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“I never dreamed I’d take my pastrami, one of Jewish cuisine’s most famous dishes, to New York,” says chef Tomás Kalika, who is just days away from popping up with his restaurant Mishiguene at Manhattan’s Intersect by Lexus for four months from 8 September.
Starting out as a dishwasher with no formal culinary training, Kalika notched up a decade working for superstar chef Eyal Shani in Jerusalem, Israel, before co-founding Buenos Aires-based Mishiguene with gastro entrepreneur Javier Ickowicz. Four years on, the Jewish-Argentine cook is about to embark on what could be his biggest challenge to date: taking up a global chef-in-residence tenure with Mishiguene at Intersect.
Photo Santiago Soto Monllor
Roots and wings
Mishiguene, which means "crazy" in Yiddish, draws flavours of traditional Jewish recipes from the Diaspora, Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By bringing together these influences under a contemporary Argentine lens, Kalika creates his version of modern Jewish cuisine inspired by his Polish and Russian roots. This mouth-watering mash-up is exactly what captivated the gastro crack team sent to South America by restaurateur kingpin Danny Meyer to discover innovative culinary concepts for his Intersect by Lexus project back in early 2017.
Photo Santiago Soto Monllor
But it wasn’t until this year that taking that first bite from the Big Apple became within Kalika’s grasp, when Meyer confirmed the chef’s four-month kitchen intervention. “Besides my pastrami, I never dreamt I’d come this far with a project I created,” says Kalika. “New York, as one of the world’s greatest gastronomical cities, represents a huge challenge for us. It’s the most populous Jewish city in the world [outside Israel] and created one of the greatest emblems of Jewish cuisine, pastrami, which still plays an important role today.”
Mishiguene was the highest climber in Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants 2018 list, skyrocketing 32 places to rank 18: this year’s awards will be hosted in Kalika’s home city of Buenos Aires for the first time on 10 October. This latest adventure promises culinary high jinks from Kalika and the Mishiguene team. He says: “We want Intersect to seem like if it’s in the middle of a Jewish wedding, but without the bride and groom.”
Photo Santiago Soto Monllor
More than just pastrami
Kalika and team will take over the café, bar and restaurant at Intersect, a challenge he relishes. Menu highlights will include those infamous Pastrami Short Ribs made with a honey-Cognac demi-glace and truffled farfalach as well as Kalika’s signature Babaganoush starring smoked eggplant, tomato coulis, tahini, za’atar, almonds and lime.
And, while the move from Buenos Aires to New York seems huge, Kalika says the two cities have some similarities. “They are two large cities that knew how to build their stories around huge waves of migrations, which led both to become multicultural and cosmopolitan cities.”
Regardless, the chef is well aware of the magnitude of the four-month Intersect pop-up. “When we started out five years ago, I never imagined we’d be going through this now. The concept has grown a lot but it still has a lot of space to grow into.”
While this is a first step toward conquering US soil, word is it won’t be the last… watch this space.
