Chef Camille Becerra and cultural salon host Lelaine Lau have joined forces for Summer Feasts series (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Multiple locations
July 7, 12, 13, 18, and 26, $128.88, 8:00
www.thecookerynyc.com
Top Chef contestant Camille Becerra and 403 cultural salon founder Lelaine Lau have joined together for an exciting new culinary adventure, the Cookery. For five nights in July (and more to come), the dynamic duo will host pop-up dinners in several downtown locations, where approximately sixty guests will mingle, share long tables, and celebrate the art of food, drink, and conversation. The peek-a-boo dinner series, called Summer Feasts, begins with a cocktail hour before everyone settles into their seats for a five-course dinner, served family style. At a recent preview, the menu included a delightful chilled parsley soup topped with a chive yogurt ice cube, house-made cheeses (the salty ricotta was a stand-out) with butter-poached vegetables and a tomato aji confit, a seafood salad of charred squid, mullet, and pickled oysters, caviar toast featuring a lovely spread of urchin emulsion, paddlefish roe, herbs, and blossoms, blood wild rice sausage over flavorful butter beans, creamy basil flan, and playfully designed fondant-glazed petit fours courtesy of Melissa Torres. Each dish was paired with a creative gin cocktail prepared by master mixologist Aisha Sharpe, cofounder of Contemporary Cocktails, that ended up impressing even those who don’t favor that specific liquor.
Melissa Torres’s fondant-glazed petit fours taste even better than they look (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
At each carefully chosen venue, the food and drink menu will change, but what won’t change is the infectious enthusiasm Becerra and Lau bring to the table. Becerra, who operated Greenpoint’s Paloma (named for her daughter) for three years, wears a huge smile on her face as she cooks in the kitchen and comes out to greet the guests. Lau is a charming raconteur, open and honest and ready to discuss myriad subjects. The pop-up dinners are organized to get all participants involved, a party bringing strangers together (although large groups are welcome). The culinary journeys, currently scheduled for July 7 at an artist loft in Chelsea, July 12 & 13 on the Lower East Side, and July 18 & 26 in the Financial District, will also feature DJs, musicians, artists, designers, stylists, and others, evoking the cultural salons that Lau runs (and helped get her recently named Woman of the Month by Thierry Mugler’s Womanity Project). The evening costs $128.88 with everything included, in addition to a take-home treat.