Seattle to Soviet Georgia: Salmon With Less Salt
LEAD: Hospitality takes on new, and overwhelming, dimensions when the purveyors of good will are Government officials and food professionals here in the Republic of Georgia, and its recipients are three chefs from the United States.
Hospitality takes on new, and overwhelming, dimensions when the purveyors of good will are Government officials and food professionals here in the Republic of Georgia, and its recipients are three chefs from the United States.
'It's kind of like being with your mother,' said Caprial Pence, the 24-year-old chef at Fuller's restaurant in the Seattle Sheraton. 'They want you to be happy, but their way.'
The Georgian way with hospitality under normal circumstances is legendary. And this visit is anything but normal. The three - Mrs. Pence and her assistants, Diana Nowlis, 28, and Laura Dewell, 27 - are the first American chefs to be invited to the Soviet Union as guests of the Republic of Georgia. In a two-week exchange program arranged by Gosteleradio, the Government-run radio and television agency in Georgia, the chefs are preparing the best of the foods of the Pacific Northwest before they return to Seattle on Saturday.
Soon after their arrival in Tbilisi on May 16, following a whirlwind day of cooking in Moscow, the chefs were asked about their reception in Georgia. It isn't that they haven't appreciated the nonstop gifts and flowers, they said. It isn't that they haven't enjoyed the tours to museums, monuments and churches, the visits to the opera and ballet, the local nightclubs, the meetings with Georgian trade and communications officials, and the unending succession of snacks, meals and tastings. It's just that all this hospitality has turned their lives into a phantasmagoria of culture, food and wine, from 8:30 in the morning to midnight.
Last Sunday's bus excursion to eastern Georgia and the wine-growing region around the city of Telavi was typical. The three-hour tour was interrupted at 1 o'clock by a meal - the chefs' Georgian hosts called it a snack - that included heaping plates of 19 savory appetizers, including khachapuri (bread stuffed with cheese), pickled acacia flowers, beet greens, cheeses, tomatoes, cucumbers, tarragon, pickled garlic and the superb Georgian bread known as puri. At 7, the chefs sat down to an even more elaborate feast, which featured 24 dishes and at least as many toasts. That meal lasted three hours.
Feelings of good will have been further tested by the Georgians' inability to understand that their guests are used to lifting pots, ordering supplies and operating on their own. There has been a polite but constant tug-of-war between the Georgians and the Americans over the proper role of the hosts and that of young women in a professional kitchen. The women often lose.
After only a few days, they gave up even trying to carry their own briefcases. That task, along with any other toting, lifting and moving of people and equipment, has been taken on by one of their hosts, Tengiz Chigvinadze, the chef at a restaurant here called Darial.
There has also been a genteel clash of culinary cultures. In the kitchen, as on the road, the Georgians are not just eager to help; they insist on it. But again, they do it their way: stirring dishes that should not be stirred, removing foods from the heat before they are cooked or returning them to the stove when they think the food is underdone.
Then there is the matter of seasonings: Georgians love salt, pepper and other spices. The American chefs avoid salt, so the Georgian chefs slip it into food when their guests aren't looking.
One Georgian chef was captivated by Ms. Nowlis and acted like a 13-year-old schoolboy, she said, sabotaging her work as only a teen-ager showing off would. She finally discovered a language he understood: making a fist, she 'threatened to punch him in the nose,' she said. He backed off.
All this help, Mrs. Pence said, has made cooking for 90 people over the past week 'like cooking for 400.'
Still, the meals the Americans have produced have been the equal of their work at Fuller's, one of the finest restaurants in the Pacific Northwest. It was there, last February, that the chairman of Gosteleradio-Georgia, Armas Saneblidze, was so impressed with his meal that he invited the chefs to visit the Soviet Union and demonstrate Pacific Northwest cooking in Moscow and Tbilisi. A group of Georgian chefs are to visit Seattle in the fall.
Mr. Saneblidze was in Seattle because his network will sponsor a film about the city, to be shown in the Soviet Union as a prelude to the Goodwill Games, an Olympics-style international sports competition to be held in Seattle in 1990.
The menus served in Tbilisi have been based on what the chefs brought from Seattle - salmon, oysters, cheese, wild greens, edible flowers, wine - and on what they obtained from the high-quality private-enterprise markets in Tbilisi. Now, the markets are brimming with spring fruits and vegetables. One night, the women made a tarragon-walnut pesto for the salmon; another night, a tarragon-aioli sauce. Tiny new potatoes were combined with apple puree and thyme at one dinner; another evening, potatoes were tossed with cooked beet greens.
There was only one near disaster. No matter what Mrs. Pence tried, she could not remove her tart shells from their baking forms. She eventually abandoned the effort and prepared a dessert of strawberries with two sauces, one of pureed berries and berry preserves and another of sour cream and oranges.
The guests at each of the dinners were especially taken with the salmon. The only salmon served here is salted, like lox. In fact, Georgy Gongadze, the maitre d'hotel at the Palace of New Rituals, where one meal was cooked, told the chefs the salmon needed more salt and pepper.
Karlo Ketsbya, the catering manager of the restaurant, took a more up-to-date view: 'I would like to emphasize that I liked best the idea of not having salt in the salmon, because natural is best.'
The meals were otherwise met with universal acclaim and eaten with gusto. In fact, Tsilosoni Autandil, the republic's First Deputy Minister of Trade, said that if the Georgian chefs' visit to Seattle is equally successful, he is 'ready to discuss opening a Georgian restaurant in America and an American restaurant in Georgia.'
For her part, Ms. Dewell said: 'It's nice that people see cooks as a viable force for peace and friendship. When we first heard about the trip, we thought we'd spend a lot of time in the kitchen and meeting chefs. I never expected the attention we are getting.'