The Taste, Part Two

For the second year in a row I was part of the Taste of Cambridge team. Last year it was chef EZ, the Future, the Maverick and me. The Maverick left the restaurant soon thereafter. At that event, the Future had to re-cut Maverick’s lemons smaller. A bad sign, foretelling dark times… On our team this year was chef EZ, the Future and Big John. Big John is moving to the west coast and this will be his last weekend at the restaurant. I guess the Taste of Cambridge is a good sendoff.

We made El Salvadorean pork tacos. Grilled pork shoulder chopped into carnitas, then marinated in lime juice, garlic and cilantro. Curtido accompanied the pork on the tortilla; that’s a pickled cabbage slaw with jalapenos and pineapple. Two salsas that we make in house, a touch more cilantro and a squeeze of lime finished each taco. The fellas did not offer me a cooking whites so I kept my distance from the action. I served (and sampled) the food and talked to the public. At one point I dipped out the booth and ate oysters and sliders and pizza and more sliders. It was glorious.

After weeks in remission, the sun came out in the early evening. The news of Michael Jackson’s death spread like wildfire through the crowd… from the twitterers and the flat screens and the smart phones / passed mouth to ear through the throngs assembled. It was possible to step back and watch this happen, like a ripple of information through the human waters. The DJ picked up on it and began playing only Michael Jackson songs, and the Taste of Cambridge morphed into a memorial dance party. The smoke of the grills lingered over the crowds and it started to feel like summer.