dinner party musings pt.1
a surf-inspired farewell feast
A few weeks ago, my once-Facebook roommate and now close friend, Kendall, moved to Australia. Kendall and I became fast friends the moment I moved into our Lower Haight apartment two years ago. She had a way of making even the most perfunctory tasks (pouring glasses of wine, running to Bi-Rite for dessert, deep-cleaning the house) feel a little more interesting, thoughtful, funny, romantic, even chaotic.
We did a lot together, but our Julia-Kendall harmony was truly unlocked through two activities: surfing and hosting dinner parties. We understood each other’s love for the ocean and for multi-hour dinners with good food and friends. We learned from each other and inspired one another. Kendall taught me so much about creating dreamy table scapes and designing menus, just as I admired her gleeful, steep takeoffs on her longboard. We created a relationship within these activities and almost like a dance, leaned into the rhythm of operating as a duo. While I was making mise en place, Kendall was stamping items onto menus. While Kendall was going left on a wave, I was going right.
So when Kendall decided to move to Australia, it only felt right that, as a final pièce de résistance, we performed our dance one last time, melding our two shared worlds of surfing and dinner parties. The vision: an intimate multi-course dinner inspired by the breaks we had surfed together.
We began by pulling themes, elements, and memories out of all of the places we surfed together. The list from north to south:
Mendocino, CA - a fourth of July camping trip with frigid surfs (cold, mushrooms, fog lines, camping, whales)
Bolinas, CA - the first break Kendall and I surfed together on a gloomy day with terrible waves (beach camping, mussels, bran muffins, strawberries, farm stands)
Ocean Beach, CA - a tricky break that was likely to humble us (Hookfish, N Judah, beach bonfires, Mollusk, Day Moon Bread, dunes)
Pacifica, CA - Kendall’s most played hit (boat docks, taco bell baja blast, seaweed, bad waves, parking lot culture)
Santa Cruz, CA - a frequent Saturday or Sunday day trip (citrus, family, night surf, seals, long drives, foraging)
Big Sur, CA - a large-group camping trip with a summer dinner cooked over open flames (fire, tuna pasta, eggplant, friends, camping, clouds)
Tres M’s, Baja CA, MX - a wave in the city of Ensenada behind a fish processing plant (fried fish, shells, salsa macha, mariscos)
Punta Baja, Baja CA, MX - a remote point break 5 hrs south of the border (Betty’s fish tacos, Abalone shells, plantains, fishing boats, maiz hotcakes, little waves)
Drawing from these themes, I developed a menu. I found creating an Are.na helpful for visualizing how dishes and flavors would work together. Some of the dishes were directly inspired by a specific break (e.g., Baja Blast cocktail) while others were an amalgamation of various breaks (e.g., Bouillabaisse). The final menu:
Baja Blast Cocktail - gin, lime, blood orange syrup, soda water
Kampachi Passion Fruit Tigre de Leche - tangerine, lime, charred garlic oil
Radicchio Salad - pears, dates, Manchego, toasted walnut and sage vinaigrette
Sea Lettuce Fettuccine - beurre blanc and salmon roe
Black Cod, Mussel, and Clam Bouillabaisse - rouille and fresh baked sourdough
Sticky Date Pudding - Bi-Rite Salted Caramel Ice Cream
The dinner party would be on Sunday night and include eight of our best friends.
Preparations were a dual effort. We spent Saturday night at Rainbow Grocery weighing out flour and scouring aisles for obscure ingredients like aji amarillo (crazy night out for the girls!). On Sunday morning, we foraged for sea lettuce in Half Moon Bay, bought Whole Foods out of passion fruits, tracked down Pernod at a random liquor store in Mission Bay, and sweet-talked a fishmonger into giving us his one and only fish carcass for our stock. The rest of the afternoon was a blur of folding and resting sourdough, bubbling fish stock, washing and spinning radicchio, kneading pasta dough, baking sticky toffee pudding, juicing passion fruit and limes, laminating sea lettuce into pasta dough, toasting walnuts, dates, and sage in brown butter, and so much more.
That evening was the perfect final dance. Kendall arranged flowers and candlesticks on a freshly ironed linen tablecloth. While she flitted around the room, pouring drinks and ushering guests to their seats, I finished plating dishes and carefully placing garnishes. Between courses, we washed dishes together and refilled drinks when needed, moving in unspoken synchronicity.
I will miss Kendall so much! While this was the nightcap on a chapter of our dinner-party collabs in SF, I know I will carry with me so much of what she has taught me about channeling creativity, embracing imperfection, and being fearless. Excited for the Melbourne series. Xx
