CITY Issue 56

CITY LIFE / THE AMUSED BOUCHE BLUEPRINT SPECIAL How is a burger like a building? Foodie and former architecture student Eva Hagberg discovers that basic design principles guide the creation of both edibles and edifices. T he burger at Prune is famous. When Gab ielle Hamilton announced that he downtown Manhattan estau ant, known fo simple-done-pe fect dishes like sa dines on T iscuits and monkﬁsh live on toast, would se ve lunch, the bu ge was the thing to have. The e was just one p oblem when I went to t y it. It comes on an English muﬃ n. I don’t like English muﬃns. The e’s something about thei d y textu e, the almost metallic dullness of thei taste, and the pa ticula way they both soak up and epel moistu e that gets ight to the hea t of my mo bid fea of wet b ead. So I asked fo my bu ge on a oll. “No substitutions.” I kicked myself fo even asking. nd then it a ived: a sphe e of bu ge ight in the middle of two almost completely ﬂat discs (the photos he e a e mo e an a tistic inte p etation than the eal thing, which is impossible to eplicate). I didn’t know whe e to sta t. P ess the ends of the discs togethe and take the ﬁ st bite bu ge less? Pull the sphe e towa ds the end, which would mean a ﬁ st bite full of g ound beef and lamb (the notsec et sec et) and the last of just, ew, soggy b ead? Somehow I got th ough it. Blissfully, in fact. The English muﬃ n was al eady wet with butte so the te o of moistu e was mitigated by my aﬀection fo fat, and the bu ge ﬂattened out, and then the bacon g abbed onto those little English muﬃ n pockets, and the e was just enough oom fo it on its long wooden platte , and I ealized that fo all my skepticism, this was a ve y well designed dish. The ﬁ st thing you a e taught in a chitectu e school (whe e I igno ed my inability to d aw o model o conceptualize space and so managed to eceive an unde g aduate deg ee) is that the e a e limits. The second thing you a e taught is that you should ci cumvent them. nd while I su vived those late nights in the studio by eating mo e F itos and soga licky-the-whole-building- ecoiled hummus than one might think possible, ou p ofesso s we e always talking about the latest endange ed ﬁsh they b oiled, the Meatpacking Dist ict estau ant they designed, the dinne pa ties they th ew. It was all ve y aspi ational and glamo ous fo us students, but what be- came clea was that the e is an ove lap between people who ca e about design and those who ca e about food. Today, as a one-time a chitectu e student and cu ent cooking enthusiast, I emain int igued about how the design of a st uctu e o object elates to the design of a dish. Back in school, and while cooking now, I’m always looking fo the limits. P og am, site, budget, client. Dinne , plate, ve y small, hung y. So what about someone who has to ﬁgu e out limits that will wo k eve y time? se ies of ules to follow even when the limitations a e as va iable as they a e, say, eve y single night of a estau ant’s life? Todd Mitgang uns C ave Ceviche Ba , a Midtown Manhattan estau ant that has one big limit al eady ve y deﬁ ned: Eve ything is, in some way, ceviche. Which meant, on a ecent night, sea ed tuna and foie g as, island c eek oyste s, and Chatham Bay codﬁsh all ca ied a little menu line desc ibing how they we e — since we can tu n eve ything into a ve b — “ceviche’d.” The next mo ning (incidentally, and quite unfo tunately, just a few days befo e a c ane fell on st St eet and dest oyed pa t of the newly expanded estau ant), I asked Mitgang about his p ocess, how he na ows down the c eation of a dish into manageable inc ements. Tu ns out it’s much the same as design: p og am, site, budget, client. Fi st, he calls his pu veyo s to ﬁgu e out his p og am: the ing edients. “I ﬁ nd out if they’ll be available fo the next th ee o fou months,” he explains. “ nd then the next step is about making sense of it all.” It’s the so ting th ough eve ything that equi es the kind of discipline we’ e talking about. Mitgang / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / ///// takes a t ip down imagination lane. We sha e a delusion that we have a box of che ies. He asks me what I would do with them. I say I’d make my g andmothe ’s che y b ead pudding. Good. That’s info mation he can wo k with. But the e’s his a tiﬁcial limit again — ceviche — and it lessens his possibilities as it info ms the dish’s design, in te ms of both what it will be and what it will look like. “Since I un a ceviche estau ant, what kind of acidity wo ks well with che ies?” he asks, walking me th ough the minute steps. “I have uby snappe and che ies, and I want to make this che y b ead pudding.” nd then he vee s, b eaking some of my own limits by suggesting we th ow in some thyme, some sp ing ga lic. Pe fect. I can almost taste it. But wait. Budget? “Maybe the uby snappe isn’t p oﬁtable,” he says. “But I’m eally passionate about the snappe and I want guests to eat it.” The solution? “Maybe the next cou se is something that comes oﬀ like it’s fancyshmancy but I’m making all my money on it, so I’m sp eading the cost th oughout a whole tasting menu.” Kind of like how a designe will skimp on the d ywall but splu ge on the d apes. Mitgang’s with me on the analogy. “If you’ e est icted — if you client says, ‘I want it to have a ba nya d feel, o fo you to use only wood o only b ick,’ that makes it so much mo e exciting to think outside of the box,” he says. “Fo me, he e, I need to make this ceviche as appealing as it can be to so many diﬀe ent people.” That’s why he gets playful, b inging in diﬀe ent textu es. It’s also why sometimes he makes choices like putting chocolate-cove ed popco n on top of the Chatham Bay cod ceviche. I loved the ﬁsh. I didn’t love the popco n. But that’s okay — the bones can be b illiant and the deco ation a bit much. It’s still the foundation that continued on pg. 44 THE DISH SOUNDS AS BIZARRE AS PRUNE'S BURGER, AND IT'S DEFINITELY A DESIGN MOVE; INFORMATION WRAPPED IN A LOOK, SURROUNDED BY A STYLE. PHOTOGRAPHY BY TRAVIS RATHBONE / FOOD STYLING BY LISA HOMA CITY TY 43

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CITY Issue 56

City Issue 56 Contents Letter from City: Re: Design Our Friends: The Faces Behind the Stories Action: What's New, What's Hot, What's Now Wanted: Olympic Bound? Button Up City Moment: The Writing’s on the Wall How We Live: Concrete Jungle Fast Food: Bites of Spring The Amused Bouche: Blueprint Special In Rouge: Hero Worship Fashion: Welcome to the Boys’ Club Travel: My Pod Architecture: Out of the Blue Design: Home Remedies Tokyo Rising Zen and the Art of Catholicism Think Big Face Value Runaways Intimate Relations Where to Buy It: Store Locations Icon: The Infinity Pool

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