A Taste of Tasca

For three nights last week, Barcelona-based “everyday life interiors magazine” apartamento was in New York to open (and each of the nights, close) Tasca, a temporary restaurant at Ed.Varie, the East Village project space run by Karen Schaupeter and publisher Nick Neubeck of Seems Books. Rustic tables and chairs were built from salvaged wood; a makeshift kitchen was installed in the gallery’s storage room to seat a selection of guests that included artists, designers, photographers, writers, and people with great apartments.

Magazine directors Nacho Alegre and Omar Sosa, and Editor in Chief Marco Velardi presented their issue #04 last October in Tokyo, “Because we thought cooking food ourselves and sharing it was the best way to introduce ourselves to the Japanese market.” In Tokyo, the editors hosted a series of lunches. Restless for New York and the launch of #05, they tried out dinners: “We don’t know where Tasca will pop-up again,” say the editors. “It’s a way for us to bring together friends, contributors, readers and share an intimate moment getting to meet and spend a couple of hours together.”

By necessity, recipes have varied by city: “Just adapting to calculating weights in pounds from kilograms, it took me a whole day to get used to it,” complains Velardi, who was responsible for most of the cooking (with the help of his hosts, co-editor, and some very gracious interns). For the menu, he says, “The concept was very simple: familiar recipes we wanted to share with our guests. These included pan con tomate, pear and brie slices, zucchini and basil salad, asparagus risotto, and, for dessert, fresh whipped cream, mascarpone, and peaches. The recipes, like apartamento‘s subjects, were “Originals…or adapted from recipes over time. But, as with any recipes, once you try it for the first time, you will always have a touch of personal experience which will inevitably make it yours forever…”