It’s tempting, in any major food city, to focus almost exclusively on the new, the trendy, the progressive. And why shouldn’t we? In a town like ours, with chefs whose ideas and techniques often push the boundaries of the previously understood and accepted, it’s easy to fall into fanboy mode and swoon over the newest culinary transmogrification. But there’s more going on here than just the new. In fact, one of the more interesting meals I’ve experienced lately was old. Really old. As in: ancient.
When my editor asked if I’d attend a small media preview at Lucha Cartel of the Babylonian Dinner, the first in a planned series of pop-up “Meals of Antiquity” conceived by Patrick Rodgers of Dancing Ferret Concerts, I accepted quickly, assuming that, regardless of whether this would be a gimmicky mess or an eye-opening experience, I’d have plenty to write about.
Turns out it was, thankfully, the latter. While there were still a few kinks remaining to be worked out from the execution end of things—the media preview was the Old City restaurant staff’s first time running through a service of this high-concept recreation of an ancient Mesopotamian menu—the pleasures were plentiful.
Cucumber and pistachio salad with chick peas and a saffron dressing was a study in varying degrees of crunch and snappiness. “Black” lamb skewers spiced with nigella sativa and joined by shimmering, nearly translucent caramelized shallots will be stunning once the right cooking time is pinned down.
“Royal emmer,” whose recipe calls for ancient grains joined by pomegranate, pickled shallots and raisins, nuts and the perfume of truffle, was nearly spot-on. As the team streamlines their processes in the kitchen, all these dishes and more promise to fully realize the vision of Rodgers and his collaborator in this dinner, designing cook Colin Patrick Barth.
For three months—including one of research and two more of hands-on development and testing—Barth earnestly, doggedly tracked down the recipes and culinary habits of the ancient Babylonians, often finding himself elbow-deep in the mind-meltingly complex minutiae of various linguistic and anthropological interpretations posited about the era and its food.
Later in the evening, Rodgers explained to our table that while he loves food, his main passion is culture, and how food and music provide a sense of explanation and context for it. Both his and Barth’s work here goes to the heart of why a culture’s culinary heritage is so important in both the big and small pictures. The foodways of a particular place, in a specific time, can tell us about a culture’s values, passions, aversions, worldview, climatological challenges and more.
With luck, there will be more. “The frequency of Meals of Antiquity going forward will depend largely on the success of the Babylonian Dinner,” Rodgers explained in an email. “There’s a large expense involved in researching, developing and testing the menu. Add to that the typical expenses—rent, ingredients, promotion, etc.—and a single sold-out seating doesn’t even break even. Having the kind of demand and interest to stage the event two or three times (or more) enables me to commit resources to do another one.”
Hopefully he will. Because a dinner like this, with its manifold intellectual and gustatory pleasures, is a firm reminder of why our collective obsession with the food culture of our own time and place—the amazing food scene in Philadelphia, circa early-21st-century—is so riveting and so rewarding. The same goes for those long-gone Babylonians, and their own unique culinary heritage.
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/food/Old_City_Food__Real_Old_City-293906361.html#ixzz3SruuYBiy
