Pasta Vino Atlanta

Last week the electricity went off an hour after we opened for our dinner hour, a GA Power snag of some sort.  I had been warned via text from one of the staff so I expected total chaos when I walked into to a dark restaurant at 6:30.  What I found was totally unexpected.  Yes it was dark, yes, very dark.  Three emergency lights lit the front door, the back of the kitchen and the back dining room exit, but the rest was a blaze of candle lit tables and gas burners in the kitchen.  Still, it was strangely calm.  Except for the waiters frantically trying to write handwritten food orders to the kitchen and adding checks with the one calculator they shared, the kitchen staff and guests appeared to be unruffled. People were chatting amicably together as usual and the candlelight warmed a cold, wintry night.  An old favorite customer, Mary B Bush, stopped by to eat while she was in town with her daughter and sister; the regulars were taking a little more time to swipe chips from the bar while they waited for their entrees and the wine flowed a little heavier… but mostly it just went on without a glitch.

Somehow we couldn’t say “no” and people kept coming.  There was a brief hesitation over “no electricity” but then, “well, as long as we can eat, we are fine.”  Soon there was a line waiting but eventually everyone was seated and fed.  People lingered and talked between tables and it was like a blackout in the hood.  I was petrified the four million candles on the tables would start a fire but it didn’t happen.  I waited for someone to trip, the kitchen staff to stop, or an angry customer to walk out, but it didn’t happen.  Quite the reverse.  At one point at the end, the three lights went out.   I saw a field of gas burners in the kitchen and the two cooks – heroes in this story – holding candles above the sauté pans to see.  The dishwasher continued to hand wash.  The pizza man, Ramiro, kept watch over the front to make sure everyone was all right and then started to clean his station.  Eventually everyone said their goodbyes as the lights came back on and we began to reclaim order.  It really wasn’t a big deal.  The electrical panel wasn’t working so we strung up a makeshift extension cord to get the software working so the credit cards could be processed and there was some damage to equipment but everyone soon finished their job and just went home.  No big deal.

All of this extra effort without one complaint from the staff.  Amazing to me.  The next day, Tomas and Esteban, our chefs, climbed the three-story ladder to replace the vent hood motor.  Esteban reset the giant mixer that must be a hundred years old and then order was restored…or did it ever leave?

An aside…

When I asked Tomas, (our head Chef), how long he had been here, he smiled and said forever.  Prodded, he told me the story of the way he started out washing dishes as a teenager.  Nico, the owner, gave him a job to keep him “out of trouble”.  His father was a cook at Abruzzi.  He just kept doing what was asked of him as various people quit or were fired.  He said he stayed because “no one had asked him to leave”.  When asked what he liked about the place he said he didn’t really know.  It was a deep thing, he said, but nothing really he could put into words.

Thought it would be easy, but no go. Like real life, it’s a tough time to get where you want to go when you haven’t been there before.

When I was in Italy last month, I was told to order the caprese salad in this little place in Cinque Terre, and I did. I didn’t know what it was, but after the first bite, I knew I was in love. I learned that falling in love with Burrata is what everyone does. “Creamy,
buttery, silky and another way of interpreting cream” puts it into words. And so I thought, why not for Pasta Vino? Why not learn it and do a short video showing where it comes from for our guests to see the process?

Well. First I learn that Burrata isn’t a cheese that one can take for granted. Its shelf life is short which makes it commercially unfeasible so we will have to make it in house. Our kitchen makes almost everything else from scratch and had talked about making
our mozzarella anyway so I am thinking no big deal. Burrata starts with mozzarella and adds a creamy mozz filling so this would make sense. Instead of watching the u-tube demonstrations, I wanted someone to show Tomas and his staff “touchy-feely”.

Googling and talking to cheese people at Saturday market, I couldn’t find an Atlanta cheese person who taught mozz classes except Chef Paul Luna and I felt funny going to him. (When I called his place “Black Market Lunacy” on a Wed night and asked about
classes, he answered the phone and told me he would teach me mozz anytime I showed up if he could…. pretty cool). But that was too easy.

Found Paula Butler, who has a farm not so nearby and teaches mozzarella classes, was willing to learn Burrata & got her to come to give hands on demo to Tomas and his crew. Sounds easy, but it wasn’t. Had Woodie Williams (great guy and great photographer) there to video Tomas and the guys making mozz for our web site. Didn’t work. Paula dropped a chemical unloading her car that she had to replace via emergency and my mother’s aid was unable to make it to get her up for breakfast and medication so I was late… bottom line: morning was too chaotic and Woodie will have to come back.

Because of the inconsistencies in making milk curds in a restaurant kitchen, Paula figured out instead of making the mozz from scratch, we should make it from purchased curd. Called local creamery and they won’t have new batch until the end of the month. We’ll get there but it would be nice to scroll back to the caprese in Italy and my original belief… how tuff can putting 3 ingredients on a plate together be? I have learned a lot depends on where you start out.

Nanci