You’re Invited Sunday Dinner
You heard it here first: Picnic will not have Sunday brunch. Why? We are complementary. Our neighborhood already has amazing brunch options, we don’t need to duplicate that. It’s more important to me that our team has the opportunity to rest and recharge after they close up on Saturday night. And, we know from talking with our community that Mondays are a bigger sandwich sized hole in your life than Sundays.
But, I love the convening power of food on a Sunday. Growing up, it was a big lunch after church with lots of extended family and usually a nap to cap it off. Living in Boston, it evolved into Sunday dinners with our found family of friends. Everyone brought something and it was simple enough and fed that need to be together and keep the Sunday scaries at bay for just a few hours. My first blog post I referenced Sunday dinners and feeding that need that is not just about food, but the convening power of food.
So, starting Sunday, May 12 we will be bringing you Sunday Dinner at Picnic. You’re Invited. It feels only fitting to kick it off on Mother’s Day given this is a mom-led operation. Kitz will be cooking for me, because I can’t do that to myself on my day off. But I’ll be pouring drinks for you because it’s what I would do if you were at my house and that is the spirit of a Sunday dinner. Less choices than our full menu, just what the host and hostess are offering. You show up, we feed you. It really is that simple. Bring a mom!
The weeks to follow we get to add in a layer that I’m so excited about. We can’t cook for you every week. But what we can do is share Picnic with our chef friends across the cities. You are going to get to stay in the neighborhood and enjoy some of the best food around.
Picnic is a platform. Our menu development was a collaboration- more on that later. Take an idea, give very talented people the time, space and creativity to make it their own. And get out of their way. That’s the Picnic way. So, for Sunday dinners we are offering up our kitchen to wildly talented friends and letting them bring you their food. It might be the food they are known for or something new they are workshopping. It might be a concept they are ready to launch, just waiting on the brick and mortar to be done. Or it might be friends just getting the gang back together and cooking for you for fun.
The space between having the tools and talents to succeed to opening a brick and mortar is wide, and risky. We want to give our friends a space and a platform to test and tweak their great ideas. So Sunday dinners are reserved for them. And you’re invited. Come support them and we will be behind the bar.
Instagram will be the place for the latest on the schedule. In reward to reading this far, here’s the all star line up:
Sunday, May 12- Mother’s Day- Kitz and I are kicking it off. He will cook a few Filipino favorites for all of you. I’ll be behind the bar. Come see what Sunday dinner is all about.
And then…
Sunday, May 19- Sushi by Baaska
Sunday May 26- Nikki and Brian of the Salsa Collaborative - but not burgers
Sunday June 2- Adam Witherspoon- Greasy Spoon Syndicate
Sunday June 9- Ben Spangler and Pete Nguyen
You’re invited!
The Ham
Uncle Rob
There is a sliver of space within big families occupied by people who love you unconditionally, but get to be more fun than parents. They don’t come with the expectations of well intentioned grandparents. The unicorns of the extended family-- aunts and uncles.
I love the Tar Heels and everything Ruth Bader Ginsberg ever wrote. My uncle Rob was a diehard Duke basketball and Fox news fan. We both love John Prine, Willie Nelson and Tom T. Hall. We both love “street porching” and Ham Dinner. We didn’t spend a lot of time in that space that popular opinion today would dictate sits between us.
Rob’s grandchildren call him Ba. This has given rise to a number of “Ba-isms” the rest of the family has adopted and turned into a constant source of banter, competition and tradition.
First, street porching is defined by the presence of a porch (naturally) and usually an adirondack chair and a drink, but those are not required. A well curated playlist or dog also up the ante. You can street porch alone, or together. Or, together apart, via a text message displaying your street porch view. I’ve received many a text of a prime street porch session on a Thursday afternoon while I’m still on a zoom call at 2pm. You get the idea.
Beyond street porching, we have the art of out-ordering as another ongoing competition. Did the fried oysters you chose beat the pork belly? If not, you lose! At least for the appetizer round. You might get another shot to redeem yourself on an entree.
One of the many things I loved about my uncle Rob: his ability to fold levity into the vernacular of everyday life and to create tradition.
In 2010, my sister was struggling at college when she received an email subject line: Rob’s Secret. Complete with a scanned copy of a transcript from 1960, it read as follows. “Kirk, I know you have been under a lot of hostile fire lately and thought I could share some humor and maybe even shed some light. I have enclosed a copy of my official transcript from my first year and one summer school back in the day.” His GPA was a cool 0.485, which he explained away to his mom with an inverse scale where 4 was bad and 0 was ideal.
As the email goes on to share, that same year of his failing grades, Rob’s parents died in a car accident. The guardrails were gone. With the help of a few good friends, some time in the Air Force and the good luck of meeting my aunt Cat, he regained his footing. But he didn’t forget the feeling of being without anyone to lean on. And he made sure that no one he loved ever had to experience that lack of a net. When my mom talks about her time in Chapel Hill, it always includes the story of being a broke college student and opening up an envelope with a crisp $20 bill from her cool brother-in-law. If he was in town for work, he would always take her out to dinner, reliably clad in cowboy boots.
Families evolve and along with them, the traditions. My mom’s side of the family doesn’t celebrate Christmas together anymore. There's no animosity (beyond basketball season), but everyone settled into their own individual tradition after my grandparents passed. Instead, we celebrate Ham Dinner, another Ba-ism of sorts. It’s my favorite day of the year. It’s not Christmas, and it’s not New Years, it’s just Ham Dinner. It falls generally between Christmas and New Years, or whenever people can get together. With this new tradition, no one is juggling the second or third meal at their in-law’s house. Uncle Rob, outlaw (our family term for “married-in”) turned patriarch of the family, always cooked the ham.
After law school, I left North Carolina and moved to Boston. It was time for a bit of breathing room away from familial expectations. As productive as the move was, at times it was lonely getting set up in a new city. Instead of being asked when are you getting married or when are you having kids, the most triggering question for me was, “So, when are you moving home?” Boston, and the space between well intentioned expectations, was good for me. I got the elbow room to figure out who I was and what I wanted my adult life to look like. But I’m much too proud, or stubborn, or both, to ever acknowledge that moving to a new city without family and few friends was very hard at times. Rob was always in touch with a moment of levity here or there.
When Rob was in the middle of chemo at Duke, I was working in a hat shop for fun so I shipped him a gorgeous navy blue fur felt Stetson. In reply, he shipped me back his entire collection of records from the 70’s. Lots of Tom T Hall and bands I didn’t know yet. On another occasion I jabbed back with, Island Creek Oysters straight from Duxbury, Mass to Warsaw, NC where Rob lived.
On an especially gray day in Boston, I received a heavy package. I opened it to find an entire dry cured country ham. Along with it, another of Rob’s secrets, the coveted recipe for cooking an entire country ham. Trying my hand at the tradition, I filled my tiny apartment with the handful of friends I’d made to date and cooked the whole ham. Of course, they loved it.
Rob’s Secret:
To prep: preferably dry cured ham as opposed to salt cured. Soak the ham in cold water overnight changing water 2-3 times.
To cook: Use a large roasting pan. Take two large pieces of aluminum foil and join together putting in the pan and put the ham in the aluminum foil cupping it so you can add ingredients. Make sure you put the ham in skin side up. Add the two cups of orange juice or ginger ale, and close the aluminum foil around the ham. Bake at 325 degrees approximately 18 minutes per pound. A good sign that it is cooked is that it has shrunk some from the bone.
To finish: When the ham is cooked, peel back the foil and let cool 30-40 minutes. When cool, trim the skin off leaving a thin layer of fat. Score the fat in diamond shapes, place a whole clove in each of the diamond intersections. Sprinkle or coat generously with brown sugar, place the two pineapple slices on the top and return to oven. Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes keeping close watch so that it doesn’t burn. Fat will crisp up without burning.
To serve: Remove from pan, place on platter, remove the cloves, cool down for a few minutes before slicing. Slice thinly. Enjoy!
My secret: You don’t have to agree on politics or basketball to have a special bond. And if you find yourself unsure what to say, try mailing them an entire ham. Oh, and GO TO HELL DUKE!
Postpartum in a pandemic and the birth of a bar
It all begins with an idea.
January 2022: Here’s the scene: I’m a new mom, recently moved to very cold Minnesota during another covid winter. We are on an endless loop of daycare germs, which always strike on Fridays, resulting in canceling social plans and staying locked inside. The transition into being a parent is hard. It’s disorienting and isolating, especially when you are living in a new place and working remotely. And cold and tired. One night I said to Kitz “I am disappearing”. Although I didn’t know it at the time, that was the moment Picnic officially began.
I’ve wanted to own my own place for as long as I can remember, realistically since high school. Sure, I’ve always loved food. As I’ve gotten older and had the chance to travel and taste more things, I found a deep appreciation for whiskey and a curiosity for wine. But why can’t I just go out to dinner and be done with it. Why do I have this itch I have to scratch?
It’s always been in my bones. I grew up in a family who is serious about food, and more than the food, the hospitality. My best family memories all revolve around food. Upon further reflection, mostly food outside: Barbecue, roasted oysters, seafood boils, and pizza on the beach. Picnics you might call them. But really, it’s the power of gathering around the excuse of food. Staying up all night with my dad and uncle to cook whole pigs (eastern NC style, of course) and feeding 100 people just for fun.
When you are at my parents house for dinner, you feel at ease but you can’t put your finger on exactly why that is. Your wine glass is full, but your heart is overflowing. Through my moves over the last few years, I have shed most hard copy books but there is one cookbook I have on my mantle. It’s called See you Sunday, by Sam SIfton. He tells a nice story about burning chickens, unfussy Sunday family meals and how congregating around food is a religious practice of its own. He writes, “People are lonely. They want to be a part of something, even when they can’t identify that longing as a need. They show up. Feed them. It isn’t more complicated than that.”
In that long first winter of parenthood, even when I couldn’t yet put my finger on it, I knew Picnic would be the antidote. To feel at home, at ease. But not to return to my own parents’ house, but rather to create that feeling of true hospitality within my own community. And to create that for everyone else with that nagging feeling that something is missing.
When you walk in the front door, you’ll hear laughter; the inviting kind that you are already a part of. You might hear someone crying and hopefully it's a baby, but I can’t guarantee it. My hope is you will hear the sound of your own voice again when you walk back out that door.