of Juliet, the Magazine volume 1, part 3

of juliet fall 2018 Seasonal Magazine

Price $12

BEHIND THE SCENES AT: PLUS ORIGINAL: Les Pommes Sauvage Short stories Juliet Steakhouse Interviews Feast of the Seven Fishes Art and photography For The First Time, Fully Illustrated The End Of Something New “this is everything I have to tell you”

Juliet Cafe

Romeo’s at Juliet Romeo’

Wink + Nod

Juliet Gitana at ONCE Lounge

Jimmy’s No. 33 Persian New Year Kitchen Kibitz

Nowruz James Beard House

May Day Flower pot luck at Eva’s Garden

Austinland / Texas Breakfast

Beacon Hill Bistro

O.N.C.E.

BELLYwine bar +The Blue Room

CREDITS

Juliet is: Home Of Somerville’s Most Unique Dining Experience As well as Juliet Café and Romeo’s At Juliet Gratuity Free Dining. Living Wages.

Great food. Great jobs. Great company.

Katrina Juliet Jazayeri, Proprietor/ Wine Director/ Set Designer Joshua Lewin, Chef/ Creative Director Katie Rosengren, General Manager Rachael Collins, Executive Sous Chef Noah Clickstein, Sous Chef Staff, in order of appearance: Samuel Fuentes, Reggie Tarver, Carlos Ponce, Carlito Pineda, Gilberto Santos, Elvis Reyes, Liz Peters, Megan Mooney, Emma Hendryx, Vivian Luo, Sergio Rodriguez, Walter Vasquez, Gabe Bellgard Bastos, Jill Petersen, Nora Connolly, Tiffany Crockett, Norlando Duarte.

Of Juliet is: Joshua Lewin, Editor in Chief Katrina Jazayeri, Design and Illustration Katie Rosengren, Managing Editor

Contributors: Samantha Mangino Nina Coomes Will Deeks Claire Cheney Alex Vai Emilie Goldinger Hannah Rosengren

CONTENTS Curtain Notes

2

Transformed by the right light 4

by Emilie Goldfinger I Was Listening 12

by Joshua lewin From “Contre une maison sèche” 14

by Claire Cheney First Bite 15

by Samantha Mangino We Hold These Myths 20

by Joshua Lewin It’s All Complementary Tonight 22

by Nina Coomes Stirred, Up 26

by Jesse Butcher Hung Out to Dry 28

by Joshua Lewin Gentian 31

by Claire Cheney Dillard’s Eclipse 35

by Joshua Lewin

Singular Focus 37

by Will Deeks Inside the Reporter’s Kitchen 38

by Samantha Mangino In Conversation 39

by Will Deeks Faraway Light 40

by Joshua Lewin Particularly Destined 45

by Joshua Lewin How do you pick the wines to go with food? 47

by Joshua Lewin Can you see that? 48

by Joshua Lewin Wishing Well 50

by Katie Rosengren Dealing with plastic straws is not a waste of time 51

by Alex Vai

CONTribuTOrS JESSE BUCHTER

KATIE ROSENGREN

is a bartender and writer with a penchant for eating and drinking. He moved from his home in New York to Boston to pursue media production and writing at Emerson College. He spends most of his time dreaming up new drinks at Bully Boy Distillers and curating food and beverage events from around the city for The Food Lens’ events page.

is the general manager of Juliet, a job which combines two of her favorite things, making spreadsheets and eating food. After a decade plus detour in New York, Katie and her husband- both native Mainers- are happy to be back in New England and call Somerville home with their son, Henry. In her spare time, she likes to ight the patriarchy, eat all the food, and watch lots of TV.

NINA COOMES is a Japanese and American writer, performer, producer, and artist. She was born in Nagoya, raised in Chicago, and currently resides in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in EATER, Catapult, The Collapsar, among other places. Her debut chapbook, haircut poems, was published by Dancing Girl Press in December 2017.

SAMANTHA MANGINO is a writer, student, and server. Born in Yarmouth, Maine, she grew up with a restaurant named after her, and parents who helped to develop her disdain for the kid’s menu. She studies journalism at Emerson College but prefers studying food and wine at Juliet.

EMILIE GOLDFINGER is a potter and writer from London, England. She recently moved away from Somerville, where she was studying ceramics. She now resides in Brooklyn, where she plans to continue making pots and generally sorting her life out. Her photographs in this edition of Juliet stem from a lifelong love of casual observation. See more of Emilie’s observation on Intagram: @missgoldinger and @potterylad

WILL DEEKS is a Boston based cook, writer, and musician. After working in a number of kitchens throughout the city, Will has settled in as a sous chef at Juliet. Whether he is at the stove there, or occasionally touring the country with various bands, he works to provide insight to the human experience through hospitality and art.

CLAIRE CHENEY is the founder and owner of Curio Spice Co., based in North Cambridge, MA. Curio Spice specializes in ethically produced spices sourced both locally and from around the world. Claire was thrilled to create two custom spice blends for Josh & Katrina at Juliet, one of which (“La Pluie”) was inspired by the surrealist poetry of French poet, René Char. Claire enjoys writing, reading, and making a big mess in the kitchen with her husband and daughter.

ALEX T. VAI Alex T. Vai is a volunteer and Campaigns Coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation Massachusetts Chapter. The chapter is thrilled to recognize Juliet as the irst Ocean Friendly Restaurant in Massachusetts.

To ind out even more ways to protect the ocean and reduce plastic pollution in your own community, please consider joining the Chapter at its monthly general meeting, currently on the irst Wednesday of every month at 6:30 PM in Davis Square, Somerville.

Check out massachusetts.surfrider.org or email massachusetts@surfrider.org for more details.

HANNAH ROSENGREN is a freelance illustrator in Southern Maine. Her work often focuses on the natural environment, taking inspiration from mid-century modern palettes and design. In addition to working in her home studio and making seed bombs with her husband, she is especially fond of The Monkees, bees, and coffee. All of the illustration in this issue of Of Juliet was completed by Hannah, our irst test at a new concept for the magazine; a dynamic and ever changing visual experience, from one issue to the next. See more of her illustrations on Instagram @hannah_rosengren_ studio or at hannahrosengren.com.

Curtain Notes The two year mark has been an important waterline for this company since its beginning. For the restaurant, speciically, I could connect the two year dots for hours on end — and I wonder what sort of shapes would result…

Two years was one of the irst phrases printed in the irst issue of this magazine, which will technically celebrate one year of publication with the close of this issue in January. But, in secret, this magazine is more like two years old. Two single copies of the irst prototype issue exist still in this world, printed about this time in 2016. It took a full year to bring the public version, from there, to life.

This will be the inal issue of our irst yearly theme: this is everything I have to tell you. It has been a very inward looking year, for both the magazine, and the restaurant. The issue in your hands is no exception. If you’ve heard enough about who we are and who we want to be, you should probably stop reading now.

This inward looking process, done publicly, has been both frightening and fun. It has also been fruitful, paying off repeatedly in unexpected ways throughout our organization.

When we return in January though, we are lipping the focus of that light completely, and our next theme, throughout all of 2019, will look outward, near and far. You might have noticed that the word “program” has already been dropped from the front cover.

We’ll continue to draw inspiration and focus from the seasonal goings on of Juliet, the restaurant, speciically the three big productions of each menu season, and will pepper in a few menu development notes and recipes for you to try at home. More than that, though, we’ll be using those themes to inform stories focused outside of this restaurant, this city, this country...and spoiler for 2020, maybe even a little bit outside of this world.

So, come on, pull up your seat, wipe the leaves away from the windows and take a look inside Juliet with us, one last time. Next time we see you, we’ll settle in for one long trip; let’s see where two more years might take us.

This is Everything i Have To Tell You, Joshua Lewin Cook and storyteller; craft as immersive performance.

Aspiring to something… I almost know what at Juliet, etc: Home of Somerville’s Most Unique Dining Experience as well as Juliet Cafe and Romeo’s At Juliet

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twitter: @jlewin @julietunionsq instagram: @jdlewin @julietunionsq www.JulietSomerville.com www.ByJoshuaLewin.com www.OfJuliet.com

SMC has it all: High quality television, internet radio and podcast studios, production equipment, editing suites, and facilities where you can make your media.

Visit somervillemedia.org to sign up for your free orientation today and start your media journey.

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Transformed By The Right Light

By Emilie Goldfinger These photos were not originally part of a series, but they all share qualities that I generally look for in a photograph.

Light and shadow both catch my eye, particularly natural light. I like that feeling of being in the right time and place, when the light falls just so on something that could otherwise be considered pedestrian. An ordinary bench in a crappy train station or an empty intersection can be transformed by the right light, from something banal to something radiant. Wait just a moment longer and the light changes, so you really have to seize the opportunity when it arises.

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photo feature

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I Was Listening

By Joshua Lewin

In the spirit of These Wild Apples, this series turns snippets of conversation from our dining room into stories for everyone to overhear:

Well, irst of all, not that kind of omelette. I’m talking about an omelet. They are a little bit different you know. One can’t exactly mean the other.

I was at Buddy’s the other day and Chris says he took off. He’s an artist now.

This again, really? We’re talking about the diner, so we both know what kind of an omelet we are talking about here, okay, let’s just let this rest already. Omelet, omelet. Omelet. Omelet. It’s always this omelet thing with you. It’s just the way I pronounce it, okay? An omelet. Got it.

That explains a lot actually.

Explains what exactly?

Chris and him had this argument the other day, I was there for breakfast.

So, what’s different about that? An argument at the diner over breakfast. Sounds like every day but Monday.

Well, it’s important. If we can’t understand what we are talking about to begin with, there’s no way we’ll see the end of this thing. There’s an omelette, and there’s an omelet. And it is not the same thing.

Alright, good. Got it. So what happened next?

Well, no you’re wrong about that, and apparently you aren’t paying much attention lately. Because the diner is open on Mondays. So an argument over breakfast, sounds like any old day, not just any day but Monday anymore. But this one was different. Buddy wasn’t making any sense, and then suddenly he was making nothing but sense.

The whole thing just made sense, man.

Now you’re not making any sense.

Right, I know, but let me try to explain.

So there I am, waiting for an omelet.

What kind of an omelette?

So I’m waiting for an omelet.

What kind of an omelet?

Well, a Denver, I guess. Does it matter?

After all that, suddenly it doesn’t matter? You’re just going to sit here and do all that with the omelet thing and now it doesn’t matter what kind it is? So who says what matters? I’m still waiting for you to make any sense.

Listen. Okay. You’ll see. So I’m waiting for an omelet, a Denver omelet, for sure. And Chris just spills coffee all over the counter. His shirt’s all untucked, and this is like 1:30, so he’s been there

since, I dunno, 5:30 AM and he’s thinking about going home, probably got a roast beef sandwich waiting for him or something and he just starts mopping at all that coffee with a towel, it’s dripping all over the loors, the counters, there’s probably, what, ice back there for water? And it’s just dripping all over that and he’s got that smile on his face, you know?

I’ve never seen Chris smile.

Well, no, ine, I don’t mean like, you know, what Chris looks like when he smiles, but like anyone who’s about to head home and eat a roast beef sandwich, at 2:00 in the afternoon, maybe crack a beer, after working since the sun was still down, like that kind of a smile, you know what that smile looks like?

they all swirl up and I look down and there’s Chris’s face, 2:00 smile and all, cooking up on the grill!

Like, in the eggs?

Yes, in the eggs. Looks just like him. Scruffy beard.

Pot leaf necklace. And that smile. That 2:00 smile like you’ve never seen. And he just starts shouting at Buddy: So you’re an artist now? Didn’t know you had it in ya. Get the fuck out of here before it’s too late will ya!

And he’s laughing and the smile is just getting bigger and bigger, on his face, and the smile on the eggs too. it was nuts.

How was the omelet?

Never got it.

Sure. Yea. Damn.

So Buddy just loses it, right. Shuts down the grill.

The griddle. He’s shouting: What the hell is wrong with you!? Gotta keep this place looking like place worth eating out of! And Chris is like: Man, we’re out of here, there’s no one here, it’s just a diner, what the hell? And Buddy’s like: It is a diner, but it’s never just anything, man. You gotta keep up appearances. Or else we might as well just do this!

And he kicks over the trash. Bread wrappers, like those plastic bags and those little plastic tags with the teeth on them, they just go lying up in the air like they were sitting there waiting for the chance to escape, and all those omelets there on the griddle they just kind of all roll together and I swear

Honestly, I don’t think I’ll have another omelet for a while. But Hell on Earth it was worth it.

How’s Chris?

What time is it?

About two.

Oh, he’s good. I’m sure of that. Buddy though… we’ll see. •

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From “Contre une maison sèche” La Nu Perdu, René Char 1978 Translated by Claire Cheney Espace couleur de pomme. Espace, brûlant comptier.

Aujourd’hui est un fauve. Demain verra son bond. *** Space the color of apples. Space, a laming dessert.

Today is a deer. Tomorrow will see its leap.

By Samantha Mangino

T

here is a breathtaking moment around the irst apple of fall. The apple pulled down from an orchard, somewhere in New England. A strong bite is needed despite the soft lesh because the fruit is held irm by its fresh juice. These are the apples we know to be true in our New England neighborhoods, but swing over to Normandy on the Northwest coast of France, and you’ll meet a new kind of apple. Small, hard and just like the ones you found in your grandmother’s backyard that were sour, mealy, and gave you a crippling stomach ache. Those apples are different – wild – and the pride of Normandy.

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Sitting along the English Channel, Normandy ills with guests visiting the shoreline in the summer. Visitors come to pay respect to fallen war heroes, or to see the monastery on Mont-Saint-Michel. All along the coast are bustling beach towns with resorts featuring casinos and racetracks.

However, the traditions of Normandy lourish in the colder months when rustic cuisine comforts food-loving souls through Autumn.

The key to Norman cuisine lives in their apples and chicken. Harvested and produced in the area, the people of Normandy don’t need to travel far for their ingredients. There’s a reason that as Julia Child introduces Americans to French cuisine in Mastering The Art Of French Cooking,

the dish representing the region is Poulet Rôti à la Normande. Child’s Roasted Chicken of Normandy is illed with stufing and topped with a rich creamy sauce – a perfect dish to be made on a brisk evening in Autumn.

In fact, the most inluential meal that sparked Julia Child’s senses and awaken her passion for French cuisine happened in Normandy.

After irst settling in France, Julia and her husband Paul traveled to Rouen to dine at the restaurant La Couronne. Their waiter detailed where the chicken they would dine on was raised and who raised it.

Immediately, Child found the personal nature of the cuisine. Knowing where your food comes from, the farm to table trend we’ve seen in contempo-

I threw small apples down into the road from the top of a hill we called Orchard. You might have been riding in a car that drove over one but you wouldn’t know.

I am still throwing them now and their sound striking the street makes a rhythm with the leaves that crinkle under sandaled feet into soft dirt and woodland spores and also the ladder rungs that thump under booted ones. Did you know that some apple trees around here used to be tall like redwood giants? Now most of them are small enough to climb quickly, easily picked clean.

Where there are evergreen forests just north of here, not very long ago there were bare mountains sheathed in wool. Where the piou-piou of luffy white chicks matures into the cot-cot cot-cot-codet of red feathered rangers, a new dream of freedom was shot from a cannon that tore a tunnel between here and everywhere. And all of this could be from so far away, but isn’t it better, or at least just as good, that it is all from right here; this small letter, these giants towering over the excommunication of short-legged sheep, these children hiding in branches; following the falling death of the apples like so many colors of lowers.

-From the menu, Les Pommes Sauvages, at Juliet

rary food culture, was just a natural part of French cuisine and especially in Normandy when the chicken being served came from the town over.

The people of Normandy are not the hunter-gatherer type but rather have cultivated a harvest that is naturally local with a gentle heartiness. In the low valleys of the region, the open pastoral land is perfect for raising livestock such as poultry and gamey meats like rabbit and lamb. The traditions are old and show resistance to the industrialization, allowing longevity and authenticity to remain in place.

When thinking of good food, a plate of rainbow colored produce comes to mind,but don’t

be hesitant or wary of what Normandy has to offer. That’s because those colors live in the landscape of hills, overlooking oceans one way and acres of orchards in the other. The food itself, chicken, cider, and cheese are vibrant in texture.

Look instead to the incredible silky interior of a Camembert, a native cheese to the region, or a moist, roast chicken draped in a creamy, stock reduction.

Giving life to Normandy and speciically Calvados, are the apple orchards at the center of the Norman cider-making tradition.

Calvados is the namesake region to the apple and pear brandy liqueur still being made there. The cider of France (or sydre if you will in Old

French) doesn’t pull as much attention as wine is typically the country’s beverage of choice. Cider in Normandy is carefully crafted through generations of producers who still use methods à la ancienne, putting to shame the mass-produced alcoholic cider we’re familiar with in the United States.

While beer and cider will often get paired on American beverage menus, don’t be confused – the cider making process is parallel to wine production. Just like grapes, apples are pressed and crushed to yield juice that will then go through the fermentation process. The apples used to produce cider will be those small, dense fruits you wouldn’t want to eat. Since no one wants to bite into their astringent lesh, the fruit can follow its path to become outstanding ciders with tannic, complex, and unique lavors.

The best part of the cider process is taking the inal product and pairing it with a meal or even incorporating it into the preparation.

Some cider gets moved along to Calvados-distilling process.

Taking the dry cider, distilling it down and allowing the product to age for at least two years in oak barrels creates a smooth inal product to be enjoyed anytime of day. Calvados will be poured as an aperitif in the afternoon alongside light snacks or in-between courses of a long meal to arouse the appetite.

There are no strict rules besides enjoying the Calvados as you please.

In Normandy, it is most important to simply enjoy the product, which has been crafted so carefully and with respect to tradition.

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In so many ways, Normandy feels delightfully stuck in time.. With landmarks of battles, and architecture of a quaint village from the Middle Ages, it’s hard to believe that time has passed there. The respect to old traditions is found through the cuisine itself.

Normandy has the fortune of being by the sea while having the land to grow fresh fruits and raise livestock that will be served locally. The Norman can see what they have in front of them and how to use that to produce the best of their cuisine. At the irst bite of a fall apple, they know it would never be the best apple for a snack, but it will indeed be the best ingredient for their cider. •

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...we hold these myths to be true… that which we hadn’t asked for

By Joshua Lewin One year, to celebrate a birthday, we took a trip to New York City. As we often do; or at least, as we often have since. When we go now, we generally drive, out of—I suppose—some false sense of the freedom and lexibility that driving offers in the cities at either end of the trip. This fragile sense is quickly dashed with a wrong turn, or a chewed up street, feeding into the solid cliff face of intersectional trafic.

Parking, though, is rarely an issue. At least, not for us. She is very good at parking. And despite a general disafinity for rising earlier than need, rising early in New York for the express purpose of moving a car from one side of the street to the other—and then back again—is a chore she takes on with seeming pleasure; looking the part of the New Yorker that she is, somewhere deep within her core, buried, but not forgotten.

I suppose the other reason we drive is because, these days, we are always at work of some kind. We often have that car packed with the obligatory stuff that might need carrying to, or carrying back. And we might need to reserve the option to cut short, and return; laden with stuff, or not.

But on that day, that year, we were on the bus.

The bus is cheap, and not as unreliable as the word sounds. And it is a great place to discover new things. Or old things. Or things that aren’t new, or old, just things that you wouldn’t have otherwise looked for, or noticed.

Later that night, after the bus had returned back where it had come from, we ate at a very special little restaurant. This would prove to be one of our favorite of the more expensive restaurants we occasionally make the time, and reserve the budget, to visit. A great restaurant (and they are not all so great, the expensive ones), where we ate things that surprised and delighted us; things that got us thinking.

And we left with one pocket full of one pretty oyster shell—after the cooks had shared with us a bite of their own after work snack, as we closed the place down.

That was a great experience, but not the one this story is actually about. This story is actually about what happened between the bus ride, and that restaurant. This is a story about a place called BunKer.

BunKer is bigger, now, than it was then, which we are very happy to see. The BunKer of this story was small. Tiny. A place that disappeared on the map as we made our way to it; a place that was hard to ind.

To get there, we had to ride a train as far as it would go. As far as it would go, in this case, was not even too near to where we needed to get. So we walked.

It was dark, and it was cold; the kind of city 5pm that reminds you why you could never live in New York year round; that you aren’t that kind of resilient.

It was the crushing dark and cold that leaves you dreaming of weather breaks and happy hours, and forces you to pull thick wool hats down close to your eyes; the kind of hats we forgot to bring—or rather, hadn’t planned on needing.

We walked. We walked past boarded up industrial buildings, and we walked past an unexplained, and unattended, ire safely smoldering in a parking lot.

We walked past things—things tinted drab and pale in the kind of sucked out twilight of a city dying to chew you up and spit you out like clean bone.

We walked in search of something—a promise from a magazine rescued from a destiny of forgotten and unintentionally bent pages, because of the boredom of a bus.

We walked until we got there. Getting there happened about ten minutes after it had inally seemed unlikely to happen at all. Getting there itself became a treat and a surprise. And even then, we waited; we waited for one of about 8 tables, and then one was ours.

We ate—noodles, and rolls, and something else I’m sure, but most importantly we ate Banh Xeo. A dish I occasionally do my best (getting better) to recreate in homage to [our] original.

We drank—artichoke tea. We remembered to look, and be willing to notice that which we hadn’t asked for, and we remembered to be ready to discover, and to share, what we uncovered.. • Places mentioned Ko. 8 Extra Pl, New York, NY 10003 Bunker. 99 Scott Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237

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It’s All Complementary Tonight

By Nina Coomes

I meet Katrina and Josh for dinner on a summer evening. It’s a weeknight in the South End, the sky streaked with pink and mottled with clouds. The street is uncluttered, dotted only with the occasional dog-walker or relaxed grocery store-goer.

I, however, am pacing back and forth in front of our agreed upon restaurant, checking the time on my phone though I’ve arrived a half hour early. It’s the irst time I’ve spent any time with Josh or Katrina outside of Juliet, and I’m suddenly nervous. What do restaurateurs eat, anyway? Do they have special, secret food-industry tasting skills that I, a mere civilian, will have no hope of understanding? What if I expose myself for the total amateur and novice that I am?

Eventually, I see Katrina and Josh walking up the block toward me, and I do my best to table my nerves. We exchange greetings, I admire their off-duty outits (for those interested, Katrina is wearing a sleek jumpsuit and Josh is wearing suspenders), and then we are ushered inside the cavernous steakhouse, bass-heavy music pulsating over speakers. At our table, I announce that I intend to eat and drink whatever they eat or drink, and so Katrina orders a round of martinis to start. (To this, I internally grimace, as my only martini up to this point was one very bad vodka martini at the bar in an Indi-

an restaurant in Chicago’s inancial district.)

Our waiter lists the house specials, and I begin doing what I always do when nervous, which is to incessantly rattle off facts. This time, I begin to talk about the proper usage of the word Wagyu when describing certain steaks. The discussion of proper labels continues, Josh comparing Wagyu and Kobe beef to the stringent rules surrounding wine.

“The issue of labeling and expectations of a label is something related to wine but also in this context--,” Katrina adds, only to be cut off by the arrival of the martinis.

The waiter explains his gin choice (Plymouth), why he chose it (“Lovely, succulently lavored”), and places a small plate of green olives and lemon peels on the table (“My personal preference with it is a lemon twist, it’s very complementary.”) Katrina takes a slip of lemon, rubbing it along the rim of her martini glass, dropping it into the cocktail, a cloudy plume of citrus following its wake. Josh does the same, and I copy both of them carefully.

(As an aside, this martini is so refreshing that I let go of my previously held martini aversion and become a staunch martini convert.)

“Josh only began liking olives six years ago,” Katrina notes, the dejected pile of olives glistening sadly on our plate of garnishes. Josh chimes in, “I couldn’t put an olive past my lips without it going

badly. Not all olives were created equally.

The problem with me and olives was the canned olives of my youth. The squeaky things that are on pizzas, that my sister would put on her ingers.” He grimaces, as if seeing the wiggling black-olive capped digits of his sister in front of his face.

“Works out great for me because I love all olives,” Katrina smiles. I smile along with them and express my surprise--I didn’t expect restauarant people to have foods they didn’t like. I feel myself relax a little as I ask if Katrina has similar food aversions.

A sheepish look crosses Katrina’s face. “Well, I, it’s more like, there’s only really one, that I hate to the point that I will not eat and if someone serves me I will reject, which is yellow papaya.” She clariies that she does, however, eat green papaya.

As if bolstered by the admission, she lists more foods she dislikes: “If left to my own devices, I’d never eat a bean unless I had to.

Like the dense dry bean. I like refried beans, a white bean sometimes.” Josh interjects, “she deinitely doesn’t mean green beans.”

In joking defense, she clariies, “I appreciate their use from a professional standpoint, but I like wet food so when beans are not a part of a soup or made into a dip of some kind they’re just too dry.” She talks about childhood aversions to crackers, pasta, and

bread, which may be explained by a gluten intolerance diagnosed later in life. Slowly, I notice that my nervousness has dissipated, and our talk turns to steakhouses, or more precisely, the winter transformation of Juliet into its own interpretation of the steakhouse.

“We have a new school steak house.

Ours is so new school that it only exists ive weeks a year!” Josh jokes. “But our new school steak house is trying to recreate an old school steak house that doesn’t exist anymore,” Katrina adds just as the waiter returns to take our irst order for appetizers. Josh orders six oysters, three shrimp, and a bowl of mussels, and after the waiter retreats, turns to Katrina and points to an item on the menu. “What do you think makes an iceberg [lettuce salad] equatorial?” Katrina raises an eyebrow, reading the description, “Well, irst of all what’s the walnut doing there?” Her eyes crinkle in a smile, “Oh, I guess that’s the other thing I don’t like.” Across the table, Josh offers conspiratorially, “Neither of us like walnuts.”

An easy, teasing rapport settles over the table. Though I’ve spoken to Josh and Katrina individually about the other, when seated together this way, the overwhelming impression is that of a team, of two people whose sense of humor and hospitality line up to offer the lighthearted generosity char-

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acteristic of Juliet. Josh and Katrina clearly share a common vocabulary of experience, memory, and joy. When complimentary popovers are delivered to our table, they reminisce about previous steakhouses they’ve visited before (“Where was it, oh yeah! The House of Prime Rib “ “San Francisco!”

“Where the meal came with Yorkshire pudding.”

“They come and carve your steaks and they come out to your table.”) After ordering our various steaks and sides in friendly harmony (“The Food & Wine steak, as featured on the cover”, “The hanger steak” “Creamed corn” “He means creamed spinach,” “twice baked potatoes” “and maybe the mushrooms?”), the conversation turns to Katrina’s favorite movie, The Thin Man, a classic American comedy made in 1934, which Josh and Katrina now show on New Years Eve at Juliet. On Halloween, they show The Witches, a 1990 ilm adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s book by the same name, starring Anjelica Huston. “Maybe this year we’ll make it our irst one night only Roald Dahl dinner,” Josh posits. The idea loats across the table, luminous and almost tangible, another possible transformation of their beloved Juliet, buoyed by their imaginations working in tandem.

In the spirit of Juliet’s many forms, I ask the pair something that has been on my mind the whole evening. Why a steakhouse? Steakhouses, while in their modern form are technically accessible to the public, were initially conceived of as male-only establishments meant for consuming large quantities of beef. Juliet, on the other hand, makes no secret of its hope to invite all people to the table. Even aesthetically

it seems incongruous--steakhouses bring to mind leather and dark oak, business deals being negotiated in smoky corners, while Juliet is a lightilled jewel box with walls painted a stark white.

To this Josh replies, “Not during steakhouse!,” Katrina explaining “I do some fake wood paneling.” Josh continues “Juliet steakhouse has a couple of tag lines: a dream for me and too, for you. And the marketing behind it is that we don’t do this often, but for these ive weeks, come celebrate in a style we’re not used to. Because it’s the holiday time, it’s winter, it’s cold, it’s Boston. It comes close to both of our birthdays.” He pauses, amending, “we don’t want to be overly winter holiday oriented, whether its Christmas or Hanukkah, but we also want to create a blank slate space to celebrate. The steakhouse provides that, a place where people go to revel. Maybe not always for all people, to all people, but bringing something like that to all people is what Juliet is about.” A thoughtful look on her face, Katrina adds that on a culinary level, Juliet’s steakhouse serves classic steakhouse food with Josh’s spin.

This sort of food “brings a sort of nostalgia to people, which is certainly what I like about the steakhouse.” On the question of steakhouses and their dubious history she admits, “It was a different time, and I sort of struggle with any time I love any element of formality or reinery. It’s not hard to trace how those things became that way, and how you offer that kind of opulence and service. It wasn’t a profession, those were servants.”

(Our steaks arrive, and for a moment, distracted by the glistening cuts of beef on the table, our conversation turns to meat. At Juliet’s Steak-

house, Josh tells me that “all the steaks are cut from a cut of meat which you didn’t hear about tonight, called the chuck roll.” According to Josh, the chuck roll is mostly used for hamburger, and sausage, and is rarely given the time or attention needed to carve the steaks in the cut of meat. Since butcher shops don’t carry this particular steak, last year, he tells me Katrina did all the butchering. This year, Katrina and Josh are hoping to try to teach their staff to butcher the steaks instead.)

After this interlude, our discussion returns to the question of steakhouses. Josh sets his fork down, saying “For six weeks we’ve taken a thing that in American history has problematic ties, this poor economic situation where only rich people can play. It’s all low paid labor and half the cow that’s never going to be seen and hungry people two blocks away. For a while, women didn’t get to play. People of a certain economic status didn’t get to play. The whole thing was predicated on this wasteful economic situation where not only were certain classes of people excluded at the front door but everyone inside was wasting 90 cents on the dollar on top of it.” He takes a breath. “At Juliet, we would never afford to be able to have a steakhouse. We can barely afford Juliet as we envision it. It’s a very surprising situation where we take what little we have and we’re going to operate it and use it, and we’re going to state our values, but we really don’t have much here. But for six weeks leading up to the new year, we, Juliet, get to have this opulent steak house that everyone is invited to” He stresses the word “everyone,” the heat building in his speech beginning to cool. “And we slow down and we celebrate,

we revel in a way we don’t normally, and we don’t think we’d want to or would be economically viable all year long. It’s a dream, we can’t afford this, here we are, here we have it. For a little while, we get to have all of this with you, all of you.”

Katrina joins in, “Something that I really like about the scale and the intentional shift of menus at Juliet is that while parts of me want to standardize things, the great thing is we get this platform to talk about the why behind stuff. We haven’t had that question, or that inquiry from a guest yet---the history of the steak house. But we have the ability to talk about those kinds of issues and say, I as a female could not have owned a steakhouse except if I had inherited it. But here we are, we’re doing something very different.” At Juliet’s Steakhouse, Katrina envisions that “everyone is partaking in the same kind of joy and experience which is harder to ind now, as there are just more restaurants, and people go out more often. That’s a positive trend, but I think that to me, the Juliet steakhouse is hearkening back to a time when eating out was a different kind of experience.”

The night mellows and stretches around us. Dinner unwinds from one hour, to two, to three, conversation lolling and meandering. By the end of the meal, the dream of Juliet’s Steakhouse is almost an apparition, infectious and catching. In my mind’s eye, I can see the paper oak paneling put up

by Katrina, Josh busy behind the counter, spooning comfort and nostalgia for guests. Though it is August outside, at our table it is December; the particular rosy joy of eating a rich dinner while a winter wind howls outside laring around us.•

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Stirred, Up

By Jesse Buchter

There’s really only one cocktail that opens bar

patrons up to an interrogation. Gin or vodka? Dry or wet? Dirty? Olives or twist? Shaken or stirred? There are nearly an ininite number of ways to make a Martini and still call it such. Set aside the classic variations – Martinez, Gibson, Vesper – and deinitely set aside all of the modern variations – Espresso Martini, Appletini, or whatever fruit, confection, or lowerbased concoction someone decided to chill, serve up, and call a martini. Even then, you’re still dealing with a nearly ininite matrix of ratios, spirits, and garnishes. So, what exactly is a Martini?

Before opening myself up to criticism from cocktail enthusiasts and bar aicionados, I should clarify that I am not qualiied to, nor will I try to rewrite the martini taxonomy here. However, I think that bartenders like myself and patrons alike could all beneit from a parsing down of the varied deinitions and clouded history of this cocktail.

At its core, a martini is gin and vermouth, chilled, and served up in a stemmed glass without ice. The drink’s exact origins are about as ambiguous and disputed as its recipe, and probably best left to cocktail historians. Early martini recipes date back to the late 19th and early 20th century and often included a couple of dashes of bitters (usually orange bitters) or even a splash of orange liqueur such as curuçao. Gin and vermouth were rarely substituted for. However, what was, and continues to be, highly debated is the ratio of gin to vermouth. Early recipes tend to call for between two and three parts gin to one part vermouth. Some recipes even call for a one to one ratio, which later became known as a Fifty-Fifty Martini. Over time palettes favored drier cocktails with less vermouth. Thus the ever-popular

Dry Martini was born, typically using around a six to one ratio. It wasn’t until the 80s and 90s that the Vodka Martini came into vogue followed by its sweeter, twice-removed cousins like the Appletini, Chocolate Martini, and many, many more.

As a result of this century-long game of martini telephone, just about every bartender has a different idea of what to make when someone orders a Martini without further speciication. For me, it’s a three to one ratio of gin to dry vermouth– perhaps out of reverence for the classics, or perhaps because I just prefer gin and a bit more vermouth. For many, it’s a dry vodka Martini, because throughout much of the 80s and until very recently, that was arguably the dominant preference of Martini drinkers in the U.S. While not quite as common, there is also the option to “dirty” your vodka or gin martini with a splash of olive brine, resulting in a salty, savory, and equally potent drink (my personal favorite). Further, you have a choice of garnish, the standard options being olives or a twist of lemon for a cleaner, brighter version. Lastly, there is the renowned question of whether this cocktail should be shaken or stirred.

While 007 may have swayed the public towards having their martinis shaken, many cocktail buffs advocate for the stirred version. This results in a silkier consistency and a crystal-clear presentation with no shards of ice loating about on the surface.

Shaken, stirred, or something else altogether, the goal is to get a drink that you enjoy. If you’d prefer a big, icey glass of vodka or a gloriied, spiked chocolate milk, then you deserve one judgementfree, but to call either a martini is a bit more dubious. I’d prefer to leave the classic be. Gin or vodka, at least a splash of vermouth, and served cold. Very cold. •

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Hung out To Dry

Juliet’s border melting Feast of the Seven Fishes

By Joshua Lewin

the open kitchen, framing the stage collection of copper pots and pans.

Katrina has collected them for me . A number om right down the e is a 6” saute pan that I oll myself up e is also a 10” saue has seen a scallop or two before inding its place on our wall. Those both came from an antiques “mall” right down the estaurant in a corner ee cities come to. Four stories plus a basement e is a little corner of the top loor that always yields good inds. Back to back up there e stalls selling some of my favorite , cooking tools; and some of Katrina’s: antique light ixtures, and other building materials ee cities meet there. Or nearly meet. Boston, Cambridge, and

ours, Somerville. Somerville is wher she hung those pots on the wall. I sometimes climb up there to parade them around the room in front of guests from one of those cities. A lot of them probably drive by that little mall on their way to see us for dinner. I’m not supposed to know they came from that mall. They were birthday presents. I don’t remember how I know, but I do.

There is a small brazier. It’s actually a traditional bain-marie —something like a double boiler— but I can’t imagine the last time it was used that way. She found it for me at one of our favorite stops in Manhattan, Bonnie Slotnick’s used bookstore.

Bonnie used to be in the West Village, but now she is in my favorite part of town, the East Village. I used to visit a friend who kept long hours working at Picholine (RIP) and I was left to wander the East Village on my own. Leaving it to be the only part of any burrough of that outrageous city that I really feel comfortable navigating. I can feel at home

there, for a while.

We like to be there. We like to eat and drink there. We’ve even cooked there. Jimmy’s No. 43, a little beer bar on 7th hosted Katrina and me as we produced a Persian New Year event across multiple cities. That was a real coming out night for us on the road to building our company...on our own in New York City: after hours at Veselka, or even better the sorely missed Pommes Frites (which was destroyed in an explosion almost a year to the day after we cooked in that building, but has since been reinvented in a new spot in Greenwich Village), what had once been our annual pilgrimage, to Prune.

Oh Prune. Gabrielle Hamilton is at once my favorite cook, writer, and role model for how to sustain a traditionally tenuous business amid the development and hype of the city. Look, I can’t yet square her choice to partner with Ken Friedman at the Spotted Pig though. I’ve tried, and I can’t. Some things simply need to end.

Some traditions, too. That doesn’t take away from what they offered us, when we needed them. Once I leave Somerville, and move to a spot on the ocean, I hope we still ind regular time to walk around in the East Village. And I’m glad Bonnie Slotnick is there now. And I love my bain-marie that she sold us for $20.

There are a few pots from France. She brought them home for me. A small saucier from Paris that I can only assume has been used to monte au beurre — painstakingly combine cold butter with simmering liquid to become an impossible sauce — many ounces of wine for inishing fancy French restaurant plates. And there is a wide, lat pan traditionally used to cook socca.

Socca is a specialty of Nice, a sort of chickpea lour crêpe cooked on a copper pan in a wood ired oven. Traditionally seasoned with only salt and pepper, I prefer mine drizzled with a bit of vinegar and plenty of good olive oil. I also prefer mine made with chicken stock, the way one farmers market vendor in the village made hers.

On another wall, I have a few copper cooking tools that Katrina didn’t buy me. One is my irst copper pot; a sugar pot. A former employer kind of left it sitting unused for a very long time and I eventually brought it home. I love that pot. For years, I used it to boil water for coffee at home. I never ate at home then. Now it sits on s bookshelf under the kitchen clock. I love having it in the kitchen, but it doesn’t belong with Katrina’s gifts. Inside that pot sits a traditional square copper pan used for making tamagoyaki — or as we call it when it sees the menu at Juliet, Japanese rolled omelette.

That last one is the only of our copper that has actually been used at Juliet. We do all of our cooking on induction ranges — a type of electric range that uses a magnet to transfer heat very eficiently

The below poem, an original by Claire Cheney, opens with a plunge into the feeling and possibilities of one single, potentially mundane, color; a color that changes and delivers new sensations of heat and cold, hard slaps and deadly wet hugs, rapture in reverse, and fear of the ultimate unknown. Blue. Claire’s work appears again later in the magazine, this time a translation, delivering a much quicker dose of the use of color to transcend the need to understand, making room for simple, rapid, extra-sensory experience.

Gentian

By Claire Cheney

let me guide myself with the blue, forked touch of this lower down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness.

— D.H. Lawerence

Not the yellow smirk of hyssop nor the bright breath still pressed in the lungs of Umberto Pelizzari as he plunged salt-deep two-hundred thirty-six feet.

Blue to pleat shadows pull and engulf the gleams in laming skirts.

Umbrella of sea-weight over the Mariana trench— blueness darkening, blazing down through an echo rock-dark, words don’t come out, but pass away sinking dark-blue to dwell on the abyssal plain.

Hanging our heads tongued and lickering like cepheids we blue lowers are lost to the dark red shift, family of bitterness.

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directly to the cooking vessel— which is a wonderful technology, but not compatible with copper. I used to insist that our pastry chef make the morning tamagoyaki in this pan, using a steel adapter, in some misguided sort of traditionalism.

That adapter eventually warped and became a momentary projectile when an air bubble forced some sort of pressure inconveniently straight through it. There is a dent in the wall, mostly out of sight. No one was hurt. Now we just use any of our other well loved, and well used, omelette pans, and through a bit of professional cooking ingenuity manage to get the same results. The square pan has happily claimed a place in our display collection. The square omelette has been immortalized as an option on our prix ixe menus (if you know to ask).

About six months after we opened Juliet we sat down after a busy Monday holiday brunch service to read our review in The Boston Globe. We covered the table in baking paper and laid out fried oysters and a few beers to share.

That review includes some of my favorite lines so far written about our little restaurant. It’s headline: “Union Square restaurant Juliet is a Jewel Box Filled With Surprises”, sent expectant chills down my spine.

A lot of praise followed. Really beautiful praise. A hell of a lot of validation for what had so far seemed like impossible effort. The writing inished with lines like [he watches, she’s a gazelle] and ended with [In the ilm they’ll play themselves] But right smack in the middle of all that is an anecdote about dinner. A dinner which the reviewer loved. Adored. Probably fantasizes about when eat-

ing some other dinner. It was a meal in ive courses, headlined by a whole branzino roasted with olives and lemons, and potato mille-feuille — a painstaking process of a potato gratin- served on “an aluminum pizza tray.”

Oh dear god no. Aluminum. Pizza. Tray.

That “aluminum pizza tray” was the most expensive little piece of copper we own. The socca tray from Nice. We spent most of an afternoon tracking it down. Katrina insisted I have it. It’s my favorite piece in our collection. I can tell you everything about the day we procured it. I run through the details of that day each time I hoist myself up onto the precarious corner of our prep sink, and hold on to the hot side of the oven for balance to grab it down and parade it out in front of only our most valued guests. Guests like our parents, and former employees, and anybody who lets it slip it’s their birthday, and the young children of our friends and neighbors. Oh, and supposed to be incognito former editors of The Boston Globe here to decide our stars. Them too.

Well, in the ilm we will play ourselves, sure.

And Katrina is easily reinvented as a gazelle. And I do have my eye on you. Not because I’m worried about something going wrong but because it still catches me by surprise when I look up and see the room full, of staff and guests, taking the time to pursue something, with us. What that something is, is a little different for everyone, but here we are, playing our role in it. And don’t look now but that might be a socca pan you are eating off of; and if it is, you can be sure someone accepted some risk in climbing up running it down off the wall for you, and it wasn’t an accident. •

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Dillard’s Eclipse Joshua Lewin Rearranged from Annie Dillard’s essay, Total Eclipse

It had been like dying, like the death of someone irrational sliding down into the region of dread. like slipping down that hole in sleep from which you wake yourself whimpering. we were in a strange place gathered on hilltops to pray for the world on its last day. we had all crawled out of spaceships and were preparing to assault the valley below.

It was odd that such a well advertised public event should have no starting gun, no overture, no introductory speaker. I was out of my depth.

What you see is much more convincing than any wild-eyed theory you may know. is entirely different from what you know. What you see in an eclipse… blackbirds do ly back to their roosts The grass at our feet was wild barley.That is how he used to look then.

We had all started down a chute of time. There was no stopping it. We were in a lost platinum print, a dead artist’s version of life. the sun was missing; God save our life. towns and orchards in the valley to the south were dissolving into the blue light. Only the thin river held a trickle of sun. and that was the last sane moment I remember. I missed my own century, the people I knew, and the real light of day.

Screams. Sun detaching. A lid. Brain slammed hatch lens-cover eyes dried arteries drained lungs hushed. No world.

The world’s dead people, forgetful of almost everything, recall us to our former selves. We got the light wrong.

I have never seen the moon yet It did not look like a dragon, although it looked more like a dragon than the moon. It materialized out of thin air-- like a mushroom cloud, it obliterated meaning itself. if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you ind what our sciences cannot locate or name. teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. This is all I have to tell you.•

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Singular Focus

By William Deeks

When I met Judy on a warm August afternoon, she had a compact Jansport backpack that is subtly thinner than the normal model. Upon asking her about it, she tells me that it got her through all of college. For all its years of use, it is remarkably clean and maintained.

“I like to keep my things clean, organized, and compact.”

Born in Taiwan and arriving in the United States at age 14 for high school, Judy continued on to Wellesley College to major in political science. A proclivity to work with her hands coincided with an observation that she found herself constantly looking forward to breaks from study when she would cook with, and for, her schoolmates and friends. After graduation from Wellesley, she began working at Clover Food Lab in Kendall Square, moving from fry cook to assistant manager in a year.

From Clover, she enlisted as a butcher’s apprentice under Chris Walker at Savenor’s Butcher Shop in Cambridge. There she spent two years learning the ins and outs of breaking down animals. From stocks and soups to chuck roast and ilet mignon, she put her head down and opened up her ears.

”

FOR ME, RIGHT NOW, I AM NOT AS FOCUSED ON THE END GOAL AS MUCH AS I AM FOCUSED ON WHAT I CAN LEARN.”

“I spent one month straight just doing stocks. From there, Chris showed me the process of the chuck and then said, ‘here is the chuck’- and had me do it everyday after that, so it was all about learning from repetition.”

Chris turned into a valuable teacher for Judy. Helping her realize her goals based around learning.

“Chris would ask me, ‘what’s on your list? What do you want to learn?’ I was very grateful to be in an environment like that.”

All of that repetition and focus has paid off. Working with Chris, she helped Juliet in launching its Steakhouse menu that is gearing up for its second year, and was a favorite of irst time diners and neighborhood regulars.

Judy taught a class to the Juliet staff in how to break down chuck shoulder this past summer. In watching her teach, one can witness her approach to the craft of butchering and cooking. She moves with both purpose and care, and no single moment- or piece of the animal- is wasted.

After Savenor’s, the journey continues in the world of food for Judy.

She has taken a position with the Somerville Arts Council in their Nibble entrepreneurship program.

At Nibble, Judy is working with immigrants to effectively launch their own food business. For her, this has meant enrolling in business classes and overseeing the development of her clients projects from both a culinary and a inancial standpoint.

Butchering at Savenor’s taught her about food costing and about learning as you make progress, which are essential elements to aiding with the launch of a food business.

Her dedication to learning and purpose driven cooking has lead her to see food in a more humble way than much of the contemporary culinary climate. When asked about a recent Boston Globe article presenting the question of why Boston restaurants don’t win awards, she says, “That kind of article is self defeating. There are amazing restaurants in Boston, but they aren’t always the hip restaurants who would have potential for awards that are overblown. The public just wants good food, and good food doesn’t have to be so expensive and out of reach for them.”

The article also fails to mention that Boston restaurants do win awards, and that Judy herself was nomi-

nated as one of the yearly EATER Young Guns, a national award drawing attention to young folks making strides in the food industry.

Judy continues, “Restaurants want to make something look, sound, and cost like more than it needs to be. When that happens too much, food becomes inaccessible.”

When we touch on the future, Judy has no plans set in stone. With someone like Judy this doesn’t mean a lack of focus. “For me, right now, I am not as focused on the end goal as much as I am focused on what I can learn.”

Someday she may want to open a dumpling house in Wellesley where she went to school. She would like to bring a more traditional experience of Taiwanese cooking to the students there. A restaurant where people could both learn about food and enjoy a simple meal. She also speaks of potentially using the recipes her grandmother cooked for her back in Taiwan. “With those recipes, there is nothing written down that I can work from. So I have to remember the lavor and work backwards.” A challenge, for sure, but also just another point of focus, or thing waiting to be learned, for Judy. •

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Inside The Reporter’s Kitchen

By Samantha Mangino Moving into her Upper West Side apartment after graduating from Vassar, Jane Kramer didn’t have many home cooked dishes in her repertoire. She was a writer, not a cook with an English degree, but certainly no experience in a professional kitchen. With some tinned-tuna, she began cooking a Tuna Curry she made on her stove at the same time she began her masters degree at Columbia University. With each new writing assignment she began to work on, she’d begin to work on a new dish in the kitchen. Her writing career began at the same time her home cooking did.

Jane Kramer has been with the New Yorker since 1964 and in her 60 year career, she has explored international affairs in addition to serving as the European correspondent for the publication. In her 2017 collection of essays, The Reporter’s Kitchen, Jane brings together her worlds of cooking and international affairs to tell of the meals she made to combat writer’s block, her deinition of a Thanksgiving meal, and all the people she has met along the way. As a seasoned writer, Kramer approaches all the topics in this collection with a humble curiosity, discovering something new in all her research. Her writing allows the reader to experience the world of food with enthusiastic, bright eyes.

The collection is broken down into proiles of well-known names such as Rene Redzepi, Yotam Ottolenghi, and Naomi Duguid. These are all igures in the culinary world who the home cook may follow on Instagram or have their cookbook, but Kramer’s portrait’s are more intimate than how you may know them already. She delves into their histories starting from childhood to connect the dots of how those experiences inform their current passions – how Redzepi’s years wandering as a teenage chef working under the greats are still in the man who jumps off his bicycle to dive into bushes to forage.

Yet, Kramer’s most compelling work may be in how she situates herself within the research and her humor in relecting on the incorrect assumptions she’s made on the

world. My favorite anecdote is in her story on vegetarian cuisine in the chapter Good Greens. Over the years, at her annual summer chili party in Italy, each year more guests would be digging into the pesto pasta saying they’ve gone vegetarian. But even the meat eaters, whom Kramer thought were showing up for the chili, were digging into the pasta too. Her own experience in cooking for others sparked a curiosity to see just why it seemed everyone she knew was not eating meat. Her own research makes a compelling case for the transition away from meat-focused eating but she rounds it all out by concluding that when hosting a chili party, in Italy for that matter, the Italians will always reach for pasta.

Kramer recognizes that eating food and how we eat it connects nearly all of us but all of our experiences are so deeply personal. I look at Rene Redzepi with a new sort of admiration for the detailed work he has put into Noma rather than the eccentric but innovative chef I follow on Instagram.

And I look to Kramer, an established international journalist with over 60 years experience in the ield, feeling so connected by our pursuit of cooking at home while mulling over our latest writing assignment. Her writing is contagiously energizing for a reader to go out and approach the world of food.

I think of Kramer often while I stand at the stove of my irst apartment and prepare new recipes during my “study breaks.”

As a journalism student in my last semester, the amount of time I spend writing seems excessive. Cooking as inspired by Kramer has created an outlet of productivity I had yet to ind. Serving as a, dare I say, productive form of procrastination. By no means am I a professional cook, and yet I ind clarity while waiting for my unevenly chopped onions to soften. Suddenly I’m looking at my subjects with a different lens and the block is lifted in my writing. Kramer’s writing has in many ways elevated my own experience as a writer and participant of the culinary world.•

In ConveRSATIon Carlos Ponce

by William Deeks

IF you have ever visited Juliet during the week, you have likely seen the backbone of the kitchen, Carlos Ponce

holding down the dish station, and frying tortillas for our brunch favorite, chilaquiles. He is the second longest standing employee at Juliet. I try not to take it personally when he insists my eggs are too runny and cooks his own for family meal. I especially don’t mind because he always has a pack of Bauducco Wafer cookies that he is willing to share. Elvis Reyes was kind enough to sit in on our interview and translate when language became a barrier. I am always happy to ind an excuse to catch up with either of these guys. We spoke over a breakfast family meal in the middle of heavy prep day.

Carlos, the irst day I worked with you, I noticed you had a very natural energy about what you were doing and your worklow. How long have you worked in restaurants?

Three years. I started at a taqueria frying tortillas and washing dishes.Then I found work at Sarma, and Juliet.

How are you spending your days off right now? Enjoying the end of the warm weather before winter takes hold again?

Trying to take it easy. Listening to music. But I am inding time to still play soccer a couple days a week.

What kinds of music do you throw on?

These days mainly reggaeton and rancheras.

how to make my own food, and just learning something different.

How was it growing up for you?

Were you in a city like this?

No, I was outside of the city. I spent most of my time as a kid just playing with my friends, man. Soccer and ishing. It was good.

Learning is such a huge part of it.

Speaking of learning, did you like school? Were you a good student?

(Laughter) Ehh, I was an ok student, but I didn’t like school very much.

So you started as a isherman, now you are a restaurant guy- what is next?

I want to continue in restaurants.

It’s working well right now.

I am deinitely happy to hear that.

What do you like about it?

I just enjoy that I am always learning. Learning how cook for a restaurant, but also picking up on

So what is the goal? Do you have your eyes on being a chef?

(Laughter) No, no. Right now, I think I am happy to just be working towards being a cook.

Thanks for talking with me today man. Before you jump back into work- what is your favorite food right now?

Spanish food, and always Pupusa.

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Faraway Light Reviewing Serpents and Doves

By Joshua Lewin In her latest project, Serpents and Doves, ilmmaker Nellie Kluz of Chicago introduces us to her exploration of the rituals that transport life on Earth from simple existence to the designed experience experienced as humanity. She does this, initially, through a thread of light.

As the ilm opens, Kluz illuminates the smallest detail; a cluster of leaves on a wall, bathed in a ray of sun. The rest of the image is casually set in its natural shadow.

A tone sounds, nearly imperceptibly. It took me three viewings to notice how early the tone truly began.

Throughout a series of still images, actually long takes of the serene, built to suit scenes of life, currently uninhabited by those that built them; the light grows.

As it grows, the tone’s volume increases—maybe itself carried by the light. A sound of birds is introduced. The sound of life. Light and sound pull us forward into our collective questions.

One of the irst lines we hear spoken aloud is about a soundtrack. This soundtrack is the recording that accompanies The Great Passion Play, a charity and community theater project in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The play traces the last moments of the life of Jesus Christ, and in 2018, celebrated its 50th anniversary showing. The play also provides a willing backdrop to Kluz’s

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revelation of humans being human, her examination of found sounds, found light, and found life.

To borrow from one of the subjects in Serpents and Doves, “of course you know…” that the passion play is not unique to the residents of Eureka Springs; churches around the world engage in a similar event, just before the spring holidays with a wide array of production quality. The tradition exists across many Christian denominations, but I have most often encountered it in a fairly evangelical sense. I suppose this should be expected — the rest may be a little bit quieter about it. Where I went to high school, one particular student would even come in selling tickets, at a discount, to the annual event.

Eureka Springs though is at least somewhat unique in the comprehensiveness of their production; the time spent in preparation, the deep traditions that these realities have spurred in its participants, spectators, and hopefuls. And now, through Nellie Kluz, its potential to reach each of us with a message, even if not the oficially approved one.

Kluz invites us to witness the range of emotion and self relection that is made possible as a cast of unlikely dramatists submits to the challenge of not only understanding themselves and their friends, but to understand the motivations of their characters. In some cases these players must struggle, and succeed, to ind the empathy required to set aside their most personal and tightly held beliefs, and give voice to an alternate viewpoint, even if only on stage. One actor goes so far as to express a longing to be the other,”It would be kind of cool to be Pilate, but that’s the wrong side…”

Our lives are illed with rituals.

Invariably, the word evokes images of religious nature. Images that bring comfort to the pious, guilt to the casual believer, and dread to the reluctant, or unwilling...dragged along by some authority, real or imagined. But what of

the unwitting?

The religious rituals that shape our lives by design are planned and obvious. We build structures in which to practice them, and hang signs to draw attention to them, to attract new devotees, and to mark the trail home for the displaced. Are all of our rituals so clearly designed though?

Even in the most religious of contexts, could the outward display of the rituals mask something deeper and more secular, more personal, or at least more non-denominational? Could our need to identify on the surface with one another, instead of simply taking deeper solace within ourselves, obscure the greater potential for connectedness that drives us to ritual in the irst place?

This ilm is about The Great Passion Play, to be sure, but in sharing its reality with us, I believe Nellie Kluz has given us the opportunity to explore our own understanding of ourselves. Or our multiple selves. In one scene, a young man in a military issued t-shirt drills holes into a handmade helmet that will transform him into a member of the Roman guard. We see him so transformed a moment later, complete with red cape, and on horseback.

Toward the end of the ilm a woman explains to us the rapture — that event when all of God’s faithful will purportedly be transported into a beautiful eternity, their clothes and belongings neatly folded and placed in the spot where they once stood or sat— and I wonder upon that rapture which version of us is likely to be represented? The patriotic American or the faithful Roman? If as I suspect, we wouldn’t have any say or foreknowledge should such an unlikely event take place, what happens if the only record of us left behind is the version we allow up on stage? And is that version of us any less realistic than the one in our favorite, worn through t-shirt?

Textbook rapture imagery aside, the subjects in this ilm take us

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through a series of incredibly impactful moments from their lives.

We learn about the loss of a son, an instant death, at the touch of an electrical wire. This plays over the sounds of an electrical storm, and a dificult decision that threatens to derail the all important play that brought, and continues to bring, these individuals together to examine themselves.

A beautiful, long, image anchors the ilm about halfway through.

Smoke, thick enough at irst to completely obscure the sky, the light, the time of day. The smoke thins, eventually, gradually allowing the persistent dots of evening stars to shine through. This scene contrasts sharply with one a few moments later: a mannequin is hoisted, noose tight around its neck, and hangs from a tree under the bright light of the afternoon sun. Death, the constant result of all of our fears, snuffs out the faraway source of all of our light.

A thread of longing for bravery, desire for conidence, a bestself version of us that experiences no hesitation in moments of fear, is traced by the growing light of this

story. The fearlessness exempliied throughout allows the players to reach out with an empathy they may struggle to understand in their own personal lives. The bravery is in the acceptance of that empathy and openness, and offering it back, if only on stage.

Are there answers in any of that faraway light? If so, how long will they take to reach us? In reaching us, how long will they take to spread wide enough to matter?

In closing, I’ll borrow a line from Serpents and Doves’s beginning, “We do know…we are supposed to know the lines —um—word for word…” and one from its end, “Last night, I had a dream that everything was different and I didn’t know what to do and I missed every single part…and I got ired.”

I think we all know that dream, regardless of the rituals we build or accept, to ight against it. • From Nellie Kluz: My approach is about looking for visual clues about belief systems or cultural fantasies that are hard to see. A lot of my recent work has dealt with religion and tourism, places where people really try to transcend the everyday, but I'm looking at

the mechanisms and behind-the-scenes work that go into those escape systems. My interest in making videos is so much about the opportunity to be be a irst-hand observer, going into spaces and situations where I’m something of an outsider and seeing what happens.

I shoot and edit my own videos and all the footage I collect feels autobiographical. I’m going for a style that’s open-ended enough to let viewers make up their own minds about what’s happening, because even thought I was present in a situation I ilmed, I could obviously never see or know everything about it, there’s too much detail. When I’m editing my footage I have fun and try to add in all the things I enjoy about cinema; jokes, juxtapositions, moments using color, texture and shapes. A lot of times context clues about what’s happening really fall away as I focus on what’s most interesting to me and what most resonates in the footage, because that’s the material that will hold up best.

Serpents and Doves has been screened at multiple festivals and events including the New Orleans Film Festival, Tacoma Film Festival and a special screening event featuring this and more of Kluz’s work at the Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles. www.NellieKluz.

com

Particularly D e s t i n e D reviewing “When Jeff tried to save the World”

By Joshua Lewin I suppose this must happen in some way, with most trends and styles of the past—it certainly does in fashion—but this current movement toward celebrating this time period of my youth in new narratives, well, it just seems particularly destined.

Maybe everyone—or most everyone—goes through a similar period, when popular culture takes its turn at reviving the things they once loved, when young. Or, maybe the current trend in ilm, television, and even contemporary literature, is a more unique development for our time. Which ever it is, take a look around and see displayed in glorious and speciic detail, the lights and sounds of video games and emerging capabilities for abstraction in sound and vision, for a new original sort of fantastic and immersive storytelling—of the late 80’s and early 90’s.

Part of that destiny, then, is a irst feature length ilm by ilmmaker (and writer, director, marketer) Kendall Goldberg: When Jeff Tried To Save The World. The ilm, with the inarguably long title (something this publication is uniquely fond of), usually goes by its shorter nickname: When Jeff Movie. Or: #WhenJeffMovie.

Set in a bowling alley nearing the end of its lifecycle, When Jeff is a story of redemption and becoming who you are, accepting loss and embracing change—and it is a story of dificult relationships that get better, much better, through a bit of empathy in communication. When Jeff is a movie that could

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save you, transform you (ix you?), all while allowing you to have quite a bit of fun; to laugh and to play. In our current achievement and unending progress based culture, these things: transformation and improvement contrasted with play, don’t always like to exist together.

They should.

Borrowing its setting from the bowling alley/ arcade of my (no, of your) youth, When Jeff delivers an original story rooted deeply in our time. Instead of simply another nostalgia movie, this ilm tackles the roots of that current nostalgia itself, celebrates them, and even lets them go.

Technically, also, this small feature (which performed so well as a short ilm that it prompted its own graduation to feature length), is a welcome counterpoint to some of the more prominent, studio budget, titles mining the same nostalgia without bringing any purpose, or originality, to the narrative.

With When Jeff, Goldberg is baring her own nostalgia, but is not content to exist entirely within the world of someone else’s game. And that makes all the difference.

When Jeff mixes incredible detail from the ins and outs operation of the bowling alley itself, the bones and structure of which continually remind us that technologies, whether long passed or emerging, are never mysterious at their core of levers, buttons, connections of wires, and the combination of digital and analog processes. Processes that will eventually fail into atrophy and entropy without human interest and

continual involvement.

Goldberg amassed a perfectly rounded cast for this feature, a cast that the mere sight of increased the thread of nostalgia, without taking away from the story itself. Jeff is played by Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite), who is in a feature length showdown with Jim O’Heir (Parks and Recreation). A minor character in this story is actually a piece of technology itself. A console style game, working in real life, that was built just for the purpose of this story.

This buggy, DIY, box illed with lights and sound, an escape, but never too far, its faulty wiring consistently drawing us back to the real world, and the real work, at hand. Memories of a more fruitful time, when the bugs in the machine were recognizable, and the programs themselves perfectly welcome, but unnecessary. • When Jeff Tried To Save The World was quickly noted as an oficial selection of the Independent Film Festival Boston 2018, the Lower East Side Film Festival 2018 and half a dozen others and has since won multiple awards including the Indie Vision Best Performance award at the Twin Cities Film Festival (Jon Heder) and the International Film Critics Choice Award for Best Directorial Debut at the Heartland Film Festival (Kendall Goldberg). When Jeff Tried To Save The World will be available in most major VOD and streaming services on December 7, 2018. www.kendallgoldbergilms.com/ whenjeffmovie @whenjeffmovie

How do you pick the wines to go with the food?

And other answers to your overheard questions at Juliet

By Joshua Lewin I have a notebook for wine tasting and pairing notes. Two of them actually, at least; one collecting dust on paper and one, unused but bothering no one, in a forgotten corner of my digital life. I suppose it is professionally hazardous to too freely admit that.

I’m not afraid of the fact, though, and I don’t dislike learning about wine. Ditto this for cheese, by the way. There is something about the typical methods for distributing this information that is just really hard for me to assimilate and retain. Based on the various pop culture jokes and misunderstandings about wine folks...I bet there is a good percentage of you reading this who feel the same.

The thing is, evidenced by the fact that this is being typed up right now... people fairly regularly ask me a bit about wine; pairings, general recommendations, and often, simply about my favorites. I get in real trouble with favorites, because as hard as it is for me to judge the lavor and then remember it, once you want a name...I’m cooked.

Katrina’s in charge of all that, and she’s great at it. Part of what makes her great at it, is that she has designed wine and beverage programs that can be about much more than plotted points on a graph and technical jargon. They can be about those things too, which have their place; in some times, for some people. But in our programs there is really something for everyone.

So much that when I get the questions over the counter, despite my supposed shortcomings, I actually have a lot to go on.

A recent wine list featured nothing but rosé [hello summer], at least at irst glance. At

“There is something

about the typical methods for distributing this information that is just really hard for me to assimilate and retain.”

one point, seven of them by the glass. That’s a lot of rosé to pack into a restaurant with 16 seats serving 30 guests a night.

I was actually about to give myself a little more credit than I deserve. What really pushed me to ind comfort in discussing that list was that Katrina left me in charge of the dining room one night. She had to ly to New Orleans to complete a brief internship as part of the package that came with her winning the Legacy Award this year from Les Dames d’Escofier. I had no other choice, except I guess to lock up early. That is when I discovered something really fun about our pairing.

Over a ive course tasting style menu, we paired nothing but rosé, kind of. This might turn some people off if Katrina wasn’t careful. In fact, she was nervous during the irst few services. It turns out though, when done right (at least, my opinion of right), a good pairing has as much to do with the joy of discovering something new as it does with plotting points of taste.

The irst wine of that pairing cycle was a pretty typical summertime rosé. But it was plotted on the graph here more for texture than just taste. Can a “thin” thing feel “creamy?” And if it can, will it be an interesting contrast to a rich cheese? What if a rosé was made from a grape with white skin? How many people that book dinner here have had an orange wine before?

Turns out not that many, about as many that had previously described a wine as creamy. What if you named a red wine Cherry, and then chilled it like it was pink? What if you paired for emotion and experience instead of taste or texture.Could a pairing work just based on “fun”? Aren’t wines full of bubbles fun? Will people laugh, and if so, will they laugh in confusion or more simple joy, when presented with their second glass of alcoholic carbonation in one night?

These are some of the questions that were explored through a recent menu at Juliet.

And it’s not that we don’t have plenty of taste data driven reasons to back up these forays into simple fun, but if you happen to ask me, these are the kinds of answers I’ll try on you irst. •

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Can You See That?

And other answers to your overheard questions at Juliet

By Joshua Lewin

“When you call the city to inquire about them, they prefer the term utility pole.“

Can you help us settle a dispute?

Probably.

If you were given a free telephone pole, you would take it, right? Because why not?

Stop. Just stop. Obviously I’m not going to take a telephone pole. Even a free one. Where am I supposed to put it, and what is it for?

Ok, so what is it for? And what could you do with a used one?

Every once in a while, I look up and notice the network of bare wooden pylons strung together with what I assume are dangerous wires. Most of the time, even when they are stapled with notices for tag sales, missing cats, upcoming local shows, I don’t notice them at all. I notice the lyers, sure, I just rarely notice deep enough to think about what they are ixed to.

They are huge, about 40 feet tall it turns out; that is standard. There are tons of them, and they are all interconnected in a web of deadly but insulated ropes. Growing up we called them phone poles. The above guest — yes, this was a real question— called it a telephone pole. When you call the city to inquire about them, they prefer the term utility pole.

If you are reading this magazine, 99.something percent of you being in the United States (although that near unanimous number is slowly shrinking, so hello, welcome, and thank you, international reader), you probably don’t notice these either. You grew up with them. Like me. All of you. They have been ubiquitous throughout the landscape of the United States since the 1950’s, although a few had been in place long before that. They began appearing by the late 19th century, Edison’s electric light bulb being the main driver of their initial proliferation.

Many people from around the world, though, notice these things right away when visiting the United States. In much of Europe especially, power and utility lines run underground. This is exactly where Mr. Edison himself wanted them, fearing the dual and directly related negatives of the destruction of trees and the marring of landscape through their re-erection. More like re-animation, in a Frankenstein’s monster sort of way; bolted, wired, and full of life sustaining juice, as well as life-ending potential.

About 20% of fatal automobile accidents each year involve collisions with ixed objects, the most common object: utility pole.

But here we are, the North American landscape solidiied as a new world of interconnected,

dead but reanimated, 30 - 100 (40 feet is the most common and standard height for utility poles, but the potential range is quite large depending on speciic circumstances) barkless and limbless trees. Just like anything else in our modern world, these things don’t last nearly forever. They can cost up to $3,000 to replace (including the cost of installation), and, at least according to one recent guest at Juliet, the used ones

should be good for something. So, upon my research, I’m a convert to the reuse scenario regarding this piece of our international acclaim. But as it turns out, the preservatives used to guard against fungus and other natural hazards to unnatural stuff probably make these things toxic and re-useful for only certain types of lumber. Conclusion: no, I’m not taking one, even if it is free. Unless you have any better ideas? •

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Wishing Well

By Katie Rosengren

“

OUR CULTURE RELIES FAR TOO HEAVILY ON ONE USE ITEMS AND NO AMOUNT OF RECYCLING

CAN FIX THAT.”

“Can this be recycled?” I ask my husband, Cole, while holding up some object or other. This happens probably once a week in my house, as I decide what to do with the inevitable refuse that we come across in our modern lives. More often than I’d like, the answer is no. Or at the very least, not in our curbside pick up.

I’ve been recycling most of my life, so much so that it has become habit to throw my plastics, glass, and cardboard into a bin and wish it well as it makes its journey toward a new life. My perspective changed, however, when Cole became a full time journalist covering trash and recycling for a trade publication. Suddenly, I had an in house expert who knew what happened to our discarded items after they left our possession and it was far more nuanced than I could have imagined. What I had been doing my whole life was “wish-cycling,” throwing things in my recycling bin and hoping that the recycling powers that be would make it into something new.

Empowered with this new information, every trip to the grocery store became a game to ind the items I wanted with the least packaging, or the least offensive.

With the recent wave of straw bans invading my Instagram feed, I found myself being irked for a reason it took me a while to identify. On its face, going without a straw or inding an alternative to single use plastic is something I would be on board with. I even bought myself a pack of the silicone variety at Target to throw in my bag. The breaking point, however, came when I saw Starbucks’ solution; a lidded cup that created even more plastic waste.

Yes, a plastic cup is recyclable and a straw is not. But for far too long, we have found a false optimism in our recycling bins. Our culture relies far too heavily on one use items and no amount of recycling can ix that. I see the straw ban as a way for people to pat themselves on the back without taking a hard look at their own habits.

When I was little, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle was the messaging of the day. I’m not sure where we got off track, but recycling shouldn’t be our end goal for every object, because a lot of what we consume just isn’t recyclable. So, yes, please, if you are able, ind an alternative to a disposable plastic straws. But straws only account for a fraction of 1% of plastic waste, so plan your self congratulations accordingly.

We need to change the throw away culture we live in, and to do that, we need to take a hard look at our choices. That’s not a lashy solution to post about on Instagram, I know, but that’s all we’ve got. •

Dealing with plastic straws is not a waste of time

By Alex T. Vai It’s good that people are talking about plastic straws. Cities from Seattle to Miami Beach, as well as companies like Starbucks, American Airlines, and Hilton have all publically announced plans to reduce their plastic straw use. Maybe you’ve seen the viral video of a straw being painfully extracted from a sea turtle’s nose, or reports about animals from birds to whales suffering and dying from ingesting or being entangled in plastic marine debris.

If you were intrigued or outraged enough to dig deeper, you may have learned about a growing scientiic consensus that the effects of plastic pollution are reaching right down to the base of oceanic food chains, threatening to disrupt critical ecosystems upon which we all depend.

We throw away plastic straws in incredible

“The cycle of thoughtless use is broken,

and an opportunity is created for the facts, statistics, and images being shared about plastic pollution to positively inluence decision making. “

numbers - hundreds of millions per day in the US alone. Even so, straws are still only a small fraction of the truly staggering global plastic pollution problem, which sees an average of more than 20,000 tons of plastic waste entering the ocean daily. Without changes, this igure is predicted to increase ten-fold by the year 2025.

Given the hugeness of the broader challenge, efforts to reduce straw use have increasingly been met by accusations of “feel-good environmentalism,” and assertions that this pollution source is just too insigniicant to be worth addressing. Since more cynical critics have been exploiting this reasoning to suggest that nothing should be done until some mythical “complete” solution is in hand, we need to discuss why dealing with plastic straws is absolutely worth the time and energy.

Nobody claims that eliminating plastic straws is enough to save the world. Nearly every straw campaign builds from the broader context of plastic marine debris and our collective role in causing it.

By starting with an everyday item, the general public has a clear path toward desperately needed behavior changes and cultural shifts in how we use and dispose

of materials.

Hopefully, you recognize the mantra “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”. Ultimately, the revolutionary change we need is the universal adoption of these principles in this order. With a few exceptions, such as for those with certain physical disabilities, plastic straws are just not needed to take a drink. Consumers most often use straws simply because they are given one by default. Today, the burden of taking action against plastic pollution is squarely on those who wish to reduce by not using or to reuse by bringing their own durable straws.

Having establishments switch to “Straws Upon Request” and not providing them automatically would turn this status quo upside down. Those who need a disposable straw can still get one, but only after making a conscious choice and personal assessment of need. The cycle of thoughtless use is broken, and an opportunity is created for the facts, statistics, and images being shared about plastic pollution to positively inluence decision making.

Those who criticize the focus on straws overlook the potential for small, local changes to snowball into an impactful movement. For example, plastic checkout bags are another common, disposable item having much in common with plastic straws. The ight against plastic bag pollution in Massachusetts has so far been waged town-by-town, led by local activists carrying a shared vision. The effort in, say, Aquinnah, MA (Population: 311) could easily have been dismissed as insigniicant. And yet, a succession of many little victories (and a few bigger ones) over the past half-decade have added up to nearly 40% of MA residents being covered by local bag laws, an estimated 700 million fewer plastic bags per year in this state, and putting Massachusetts on the brink of strong, statewide plastic bag legislation.

Even if the path for decreasing straw use starts restaurant-by-restaurant instead, the shared truths are many and the similarities unmistakable.

The Surfrider Foundation’s work in Massachusetts has proven that there is absolutely enough energy, passion, and caring in the community to protect the ocean in multiple ways at once. Straws are just one strand in the net of disposable plastics that has entangled our society. But, as with any seemingly intractable problem, every strand we cut reveals new avenues of attack and puts us another step closer to a cleaner, healthier ocean. •

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DINE RESPONSIBLY PROTECT OUR OCEANS

Ocean Friendly Restaurants like Juliet help keep harmful plastic waste out of our environment.

Learn more and find out how you can get involved at ma.surfrider.org.

JULIET Thank you for joining us.

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