, Cab Franc. My palate has always favored zingy and juicy over robust and dry. Mostly it's because deep, dark tannins just don't agree with me, but also because I'm more of a lusty guzzler than a sipper and swirler. I am a lover of the glou-glou, as they call it- simpler, younger, unfussy, and completely "smashable" (er, easy-drinking and lower alcohol, that is) wines for everyday drinking.
It was at a pop-up dinner, coincidentally cooked by the chef of Brawn, where I tasted the revelation of Sebastian David's "Kezako", which is a kind of/sort of slang that translates to "what on earth is this?!" Indeed! Luxuriously perfumed with brambly blackberries, and as richly colored, this natural wine from the Saint Nicholas de Bourgueil region knocked me right over with its exceptional freshness, that little pencil-shavings edge I love. I immediately went home and ordered a half case, as well as a half case of its little brother, David's "Hurluberlu," which we served at our wedding (and, also much later into the evening as some of the party moved to our house...)
At Spring I discovered an unbelievable value by the glass- a soft and smooth and incredibly enjoyable 2015 Saumur-Champigny by Theirry Germain. The perfect Sunday lunch wine, for a languourous afternoon à table before facing the week.
For your modest weeknight drinking, you'll need to grab a 1.5 litre bag of the awesome Vin Naturo, perfect for pouring out one little glass to sip as you make dinner. In no time, it'll have you conjuring memories of afternoons turning into evenings spent glugging carafes of reliable Chinon from the heated terrasse of a beloved bistro overlooking the square at the base of the rue Mouffetard in the 5ème...