The Case of the Argentine Waiter and the Korean Supper Club

“I’ve got one for you,” the waiter said in a stagey whisper and handed me a cafe chit upon which he’d written “casamun.com,” the Web site of the hottest new puerta cerrada, or private supper club, in Buenos Aires. It was the fifth morning in a row that I had had coffee at the elegant Las Violetas cafe. There I earned a warm “Buenos Días” and a courtly half bow from the same distinguished, leonine, white-jacketed waiter I’d had the mornings before. We’d discovered our mutual passion for good food when he saw the French newspaper I’d been reading the first day I came in, right off the plane from Paris. The paper prompted a moist-eyed reminiscence of a trip to France he’d made as a young man; he had told me he hopes to eat a black truffle omelet again before “God drops the curtains.” He asked me where I ate yesterday, and I mentioned a good lunch I had at El Almacén de Los Milagros in the chic Recoleta neighborhood — freshly baked empanadas, orecchiette with an arugula pesto, a terrific apple tart. The meal was also something of a relief for being mostly meat free: after 96 hours in Buenos Aires, I was pretty certain I’d eaten almost as much beef as I might during a year at home in Paris. It wasn’t, I hastened to add, that I didn’t appreciate the pride of Argentina’s pampas, but rather that I also love seafood, Asian cooking, vegetables. … “Go,” he said, nodding at the note he’d just handed me. “It’s wonderful, run by a Korean-American man, delicious food, a good time, my daughter took me for my birthday.” So I booked a place at one of the biweekly (Friday or Saturday) group dinners online — the only way you can reserve — and was intrigued to read the brief bio that the mysterious chef Mun offers on his Web site. It turns out that Mun Kim, 44, had thrown over a career as a banker in Los Angeles and New York to do what he really loves: cook. He mentioned the Korean short ribs his mother would make when he was growing up in an immigrant family in Honolulu, and also how he’d studied at the Sushi Chef Institute before working for the chef Makoto Okuwa, a regular on “Iron Chef,” at Sashi in Manhattan Beach, Calif. Having fallen hard for Buenos Aires during vacations there, Kim, according to the site, decided to make it his home and introduce his own version of Asian-California cuisine to a city “dominated by a mix of parrilla (red meat) and pastas.” The day of dinner, another e-mail arrived with a link to the evening’s mouthwatering menu and the address of the loft in the hip Palermo neighborhood where Kim does his dinners. Arriving, I joined a friendly food-loving international crowd who were drinking Argentine sparkling wine. Before we sat down for dinner, I fell into conversation with a couple — an Australian-born, California-based software developer and his Mexican-American wife, whose passion for the tango had brought them to Buenos Aires. Like the chef himself, almost everyone at the three tables of 10 had a great back story. When our first course — a “bento box assortment of Korean favorites: haemul pajeon (scallion-and-seafood pancake), oseu-pyeonchae (marinated filet mignon and vegetables), tofu jeon (pan-fried tofu with seasoned ground beef) and gochu jeon (seasoned ground beef on Korean green pepper)” — was served, the ingredients were so fresh, the flavors so bright, that I was already looking forward to thanking Agustín, the courtly waiter who’d both moved and startled me by inviting me to call him by his first name, “like people do in America.” The next course was a dish I knew I’d never forget: imjasutang, the summer soup of the Korean royal family, a cool, concentrated but refreshing ginseng-spiked chicken stock garnished with shredded chicken, shiitake mushrooms, eggs and sesame seeds that was bliss on an Indian summer evening. How curious, I mused, that I’d traveled all the way to Buenos Aires to taste something so heartfelt and Korean, but what a relief to feel my palate racing again. The shrimp and California maki sushi and spicy tuna on fried rice sticks and “Momofuku style pork buns” with cucumber kimchi that followed were brilliant, too, as were the wine pairings all through the meal. To my disappointment, Agustín wasn’t at Las Violetas the next morning or the following one; he had a cold. But when I saw him on my last day in town, I raved about Casa Mun. Not only was it a great time with delicious food, but it. … And here he cut me off with a raised index finger: “It gave you the context you needed to appreciate some good Argentinean cooking.” Si, señor, and muchas gracias, Agustín. Article Src: nytimes.com