Open & Gathered At a Closed-Door Dinner

Jueves a la Mesa (Thursdays at the Table) brings groups of strangers together each week to share a great meal, and exchange ideas about food, life in the city, and community. Aligned Magazine reached out to the young entrepreneurs / food crafters Sofia and Meghan in Buenos Aires, Argentina to have an open conversation about their “closed door” dinners.

What were your motivations when you started Jueves a la Mesa?

On the most practical level, I was just extending what I had been doing informally – cooking the kind of foods I missed [being from the States] for groups of friends. And so many yoga students were looking for the same kind of food, so it just seemed like the perfect complement to Buena Onda Yoga (Meghan’s yoga studio/business).

I think that the environmental challenges, social inequities, and individual health problems we face collectively should be addressed together. I believe in the value of good food and paying more attention to make sure that it is raised, cultivated, harvested, processed, and transported in ways that are non-harmful to the earth or to the various people who work to get our food to us.

I also think that this disconnection from food is part of our larger disconnection from the earth’s rhythms: its growth cycle, the seasons, and life and death. I think paying attention to our senses and sensations is the best way to escape from the incessant stream of thoughts that draw our attention away from the present moment. Getting out of that trance and connecting with our bodies and the earth is our only hope to begin to actually see and empathize with one another.

I don’t really think that our weekly dinners have immediate impact, but I do know that we have the opportunity every week to share these ideas aloud to 14 people. Hopefully we inspire some of them to think a little more about what they eat and what consequences their food choices have. Also on the smallest scale I love the idea of a large table where strangers meet each other and share a moment of warmth and coziness while nourishing their bodies.

Where does the concept of Puerta Cerrada (closed door restaurant) come from?

I first heard of them here, the first one I found out about was Casa Felix which I still want to visit. But according to Dan of Casa Salt Shaker they actually started in New York. They make the dining scene here pretty unique. I hosted the first official dinner in and for the first 4 years the dinner was in my San Telmo apartment. It was really special, people had the opportunity to come into a home and it added to the ‘family feeling’. We’ve landed in a similarly warm environment now at Biking BA with the added benefit that it’s zoned for commercial purposes so we can’t be kicked out! But I love that in Buenos Aires you can act on your ideas without having to wade through so much institutional bureaucracy.

Where did your idea / fascination for travel, community, wellness and good clean food originate from? How early?

I think witnessing my dad suffer from depression was one thing that made me always wonder what makes people happy and if there things we can do to increase our happiness. He’s also the one who introduced me to yoga. I studied wellness and holistic health at The Evergreen State College in Washington and made my first international trip as part of an independent study contract to Bali to study their banjar system; wherein members of a village help each other with things such as harvest, building projects, and celebrations. I later got interested in latin american culture through a Mexican American friend I lived with in college who introduced me to salsa dancing

The idea for Jueves came about really organically because so many yoga students were seeking good veggie food. We started doing Moonlight Yoga and I cooked the dinner to serve afterwards and people were so enthusiastic about the food that it seemed like a natural next step to start cooking more regularly.

Walk me through a typical Thursday in preparation for the evening meal.
What’s most important when you decide upon the menu?

So the basics in menu planning from the beginning have been to offer what’s hard to find here and avoid what is ubiquitous here. That means little to no white flour, white sugar, pastas, white rice, breads etc. All the menus are vegetarian and we make sure that there are 2 or 3 different protein sources so it feels very satisfying. There’s also always at least one spicy dish. Other than that we like to think about having a variety of textures and temperatures and colors. Pretty soon after I started I settled into having each menu be themed from a certain country or region, and after Sofi (Sofia Madriz, who I knew as a barista at my favorite cafe) came on board our shared love of Central American food made us create lots of menus from Central America (and even into Colombia and Venezuela) where corn products, beans, cilantro and hot chilis are included in a variety of traditional dishes.

They know everything going on in the barrio and will share a handful of almonds or some fruit if I come in tired and sit down to chat.

We sometimes start a day or so before depending on whether we need to soak beans, get dough fermenting (for injera in the Ethiopian menu for instance) or shop for something hard to find. Otherwise most everything happens on Thursdays. We take the list to our very trusted and beloved verduleria (produce shop) run by brother and sister Gladys and Roberto. I used to shop from them for my personal kitchen as well when I lived closer, and have know them for over 6 years. In the time I’ve known them they have increased the number of organic and gourmet items that they carry, partly by my request and partly because there are lots of expats in the area. They know everything going on in the barrio and will share a handful of almonds or some fruit if I come in tired and sit down to chat. They put beans in water to soak if we call them and request that. Gladys has been to eat at Jueves a la Mesa at least half a dozen times, we always invite her if we have an empty seat. There are a few ingredients we may need to get at a local health food shop but they usually have almost everything we need. Another great thing about Gladys and Roberto is that we can leave the list and a pile of bags with them and Roberto will deliver the order an hour later so we can go get flowers or whatever else we need.

Thursdays are a day I dedicate solely to Jueves a la Mesa. I clean the house and make a shopping list in the morning, and then go pick up supplies around the neighborhood. I like to have things ready so that we are all set up to start cooking when Sofi comes at 2pm. The first thing is always splitting open cardamom pods for our simple but delicious flavored water, which we have at every meal.

Diners arrive at around 8:30pm in the welcoming area. Once everyone has arrived, we bring them back to be seated, give a short presentation on the meal, and bring out the appetizer course. Depending on how talkative folks are and how quickly they eat, we usually serve tea and dessert between 10 and 10:30pm. Once everyone has left, we finish washing up, move the community table out, and bring the bikes back in. We pack up and head home between 12 and 1am.