The long tables were lined with banana leaves and we each got a paper napkin and a plastic cup for our drinks. Garlic rice was scooped out into mounds in a steady line going down the long table set with thirty chairs. Every five people or so, a dish full of peppered vinegar was poured out and a circle of fried mesentary was placed around. Mesentary is chitlins, or chitterlings. They look like little dumplings made of scrotum, but they tasted pretty good.
On one side of the rice mounds, a dish with lots of vegetables, tomato-y broth, chickpeas, ham hocks and tripe was scooped out. On the other side was a fried noodle dish with quail's eggs, roast chicken and mushrooms. So basically, you reach out and pull handfuls of food toward you across the banana leaf. I kept forgetting not to lick my fingers so much because I'd be sticking them back into a communal pile of food, and I also had a hard time resisting the urge to clean my fingers with my paper napkin after every bite. I'm just conditioned to mitigate my slovenliness and wasn't prepared for this much acceptance. My husband leaned over to me halfway through the meal and whispered "I wish I washed my hands before we started."
After those two dishes, we were rewarded with a pork dish, boiled in sugar and vinegar with banana blossoms and that was my favorite, except for dessert, which was the best flan I've ever had, ever.
There were a lot of Filipino Americans at the dinner, which was nice, because it's not a culture I'm extremely knowledgeable about, but it's at times a hybrid Latin-Asian dynamic because The Philippines was once colonized by the Spanish. They got a lot of American t.v. shows, but not The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, so nobody understood when I was showing them my dog Truffles honoring greatness:
The dinner table was full of good conversation, bottles of beer and wine (bring your own) and I think it was the first time I ate with my hands in a well-lit setting in front of other people as an adult. I typically save that sort of behavior for dark closets when nobody is around. Here is the aftermath:
The staging for a pop-up dinner is intense. This food-circus travels from State to State, finds a location, figures out the local food scene and tests recipes before the big dinner. On the side, they are continuing the marketing to get people to buy tickets in advance and to get newspapers and food blogs to mention them, and they have about 40 States to go. Next week, New Jersey and the week after is Connecticut. In CT, they are staying with my parents, who will probably love this. After dinner, my husband and I were comparing our parents' potential reactions to eating with fingers off of banana leaves in front of strangers at a communal table. We agreed that if his parents went, they would look around, and his dad would immediately go to the bathroom, sneak out and wait in the car with the doors locked until it was over. His mom would probably hang out and see what it was about, but ultimately might not eat. I think my parents will dig it, and I hope they do me proud by being the sloppiest at the table. It was fun, I learned a lot, and I got messy. I had flan for breakfast.
www.thesaloproject.com
