The Violet Hour

The violet hour, when the sun sets on the outside world and shadows lengthen with mystery, when a laugh can last a lifetime, and affections glow brightly. There’s the bar buzz at your back, and anybody who walks through the door could be somebody you want to know. It’s the cocktail hour. Time stands still.

Today Americans drink approximately 1/2 oz of distilled spirits a day per man, woman, and child. But back then, when the cocktail was born, it was 2 oz of liquor per day. The country was full of jitterbugs. It was drank at breakfast, as a medicine, at lunch break, and after dinner. Rum was the gold of the New World and the taxes on it’s production caused more furor and trouble than any pitiful English Tea. Alcohol. It made fortunes and bought votes.

The cocktail was the first American export around the world. Before we were known for our authors, our art, our steel, our textiles, or what have you, we were known for our drinks. It was something we were great at.

And what makes a good cocktail and not just some swill covered in syrup or water? The key is balance. Balance of mood. Of setting. Of ingredients. The soul of the spirit must be soothed before it can easily glide down the throat and coat the brain. It’s in the mixing, and in that there is something, magical.

Once inside the violet hour, the world outside may be an illusion and all of us here larger than life.

Looking for the American Bar

What does it take to follow the illustrious Chef Nordo around in search of the perfect cocktail, the perfect bartender, and the perfect bar food? First, you have to resign yourself to lost evenings and foggy, thunderous hangovers. Then, you have to accept the nacho plate, the jalapeno poppers, the atomic chicken wings, the chili dusted nuts, the fried oysters, the deviled egg, the pickled... and so on and so on. Who knows where you may wake up and what dribble of sordid ranch dressing may cling to your chin. I believe that Chef Nordo has a wooden leg. Or two.

Do not worry though. You do not have to follow in these footsteps. Your experience will be of the finest quality using only the best spirits, the finest ingredients, and the re-imagined essence of what bar food should be. Nordo will not stoop to hack pop-art. As always he will strive to provide the highest level of satiation and satisfaction. If you leave a little pickled and wake up in the arms of a co-worker, well, that is your decision and hopefully a nice addition to a wonderful dining experience.

What lurks in the laboratory besides a mess of cookbooks, food magazines, and scraps of paper with crudely drawn renditions of food? Well, in honor of our brothers in Siberia who have given us such wonderful foods that accompany alcohol, we labor on a pickled plate in the zaruski fashion. We begin with a home made cream cheese. (Note: Do not mistake half and half for buttermilk. Once the half and half is in you must add the buttermilk, and well, this is not low fat cream cheese.) Why most of us just buy such things like cream cheese once you endeavor to make your own is beyond us. Learn your food we say. What else are doing with your time?

Now, the roasted beets. Florescent pink and full of juice, hands are stained red with the blood of vegetables. Some are thrown on the stove with vinegar, salt, and sugar to create a pickling concoction while others are sliced into long rectangular spears. Up next is the darling quail egg. Very difficult to peel, we need tiny elf fingers, they are pickled in a beet bath until these little fuschia gems literally glow on the plate. Now, remove the pickled salmon from the fridge and slice thin sheafs of flesh. Almost all the ingredients are on hand.

But there is the coup de grace- a carrot saffron sheet. Here shines the genius of the modern kitchen. Imagination and experimentation collide. Once the juice of the carrot is boiled and slowly whisked with gelatin and agar agar it is poured over an acetate sheet. With small shifts of the sheet the substance pools outward into a thin (1/16") puddle. Chilled for no less than 15 min. this sheet can then be pulled free, and like delicious gummy rubber that tastes like the essence of carrot, it can be sliced, rolled and wrapped about a pickled beet slathered in cream cheese. Perfection. It is carrot incarnate.

Next, the salmon wraps a barely pickled cucumber. The quail eggs are stood on end. And over the entire setting a dill and lemon sauce is applied for dipping. Toss some fresh dill, a few fried capers, and voila. I think we have stumbled upon something here. Something clear but potent, standing tall beside a cocktail, and intriguing to eat. We have a winner in the lab.

We cannot wait until this mixture of vegetable tartness can mingle with a dry gin cocktail.

Next up: Why is we drink and what is the magic of a proper bar?

Cafe Nordo Returns to Seattle!

Apparently Mr. Nordo Lefesczki loves Seattle. He's returning this fall with another grand premiere. Maybe the rest of the country just doesn't get how cool this guy is. Regardless, he's back, and we're happy to say he's got yet another new idea under his hat. This guy never stays with the same format. He's always out to impress. This time his restaurant becomes a bar, his imagination is tackling the world of bar food, and he's wrangled a master of cocktails to work with him. And, by the press release you'll see below, he's obviously got a wacky story of intrigue to accompany his inventions.

Stay tuned for more salacious details. As we get behind-the-scenes information on the food and the production you know we'll pass them along. We just love the Cafe Nordo dirt here at this blog.

In a secret gin-joint within Theo Chocolate Factory the incomparable Chef Nordo Lefesczki teams up with “America’s Best Bartender” Murray Stenson to bring Seattle an evening of sizzling entertainment, creative food, amazing cocktails, and smokin’ music that harkens back to another era.

This fall, Café Nordo returns to Fremont with “Sauced”, one part historical tour of mixology, one part film noir style thriller, shaken and served up with a dash of surreal. Fedoras nod to the beat of original jazz tunes performed live, as four of the top performers in Seattle deliver salty one-liners and perfectly poured classic cocktails to an intimate audience. Paired with each cocktail is Chef Nordo Lefesczki’s interpretation of bar food, deconstructed, reconstructed, and then deconstructed again. As per the laws of Café Nordo, only the finest local, sustainable ingredients are served, and local craft distilleries provide the booze.

With Billie Wildrick (most recently seen in Candide and On The Town at the 5^th Avenue Theatre) as the bombshell lounge singer, Mark Siano (“One of Seattle’s top cabaret acts” – Seattle Gay Scene) as the washed up bar owner, and Opal Peachey as the cocktail waitress on the edge, and Ray Tagavilla (Seattle Magazine Spotlight Award Winner) as the bartender with a secret, Sauced delves into the sexy, dirty, soul-baring darkness of humanity under the influence. Under the “beguiling” (Seattle Times) spell of Annastasia Workman’s original jazz score, performed live by the Café Nordo House Band, audiences sip and taste as a story of mystery and betrayal unfolds all around them.

Seattle’s own Sultan of the Sauce, Murray Stenson, lends his expertise by designing the evening’s flight of cocktails. In July, Stenson won the highest award for mixology in the US, “The Best Bartender in America,” voted by his peers at the 2010 Tales of the Cocktail festivities in New Orleans. Currently at the Zig Zag Café, and formerly at Il Bistro, Stenson’s blend of historical knowledge, originality, and craftsmanship garnered him national recognition in The New York Times, Playboy Magazine, and Salon.com.

After two acclaimed five-course dining experiences, Café Nordo tipples towards its third Seattle installment, changing the form but not the experience. The first, The Modern American Chicken, won Café Nordo a Seattle Times Footlight Award for Excellence in Local Theater, and introduced audiences to Café Nordo: “A fricassee of satire, zany antics and enlightened food consciousness, ‘Café Nordo has a unique spin on dining, wine-ing and watching…with kinky sincerity, the show spoofs chef-cult madness but sincerely honors the consumption of a well-cooked meal” (Seattle Times). The second, Bounty! An Epic Adventure in Seafood (“Fun filled and action packed” – Northwest Wining and Dining) treated audiences to “preternaturally fresh” (Seattle Times) seafood along with the science and folklore of the Salish Sea. Through sizzling entertainment, creative food, amazing cocktails, and smokin’ music, Sauced harkens back to a different era. A much cooler era.

For more information visit www.cafenordo.com

USS Nordo Docks at Port

The sails are furled, the deck swabbed, and the food stores emptied. Bounty! An Epic Adventure in Seafood has come to an end. It was another success for Chef Nordo and his production crew. From the decks of a 1896 sailing vessel cruising the Salish Sea to the dystopia of the Kodiak Island Resort audiences were enthralled with the food and the stories of our delightful oceans.

Once again Chef Nordo impressed with his unique vision of food. His relentless passion to serve quality foods both local and sustainable while simultaneously exposing the importance of food in our lives gave us another menu that shocked and satisfied. Here are a few pictures of the delicacies served at Cafe Nordo's Bounty!.

Perhaps, if we consciously choose our seafood each and every time we sit down to eat and remember that our sea life cannot be taken for granted, we will ensure an abundance of magic and food for generations to come. For all of those who came, Thank You, and for those of you who missed it, well, I'd like to say there will be something else like it in the future, but Bounty! proved to be a experience unlike anything else Seattle has seen.

Keep an eye out for more Cafe Nordo culinary adventures in the fall. And as the next story develops we will chronicle it here at the Carnal Food blog.

And Chef Nordo has been heard mumbling something about a one time event/fundraiser for the whole community to enjoy- Roast a Critic!!! We can only dream.