Bon appetit: dinner at Betty’s. Photograph: Stylish Hip WeddingsBetty Kalin spends most of her time catering to clients, but her monthly meal for 20 guests offers a chance to indulge her own interests – and visitors’ palettes.Pop-up dinners seem to be popping up everywhere " in secret, en masse, in the dark and even in the sky. In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, I tried a Proven"al pop-up dinner.
Once a month, Betty Kalin of Betty Brooklyn Catering Co invites about 20 guests to enjoy a multi-course meal inspired by her favorite parts of the world. Last month it was southern Italy, and next month the American south.
Her small storefront and kitchen is squeezed between a Pentecostal church and an injury lawyer's office. As I stepped inside, the sunny office space looked like a Proven"al picnic, minus a C"ézanne painting backdrop: sprigs of lavender, fresh fruit and checkered napkins decorated the two farmhouse style dinner tables.
A waitress greeted guests with an anise-infused lemonade. I was the first one there, so I plopped down in my assigned seat and waited for the other guests to arrive " among them my husband Bastien, who grew up in the small town Salon-de-Provence. He moved to New York in December, and Betty's dinner is probably as close to Provence he will get this year.
Perhaps the hardest part of my husband's immigration to the US, after the inane visa process, has been dinner time. Americans "eat with the hens", he likes to say. Well, his loss, because while he arrived late to the dinner, I ate his appetiser " a single shrimp wrapped in phyllo dough and drizzled with pesto sauce.
Then, a multi-dish second course: braised rabbit in a red wine sauce; "loup de mer", a Mediterranean seabass; ratatouille; a carrot and chickpea dish; and fettuccine in a roquefort sauce with artichoke hearts.
It was the course I'd been waiting for. In five years spent with Bastien, I've successfully dodged eating horse, frog legs, andouille sausage and a few other delicacies I'm still not sure how to pronounce. But here, in my very own neighborhood, I tried rabbit.
Verdict: I helped myself to seconds. (We were told later by a representative from Local Bushel, which sourced a lot of the ingredients, that the meat was "fresh". The rabbits had been slaughtered on Monday, he said. It was Wednesday.)
The family-style setting gave way to easy conversation. Or maybe it was the wine, which was paired with each course.
One of the young women seated at our table told us the recipe for hummus. Then she gave us a lesson in kebabs. Her parents had immigrated to New York from Syria several decades ago, she explained. And in case there was any doubt, she told us: "I'm basically the queen the of kebab."
We learned that everyone else at the table had been born and raised in New York. Bastien had so many questions.
"So when you say "the city'," my husband asked, "do you mean Manhattan or do you mean New York?" Manhattan, they all agreed.
"Do you say you're from Brooklyn or New York?" he asked the Kebab Queen. The New Yorkers giggled. Her accent answered the question. "Brooklyn," she told him. "Definitely Brooklyn."
Then she gave him some real talk. "When you live here, you've got to know a guy for everything," she advised him, as the waiters brought around a honey saffron cake that was syrupy, rich and spongy.
After dinner, I asked Betty why she had started the pop-up dinner series. As a caterer, she said, she spends most of her time preparing meals that mean the most to her clients, but the pop-up dinner series allows her to experiment with her own favorite foods.
"All of these dinners are a little bit personal," she said, "which is the fun part " that they can be individual and unique and fun and expressive for me as a chef."
As the guests filed out, we said goodbye to our fellow diners, and thanked the host for what Bastien and I agreed was a truly enjoyable evening escape to Provence. But as soon as we stepped outside, the blare of car horns and screeching of tires snapped us right back to Brooklyn.
- Betty Brooklyn Catering Co provided the dinner. $100 per guest. 455 Utica Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11203
