Hi Friends.

It has been a while, and I hope you all have been taking care of yourselves and those around you.

After a few weeks off, Counter Service is back with really incredible contributions that we are excited to share with you all. Over the next few months you can expect a bi-monthly journal to come out, reacting to current events and passionate musings from some of our talented community members.

With these Journals, we have now included a donation button. We are asking that if you enjoy the musings and thoughtful, passionate pieces contributed, to donate any amount you can to help support our community. These donations will be split 70% directly to the contributors (artists and writers in the hospitality world) 25% to an organization (this issue’s organization is The Okra Project), and 5% to maintaining the website.

A last note before we dive deep into some incredible work, the always inspiring Erika DaSilva and Ten Mile Table in Upstate New York are hosting a Food & Art Magazine-Stand Pop-Up, Cuizinestand, this weekend. Aug 1-2, 8-9, 15, 2020 at 10 Main Street, Wassaic, NY. Over 25 incredible publications will be there and we are honored to be a part of that group.

Much love, CS Magazine

Did You come?

Zach LIgas

The usual suspects of spring are conspicuously absent.  The vegetables that trigger nearly ejaculatory responses seem to have left the city for the Hamptons.

There are certainly parallels to be made between seasonality and mortality.  We cling to what emerges from the Earth for weeks at a time, and when it’s over, we begin to mourn.

There are no more tomatoes.

Those of us industrious enough to stow away and preserve these ephemeral visitors can amass a catalogue worthy of combatting the most dire instances of seasonal affective disorder. A peculiar affliction treated with ramps, corn and/or ripe strawberries.

In the current state of our ever flattening climatic curve, sometimes our bodies fail to feel these shifts. The cameos by truffles, fiddleheads or peaches are often times more potent landmarks for where we exist in time, the revolution.  We depend on these sensual activations to propel us. During this period specifically, the passage of time is even less measured, existing outside of traditional rhythm.  We are warping between a slow tumble and a sweaty sprint as days and weeks progress.  Differentiating between Monday and Thursday, April and May when we are essentially skipping this Spring gastronomically can become minutae.

This brings about musings akin to “if a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear it?”

Did ramps even grow this year if droves of foragers did not drag their ivory bulbs from the dirt?

Were truffles a thing this year if crowds didn’t edge themselves while they’re shaved over tagliatelle by the gram?

Perhaps the delicate ecosystems of foraged plants are welcoming this respite, replenishing their numbers. Mommy and daddy ramp get to live another year. Summer vacation with the family all together, perhaps much to the chagrin of the adolescent ramps.  I digress.  You’re welcome.

Amidst a pandemic it may seem shallow to mourn a season.  A season lost is a marked absence to those who finally have the opportunity to shake off tubers and work with fresh green sprouts and wild mushrooms.  It is a loss of a different caliber; of creative opportunity, release, celebration. 

Our mounting hopes that Summer will not be lost are palpable.  Aside from beaches, nutcrackers, and broken open fire hydrants, there’s corn and strawberries. Some things only feel right with the sun beating down.  We feel the weight and pressure of an overly ripe strawberry, its skins stretched by months of sun, worn thin with the sheer anticipation.  The ability to burst, to expose itself to a willing, eager mouth.

It is interesting to note a particularly peaked awareness of mundane growth surrounding us once deprived of these culinary seasonal shifts.  Never before have we had the opportunity to see the day-to-day evolutions in the trees in our backyard or on our blocks.  New parental encouragements emerge from us, cheering on unfurling leaves and bud break in our houseplants.

When we are lucky enough to be, frankly privileged to be graced with a bunch of asparagus or cardboard carton of cherries, they are handled differently now.  With the lack of distractions and an abundance of space to fill with contemplation, we find ourselves facing our produce head on.  Our fleeting abundance gathers as an effigy of Demeter.  She awaits roasting, an offering to the immense labors of these fruits.

If nothing else, isolation has brought us closer to reverence. The progression of time never ceases and we have learned that how we enjoy it is subject to availability.

Zach Ligas lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Instagram: @zachwithan_h

Spring

SUmmer

I smell the wet shells and ocean water. All of my senses salivate. Give me the salinity. Each cup of brine greedily slurped, anticipating the next. 

I hear the creamy bubbles popping, the liquid gold raucous party having to contain itself. Every sip tickles, giggles. 

This tiny, wobbly, white patio table. This worn but jaunty chair. So happy to return outside, to enjoy longer days, warm sun. 

I, too, celebrate.

Late spring. The promising gateway to summer. Summer. 

Give me heat. Deep brown skin. Sandals that tease and taunt my feet, so close to earth. Hot sand between my toes. Sated by the gurgles and leaps of the sea.

Parched bodies quenched with ocean. Parched mouths quenched with ice water, paletas, other mouths.

Hot grills. Sweet corn with butter. My faithful cut-offs. Ceviche in a solo cup.

Sweat. Dancing with friends, a frivolous glass in hand. A love for the moment so deep. I close my eyes. 

I see lightning bugs. Floating softly down the hill in front of my grandma’s house.

Jasmine is a food and wine enthusiast, restaurant service director, and freelance writer and illustrator based in New York. For collaboration inquiries or more of her work, please visit jasminesenaveratna.com

Instagram: @corked.wines.inked.lines

Link: jasminesenaveratna.com & miguel-deleon.com/owf/

How to Aperitivo from anywhere, with anything

A Conversation between Kimberly Chou Tsun An and Ora Wise

KCTA: I first learned about the art of aperitivo — the Italian, leisurely, time-is-nothing, time-is-a-circle practice of late afternoon drinks and snacks — through my friendship with Ora and our mutual pal Munira.

We met through food justice organizing, and all had worked or were working in the restaurant industry in some way. So it makes sense that the courtship portion of getting to know both of them would involve toasting and hosting over plump green olives, good bread, and good drinks. Through them, I’ve learned to love the smuttiest of natural wines and all kinds of cured meats (lord, the cured meats), though I entered this comradeship as both an indifferent drinker and a vegetarian.

As our friendship has deepened, our aperitivo practice has also leveled up. I can say I’ve enjoyed aperitivi not only in the late afternoon or early evening but as a substitute for lunch, as an endless lighthearted but filling meal that extends and replaces dinner; or rather a lunch that goes on for several more hours into the day; as a wake-up snack found in the morning from the party the night before; and fixed and fed across the rental car console. 

It turns out this way of joyful eating comes naturally to me. I’ve always loved a snack tray, even if I previously called it by different names, including Lunchables (what are Lunchables if not a kids’ supermarket charcuterie board?) 

But part of the beauty of finding your people out in the world is that sometimes they show you how to call things by their true names — they give you language that fits your mouth and soon rolls easily off your own tongue, even if it wasn’t one you knew you spoke.

OW:

Aperitivo is like the culinary equivalent of flirtation: playful, pleasure-oriented, casual, improvisational. It can be quick or lingering, it can be all you’re interested in or it is just whetting the appetite before a full feast. 

And just as you are meant to share aperitivo with friends and family to unwind from the day, I believe flirtation is for EVERYONE — friends and family included — to lift spirits, infuse otherwise mundane interactions with some affirmation, and generally increase our quality of life. Flirtation or coquetry (yes!) is a social behavior suggesting interest in a deeper relationship with the other person, or if done playfully, for amusement (Wiki definition). I love that the tradition of aperitivo in Italy is a collective commitment to a sweet moment shared in public. I love that it is as valued and embedded in the culture as showing up for work. However, during the lockdown that this global pandemic has necessitated, aperitivo has still served as an anchor, a through line for our practice of sensuality and hospitality for ourselves, by ourselves. 

For me the value is also in the celebration of liminality. What is aperitivo if not a ritual of transition, a softening of the edges or boundaries of time? It is a celebration of the inbetween — that holy time between the work day and the night (often twilight but welcome at 4pm, an antidote to capitalist notions of long work days as requisite for productivity). Sometimes our aperitivi end up extending throughout the evening and we find ourselves snacking and sipping for hours to the point where there’s no room for a formal dinner. Although I strongly believe in the social, physical, and spiritual benefits of sit-down meals, these nights of mellow, unbounded nibbling feel liberated too — these nonhierarchical meals reminding us that we can also just be present and use whatever we’ve got, that we can choose a balance between spontaneity and drawing upon tradition. 

OW + KCTA:

We love and celebrate both the very traditional Italian aperitivo — which just refers to having a drink with a snack to “open” your stomach (and spirit) before the evening meal —  as well as the most interpretive, hybridized snack experience. We are about the spirit, not the letter, of the law. Aperitivo can be an improvisational form of offering, its essence captured in the notion of sprezzatura: the art of effortlessness, the effort put into artfulness. It is a mandate to prioritize always keeping a delicious bite handy.

Traditional aperitivo fundamentals

• A drink (extra points for effervescence) — bitter liqueurs and aromatized wines

• Salty finger foods — olives, potato chips, corn nuts, taralli 

• Cheese and/or salume (really just more salty finger foods with a bit more protein)

• A friend (which in these times could be in a book or the neighbor on the next stoop over who might not even be aware that they are having an aperitivo with you)

Favorite aperitivo beverages

• Negroni (best of the best: made with Cynar or Montenegro)

• Spritz (best of the best: made with Select, it’s like if Fernet and Aperol had a baby) 

• Pet nat 

• Seltzer with (lots of) bitters

Our top aperitivo/snack tray/cheese board assembled bites, in no particular order

• Potato chip, something creamy, something green 

• Anchovy on half a medium cooked egg, chopped preserved lemon 

• Pickled veg, soft cheese, a whisper of salami

• Soft dried date with a marcona almond stuffed inside

• Broken piece of chocolate with some salt on it from the chips

• Fresh bread, pesto made out of anything, an aged cheese, a fresh cheese, an earthy jam (onion, plum, fig, apricot)

• Caprese with garden tomatoes and basil 

• Any kind of chip or bread with any kind of dip or spread

Ora Wise is the Food Experience Producer for the Allied Media Conference. Her work includes founding The Dream Cafe, an experimental pop-up restaurant in collaboration with cultural workers, chefs and farmers of color in Detroit. She is a co-founder and coordinator of Food Issues Group, a grassroots collective of people in New York in food and hospitality working towards sustainability and equity. She is the Culinary Curator for Queer Anga, a queer & trans wellness collective based in Brooklyn.

Kimberly Chou Tsun An lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her cultural work involves writing, food, ritual, and sexting, among other media.

ABOUT FIG:  FIG (Food Issues Group) is a collective of food and hospitality workers in New York and beyond. FIG focuses on concrete strategies for making the hospitality industry and the food system at large more democratic, humane, and sustainable. We address the interlocking issues of environmental sustainability, food sovereignty, racial equity and economic justice through mutual aid work at the micro and macro levels.