This year we are introducing something new and rather exciting to Fusebox: “Digestible Feats” a new program pairing artists with chefs. The idea is to collaborate on a dish that would be “satisfying to different senses.”
The first offering was with Lope Gutiérrez-Ruiz and Michu Benaim, the editors of The Gopher Illustrated, a magazine featuring emerging talents in visual arts, literature and journalism with interest in bringing work from Latin America to an English-speaking readership. Fusebox paired the two with La Sombra, a restaurant focusing on capturing “the vibrant flavors and fresh ingredients of Central and South America” for Austinites. Benaim explains the process:
We met with Chef Julio César and with Cameron Lockley a few times to figure out what we should do. Evidently, coming up with some sort of philosophy that aligned our interests wasn’t all that difficult. The fact that we could easily find common ground presented a greater challenge, however, in that we needed to decide what it was that we wanted the dish to convey about Latin America, its food, its arts scene, and in particular, how we could make an authentic, fun and meaningful experience in the land of Tex-Mex.
Lope and I suggested that we hinge on the “emergent” aspect of the Gopher’s mission. Julio César provided an overview of emerging culinary trends in various parts of Latin America, particularly in Peru (where he was born) and Mexico. From the Gopher side of the table, we knew that we wanted to somehow incorporate a print or graphic element to the project.
We decided on versioning street food, knowing that there is probably nothing that embodies the marriage between youth culture, the fast pace of urban areas and the everyday presence of tradition better than the anticucheras, taquerías and areperas that we’d each frequented for so long. We went through a list of countries to include in the dish, knowing that we wanted to include a country in Central America, one on the Caribbean end of South America, and another from the southern region of South America. Lope and I are both Venezuelan, a country with a vast Caribbean coastline, and Julio Cesar’s expertise with Peruvian cuisine ensured the two countries’ representation in the plates. Mexico’s taquería culture, and the vast Mexican American community in Texas settled the matter.
Many years of cheesy, drippy arepas taught us the importance of those faux-napkins in the presentation of the dish. Likewise, taquerías and anticucheras present their cheap, delicious fare in similar cheap not-quite-napkins. These are less napkins than they are grease blotting devices; functional, small and designed for you to eat fast and standing.
Given that Julio César was going to gourmetize street fare, we decided to dress up the grease napkin. La Sombra already used wax squares of blotting paper, so we created three designs, one for each element in the dish. Each of these designs features a common saying from the food’s country of origin, taken from the cultural vernacular. The phrase is printed in Spanish, and an English translation is included on the bottom. The graphics that we used were designed to reflect aesthetic trends in the Graphic Design scenes in Caracas, Mexico DF and Lima, incorporating traditional elements from the countries they represent.
We ordered some rather large rubber stamps, researched and purchased food-safe, non-toxic inks, and hand-stamped a bazillion grease-napkin-waxy-paper-things. The dishes are plated on top of the stamped napkins, and you can use them to grab your arepa.
The lowdown on the dishes:
Mexico: Seared tuna taco with chile lime mayo, jicama, pickle radish y serrano chilies
Venezuela: Arepa de pabellón with black beans and smoked and fried plantains
Perú: Anticucho de corazón (beef heart skewers) with rocoto sauce, rosé potatoes and choclo
