I had the rarified privilege of experiencing many facets of Argentinian life in my first twenty years – from the symphony to the bus system. I was looking for myself in foreign places and, in the process, building an unmatched repertoire of personal experience. Not much compares to those chaotic moments spent with a violin in my hand or a piano beneath my fingers, and the experience of connection, flavor, and culture that filled that house along with the music.
Argentinian asado – assorted meat grilled diligently for hours over open flame – is unmatched both in flavor and in experience. My brother-in-law Nestor makes the best parrillada I have ever tasted. He cooks it slowly and salts it heavily, and serves it with plenty of empanadas. I began this New Year – 2023 – at Nestor’s house grilling meat, playing the world’s most elegant piano (a 1959 Steinway baby grand), and drinking Achaval Ferrer’s Quimera, inundated in gratitude for every moment of my childhood and every ounce of experience he shared with my very young and impressionable mind.
The taste of empanadas, parrillada, and red wine came to flavor my adolescence, calibrating my tastes – both for food and experience – for something deeper.
The something deeper was comprised of sound, flavor, place, and an inescapable depth of being. The curation of these components into a prismatic interpretation of how to spend an evening is what I am after in 2023 with both Merigold and OneandahalfSlices. For me, it all started with people. People immersed in sound, flavor, culture, and place drives connection. It is a formidable thing, a strong thing, a simple thing. This experiential living is not the type of thing that can be perfectly curated. It is organic, not contrived; fresh, not canned; and served a little sloppy, not manicured and tweezed onto a plate.
It’s an agent-based model.
(stick with me…)
Agent-Based Model. A stochastic computer simulation comprised of autonomous agents used to study the presence, emergence, and evolution of complex social phenomena.
The beauty (artistry / elegance) in an agent-based model is that neither behavior nor interaction is prescribed. A successful simulation provides the environment for interaction to emerge organically without explicit logic or rules to specify outcomes.
When you are designing an ABM (something I did routinely during the three years of earning my PhD) you are designing an environment, not coding an outcome. You’re building a world or a scene… in a place, with flavors and sounds and things you feel. It’s sensory, it’s visceral, and it is much more fun in the real world than in the world of computation.
In 2023, Merigold and OneandahalfSlices together are going to make more empanadas. We’re going to measure less and live a little bit more. We’re going to be fundamentally more creative than corporate. We’re going to travel, be curious, and think deeply about the world and the people in it. Invite-only but every possible perspective welcome. I, for one, am looking forward to the year – the flavors, the music, the salt, the ocean waves crashing, and the company.
So what does Argentinian food taste like? I’m not sure how to describe it other than to say, to me, it tastes like experience. It tastes like my childhood, like my family, like music, and like deep connection to the world.
It is the dish OneandhalfSlices would most like to serve to its patrons and followers this year.
#yellow2023
#openflamecooking
#measurelesslivemore
#morecreativethancorporate
