Six-Course Dinner for Twenty-three

Well, I’m going to keep this post shorter than anticipated only because we have another dinner party this Sunday and I will document and photograph the event in more detail.

Fresh from the farm's garden

Red or White?

Essentially, the farm owner hosts dinner parties at the request of locals. It’s not just any dinner party however – no no no – this isn’t just some event you attend and eat good food. It’s more of a dinner ceremony, or a renewed dinner experience of fine cuisine; food freshly selected, all ingredients made from scratch (save flour), and six dishes prepared and served comfortably over the course of 3 hours at a farm in tropical Costa Rica.

Keep in mind, as a server, we get the less than ideal looking plates:)

Serving so many people, so many courses takes but two days of preparation…that being said, and may I speak on behalf of the chef, that the mental preparation for such an event yields at least a weeks worth of work. Lo: Choosing or working with a dinner theme; selecting the number of dishes and the dishes themselves; considering the price and availability of food in our area; carrying out the grocery shopping, revising a dish or two after shopping when the shrimp guy didn’t have shrimp because his car broke down and he couldn’t make it to the beach; expecting the unexpected; timing each dish accordingly (did I mention there were six courses served over 2 – 3 hours?); balancing the grocery bill against the cost of each individual (I doubt this kind of thing is feasible); never using the same recipe twice; ETC!

Happy Valentines Day. Mixed greens w/ homemade Gorgonzola & strawberry balsamic vinegrette

However, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and the whole is the chef’s love of food and service while the sum are the parts listed above. Oh! And I forgot to mention, many of the ingredients come right from the farm, from cheese, to chocolate, to herbs and some vegetables, and sometimes meats.

So, we’ve got:

– 5 cups concentrated planning

– 3 rounded tablespoons preparation

– 1 Farm in Costa Rica

– 3 assistants (two Tica’s, one Canadian)

– a massive fridge and extra freezer

– a dash of help

– a pinch of luck

– 1 heaping cow’s utter full of love and passion

and voila! A six-course, melt in your mouth, pura vida, dinner ceremony extraordinaire.

Serves: 23

Mango pineapple cobbler w/ almond coconut macaroon topping. Chocolate covered stawberries and sweet salami with drizzled farm-made chocolate

TLC

 

Today, my palate was born

Gingerbread, people! It’s a restaurant just on the outskirts of Nuevo Arenal, of all places – I say that because it’s hands down the finest quality food I’ve ever had in my life. Not too recently, I would have said my favourite meal was a dish prepared by a Sri Lanka family at a monastery in Kamloops, however, this takes the cake. Essentially, the dinner is conducted as such: the enthusiastic and boisterous Israeli chef, with all of his round-bellied love of food, approaches to tell you what’s on tap. About five appetizers are revealed. I dare not say for my employed written ability remain unlicensed to describe such delicacies, that which arouse such pleasurable foreign flavors – let your imagination soar to the ends of the ever-increasing universe when I tell you I had tuna salad and calamari.

In a palate-awakening comatose, we are approached again to decide on an entrée. Maybe a light poetical verse will suffice in approaching this explosion of sauce and flavour. Or maybe not, and possibly my hard rigid grammar will be as a bikini on a super model when I tell you we had curried chicken on rice with carrots, green beans, ginger, pepper, and a score of other flavours that splash the tongue – it leaves something to the imagination, por que si?

By the way, each meal comes well presented on one large decorated plate for everyone to share, and between three of us, two appetizers and one entrée was more than enough, and you can’t beat the price; the cheque is like a desert following a meal. Speaking of dessert, we had Bocanegra – a deadly combo of ice cream, brownie, fruity syrups, and some coffee beans.

All in all, I’ve never been so satisfied walking away from a restaurant. That experience was something to reminisce about the entire ride home.

TLC