Emily Brochin

Getting one’s start as a food writer is a rather perplexing. It requires a fair amount of tenacity, patience, and putting up with some unfortunate but inevitable food snobbery. So it was rather surprising when Chef Michael Thomas struck up a friendly conversation with me when I was seated across from his prep station at Bar Ferdinand and he noticed I was deeply engrossed in Molly O’Neill’s American Food Writing anthology. He asked about my choice of reading material and I somewhat guiltily admitted to my intended career choice. He recommended the work of former New Yorker food writer M.F.K. Fisher and then promptly invited me downstairs to have a look at the kitchen.

It’s safe to say I’ve been in my fair share of industrial kitchens and they’re all pretty much the same—lots of heat, lots of steam, and lots of squishy rubberized mats on the floor. The brain of Bar Ferdinand was no different except it was by far the cleanest kitchen I have ever seen, barring my mother’s. Michael introduced me to owner Owen Kamihira and Executive Chef Blake Joffe, who both looked a bit surprised at encountering a strange woman wandering about but were incredibly accommodating of my questions. They even invited me back during the day to help prep vegetables and observe the inner workings of the restaurant.

After returning to my seat and nursing a cold glass of white sangria, I wondered why I’d never thought to write about the food at Bar Ferdinand. Perhaps because it’s so close to my house and seemed too obvious a choice. Or perhaps because every meal I’d had there was uniformly delicious and understated in such a way that it simply slipped by my radar. And as if the cosmic food gods wanted to underline the point that one should never, ever take great cooking for granted, I experienced something akin to Proust’s flood of Madeleine-induced memories when I took the first bite of my paella and was instantaneously reminded of the year I spent living with an elderly widow in Seville, Spain.

Carmen had been taking in study abroad students for over twenty years and never seemed to stop moving but for the two hours she spent parked in front of the television, snoozing away the hottest part of the afternoon. She began her days by laundering and meticulously folding all washable objects in sight. I would come home from class and find everything from towels to underwear mercilessly creased into manageable cloth envelopes stacked on the coverlet of my sagging bunk bed. For the other half of the day, Carmen disappeared into the kitchen. No matter how much I protested, she refused to allow me to watch her cook. It was six months before I was permitted to carry my licked-clean dishes from the table to the kitchen. That was as far as I got. For all I could tell, the woman with terrible arthritis had a wand that conjured the most delicious arroz (varying rice dishes with meat and shellfish, though differing from than the traditional Valencia paella), plates of deep-fried sardines, albondigas, croquetas, and subtle green salads adorned with tuna and dripping fried eggs. Not everything was perfect—there were frightening plates of trimmed fat and a mayonnaise-iced cake made from layers of tuna, carrot shreds, and white bread. Years later I continued to dream of her cooking and pretty much despaired of ever trying anything similar ever again.

For every perfect piece of Carmen’s rich, eggy tortillas I ingested in 2001, I’ve had as many hackneyed interpretations of Spanish cuisine. Which is why that bite of Bar Ferdinand paella was such a revelation—when I think abut it, their creamy jamon croquetas, carne a la plancha with a fried egg, pollo asado with apples, shallots, and wild mushrooms, and fried churros with impeccable chocolate dipping sauce have been the most toothsome and accurate interpretations of Spanish cooking I’ve had in over six years. Carmen would be proud.