FAKE RESTAURANT #1

(march ‘22 in PORTLAND MAINE at WASHINGTON BATHS)

I have been into Hungarian food since I was a child. There is a heritage restaurant in Albany, OR called Novak's where my family would stop to eat on nearly every drive to and from visiting friends in Portland. That started it, certainly. I've written about it during the most recent and the first time we made Hungarian food for Secret Restaurant, so you can go read about it all there! But if you asked, about this Fake Restaurant dinner, Why did you make Hungarian food at a public bath house in Portland, Maine? I might answer: Because of the public baths in Budapest. Because Asher and I went there in a whirlwind when we were 26. Because I went back there a few years ago. Because Asher opened a public bath house with a café in it. Because Izabel, who runs bath house with Asher, used to live near the Hungarian Pastry Shop in New York on the upper west side, and perhaps its dry erase board menu and straight up approach had already seeped its way into the café at Washington Baths. Because Izabel and I cook very well together. Because doing a Fake Restaurant in a place that already kind of has a restaurant is a cool idea. Because it was fun!

If Asher is a familiar sounding character, you are right to think so. As my best friend from college, he has made appearances many times over the years – first at one of our earliest dinners, doing the food of Mauritius, a tiny island country he once lived in, then at a sidewalk holiday event of baked goods, roasted chestnuts, and smoked mountain cheeses inspired by our time in Poland together. Then he hosted an on-farm Secret Restaurant out in super down east Maine, where he was living for a time. Ever since then, really, because the next year was when he first thought about opening a sauna, we've had the dream of doing some kind of food thing at his eventual business for public bathing. Well, folks – he did it: Washington Baths, a place that should be on your radar if you ever in (or even near) the '‘other” Portland.

Izabel Nielsen has been doing a project called Bread Soup Cake for a number of years. Bread Soup Cake has at its core the same feeling as Secret Restaurant Portland, of being more like a social practice art project than a business. She has also done a number of other singular food related happenings/performances/public practices, some of which are documented in printed form. Check out her website to catch a glimpse! In addition to the other ins and outs of operating Washington Baths, Izabel bottom-lines the café there, and does it in a compelling and dialed-in way. There are days when they serve hearty full meals, days when they serve just snacks, but always, every day, they serve obscure seltzer water from places like Romania.

A piece from the unorganized mood board passed between Izabel and myself during the lead up to this dinner:

The poster we designed and posted in the lobby for a week leading up to the event:

Washington Baths is only open Friday-Monday, and it was always in the plan that we would be prepping, cooking, and hosting this evening during the days they'd be closed. I arrived in Portland on Tuesday, and Izabel picked me up from the bus station in her charming Volvo station wagon. We wrote a plan, we drove all around, we gathered the things. We could feel some anticipatory buzz in the air around the dinner even as we shopped.

We cooked from Tuesday evening up until Thursday afternoon, when our staff (Izabel's brother's wife, Sandy, and Grace, who was working at the sauna) arrived to get acclimated to the plan. The most fun was Wednesday afternoon when we were able to fulfill our "grilled fish and espresso on the sidewalk" fantasy (see pictures below)

Izabel came up with the name after we'd spent some time pondering how quite to bill this event. The idea of having it be, like, Secret Restaurant Portland x Bread Soup Cake, The Collab felt silly. I love that she thought of a name that references this longtime project while also being something entirely new and very relevant a way she is able to use her café space at the baths. This event was very different from the usual Secret Restaurant Portland, as it was an a la carte menu with no set time (just open hours) and happening in a very public, very commercial, very licensed and legal space. And yet, it was on a night when that space was not open as normal, it was an event that wouldn't really be possible when they are open, and it also utilized the beautiful building of Washington Baths in a way that felt always meant to be. Izabel went on to do Fake Restaurant #2 at the sauna in July, where she turned it into a Greek restaurant for several weekends. So fun!

But back to #1. We prepped, we danced to Italo Disco record "Welcome to Paradise vol. II" < which has, it should be noted, inspired a concept for a future Fake Restaurant... stay tuned ;) > , we opened the doors, and people came. We felt very lucky that the place was full basically the entire time, without ever being overfull or us having to ask people to wait. People ordered bounteously. It was a novelty experience for me, in particular, to be taking tickets and filling orders. We've done it that way just a few times over the years with Secret Restaurant, and this was a much more professional setup. I can still hear the snap of the ticket going on the clippy thing with Grace or Sandy saying "Order in!" and remember leaning in to see what the ticket said, calling out to Izabel what was on there. She handled the salads and fired up the fatty toasts, I did the paradise plate, paprika snack, and cakes – sometimes doing salads or toasts when she had stepped out. It was also fun to be a fast restaurant, which is a trifle unfamiliar coming from years of doing this thing where people need to block out their entire evening to wait for all 6 courses to come out or whatever.

Ariela Rose, who is a friend I actually met at a Secret Restaurant event many years ago (randomly, the one with the chestnuts when Asher was visiting) and who hosted the last Hungarian dinner in her tiny apartment, was living in Maine at the time of this dinner, and was able to be our wine bar host for the evening. The 'wine bar' set up was down the hall from the café window in the doorway to the actual sauna, and included an ice bath in the cold plunge.

Then it was basically over and we were having Family Meal, sometime after 10. This was the moment of conviviality and sitting down that we'd all earned. We finished off the last magnum of light bodied red wine, the salads were piled high, the fish and potatoes bounteous. The toasts stacked. The crew gathered around, laughing. Welcome to Paradise....SEXXX.... playing over the speakers once more.

Natural light, guest-experience gallery:

The above were photos were taken by the very kind folks at Portland Food Map, who showed up early, got these great shots while it was still light out, and gave the dinner some attention on their channels! We didn’t have a “staff photographer” as we do for the usual Secret Restaurant project, and there was a full-memory-card situation with the camera we had on hand to snap with ourselves which resulted in a 2007-Facebook-dump style collection of mostly out of focus shots of the same thing over and over. So rather than hundreds of photos to scroll through, you have bits and pieces separated out into mini galleries.

Natural light prep-time phone snapshots gallery, including our favorite moment as cooks where we were drinking espresso while grilling fish on the street:

Shots from the camera being handed around on the night of:

Paprika snack

Fox Family Chips (excellent Maine regional potato chip maker), dusted heavily with our proprietary paprika blend, Liptauer cheese dip (originally learned from the Bar Tartine book and made many times, which I have also eaten at market stalls in Budapest), sliced sweet peppers, pickled egg.

Traditional salad

Super-classic Hungarian cucumber salad with onion, dill, white wine vinegar, and sour cream.

Chopped salad

Green cabbage, apple, celery, herbs, fried sunflower seeds, heaped atop a swirl of whipped feta.

Fatty toast

Night Moves (excellent bakery which was on hiatus at the time, so; a treat) bread, a blend of Eastern European butter and duck fat, and tempered white onions.

Paradise Plate

Hal (fish), lesco (peppers), krumpli (potatoes). A dish inspired by something I ate on the Danube during the St. Stephens Day celebrations but also improvised with Izabel, the fish was branzino – normally something coming all the way from the Meditteranean but farmed in not-very-far Connecticut, and it tasted similar to the river fish of Hungary. We made a makeshift grill on the sidewalk and cooked it the day before on the street. When we were grilling the fish and drinking espresso in the sun, we paused to notice the beautiful moment and wish more of life was “like grilling fish on the street with an espresso.” The fish was marinated overnight with onions and peppers and vinegar, escabiche-style. The potatoes were cooked in a rich broth and lightly smashed with melted butter and parsley. Lesco is yellow, orange, and red peppers cooked for hours in a dutch oven, mixed with the flesh from large eggplants we cooked in the coals from the fish-grilling, and a small amount or tinned whole peeled tomatoes and kick of spicy paprika; it is like the Hungarian ratatouille.

Cake & Cream

Poppy seeds, “cherry business” (cooked whole frozen cherries, sour cherry jam, sugar, lemon juice, a light red wine), poured cream.

“LA-style” flash/macro gallery: