Interview between Style Magazine (Mary Murphy, November 2007, unpublished) and Azafrán
What are you known for? What’s unique about your cuisine?
We are known to be a very creative kitchen, with interesting, small, but numerous plates, call it tapas, hors d'oeuvre, appetizers, finger foods, or amuse-gueule; and with an equal emphasis on beauty as on flavor.
We draw from cuisines all over the world and attempt to make bold statements for peoples' tongues. The tongue is an important transmitter of sensations of love, ideas (when we speak or pull a face), and cultural connotations in the form of taste.
What type/style of food do you serve?
We serve light food with bold flavors, drawing primarily from the Mediterranean and the Latin American worlds. Even children are willing to try it.
What type of events do you cater?
We cater any affair, on the condition that the client wants an event in a relaxed and creative environment - one that will form lasting memories for his/her guests.
What is your vision or philosophy?
Our philosophy is to ensure that our food is made with lots of care. That means using ingredients that are grown locally (or not) under happy conditions, and having a wonderful staff to make and serve exquisite food to the best of its ability.
What is your idea of a good wedding party? How do you create this on a modest/extravagant budget?
I like to remind families that a wedding is a celebration of love and nothing else. No matter what the budget, our appreciation of love, food, and beauty comes through.
What’s your Catering M.O.? How do you work with a client to come up with a menu?
We first ask for the client's favorite foods and/or cuisine, the intent of the event, the average age of the guests, and then work from there. Every menu is as unique as the party.
What’s your culinary background? How long have you been catering?
I have been cooking for family and friends for the last 30 years and have been told that I should be a caterer for just as long. For 25 of those years, my professional occupations were anthropologist and jewelery designer, which is why Azafrán pays so much attention to design and detail in its food as well as multicultural flavors. Five years ago, in 2002, was when I officially began to my catering business full time.
Our executive chef, my right hand, Ted Gowrie, has been cooking professionally in French restaurants for 30 years, and with Azafrán for the past two.
What have been the most memorable events/amazing dishes or dinners you’ve catered?
There are too many to count because each event has its own flair.
Do you have one signature dish or drink?
Sangria and mojitos for beverages, but we constantly are researching new recipes to surprise our customers' palate. There are many equally popular dishes.
What is the average cost per person?
Our larger events that include rentals, servers, food and beverage, average per person cost is between $90 and $120.
High Spirits
At an annual celebration, the living— and the departed— are invited to drink, eat and celebrate.
By Laura Wexler
Irena Stein’s Day of the Dead celebration is about as far as you can get from a typical American Halloween party— and glorious because of it. Instead of a barrage of grinning jack-o’-lanterns and arch-backed black cats, teeth-rattlingly sweet Hershey bars and popcorn balls, there is an ornate altar, live musicians playing Latin jazz, delectable hors d’oeuvres and fresh margaritas at the ready. It’s a feast for the five senses with something for the sixth sense, too: something palpable yet inexplicable floating in the air.
Stein would say that something— or rather, those somethings— are the spirits of the dead, whom she’s invited to celebrate among the living for one night here at Café Azafrán. If it sounds like Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits” crossed with Laura Esquivel’s “Like Water for Chocolate,” it is. “I grew up in magic realism,” says Stein, a native Venezuelan who came to the United States in 1980 to study cultural anthropology on a Fulbright scholarship. “My grandmother could turn the lights on and off with her psyche. With her, everything had an extrasensory feel. She put magic into things.”
Stein, who presides over a catering business in addition to the café, connects with her dead grandmother— and with all her deceased beloveds— through her annual Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) celebration in Café Azafrán’s digs at the Space Telescope Science Institute on Johns Hopkins’ Homewood campus. Far from an institutional food service operation, the café has become a hidden gem since Stein took over its operation in 2004.
From the kitchen, Stein’s staff brings out a variety of beautifully arranged appetizers that reveal her Latin-tinged multicultural roots— she spent time in Paris and Brussels as well as Venezuela— and her background as a jewelry designer. There are trays of meat empanadas, shrimp skewers to dip in Asian sauce, ceviche and tequenos, a Venezuelan pastry of cheese wrapped in paper-thin dough.
The 80 or so guests— some café regulars, some who’ve heard about the party and came to Azafrán for the first time— mingle, nibble and visit the altar created by Stein’s longtime friend, artist Irma Vega de Bijou, who comes each year from California. Splashed with bright reds, yellows and oranges, the altar is a visual demonstration of the Mexican relationship to death explained by Nobel laureate Octavio Paz: “The Mexican chases after it, mocks it, courts it, hugs it, sleeps with it.
It is his favorite plaything and his most lasting love.” This intimacy is quite in contrast to the American relationship to death— and is the reason why Day of the Dead is so different from Halloween: one is a celebration of death and one is a trivialization of it.
The altar displays the traditional Dia de los Muertos accoutrements: handmade papel picado (brightly colored tissue paper flags and banners), pan muerto (animal-shaped loaves of bread), calaveritas de azucar (skulls made of sugar) and calacas (whimsical skeletons that represent death).
Also on the altar are a variety of ofrendas, offerings for the dead: fresh fruit, letters and bunches of marigolds, which are believed to attract the dead to the altar. Some guests have set out photos of loved ones, including a dog and his award ribbon and squeeze toy. Someone has placed postcards from Reno and Virginia City, Nev., places that held meaning for a lost loved one. There is a matchbook with one match extended. Stein herself has placed a photograph of her Polish-born father, who died in 2004, near the things that delighted him in life: apples, vodka, herring.
When it’s time for dinner, guests find seats to await the first course, a jicama, orange and mesclun salad. Soon, Stein and her staff bring out the star of the evening, chiles en nogada, an elaborate Mexican specialty they’ve worked for days to prepare. It’s a rich and complex dish: poblano chiles stuffed with three types of meat, spices and fruit, topped with a creamy almond sauce and garnished with pomegranate seeds. “It takes forever to make,” says Stein. “It’s done for special occasions only.”
With the handmade decorations, the beautiful food— and the presence of the spirits— this certainly feels like a special occasion.
Style Magazine – November 2007
Interview for 'Baltimore Eats' Magazine, Winter 2006
Azafrán —Spanish for saffron. “It is an Arabic word,” Irena explains, “One that comes from the Moors… from when the Moors lived in Spain. There are many gorgeous Spanish words that came from the Moors. Beautiful words like albahaca, which is basil, azúcar [sugar], azul [blue], alcoba [bedroom], azahar (flower from a lemon tree)… In Irena’s delicate, hybrid French/Venezuelan accent these words are truly beautiful!
Irena Stein hails from Caracas, Venezuela. With a Polish father and a Venezuelan mother, she spent her childhood in both South America and in Europe, primarily Paris and Brussels.
“My father always was nostalgic about Europe and we’d go —and then my mother would be nostalgic for Venezuela and we’d go back, and back and forth like that…” she laughs. “So we ended up doing our education in French schools because you can find a French school anywhere.”
Irena came to the US in 1980 on a Fulbright scholarship to Stanford to pursue a Masters Degree in Cultural Anthropology. “Then I stayed on, got married, and had a child.” Due to personal circumstances, she took a job working with a jewelry designer out in California. “I had never worked with my hands before. This was new to me and it was exciting to become involved in the arts. I was always the social scientist, so this was a great opportunity for me to develop my own sense of aesthetic, my own expression. Often now, when I work with the food, I find myself arranging things in just this way or that and I think: I’m still designing jewelry but now working with this lovely food!”
Eventually she built up a strong reputation as a designer/craftsperson in her own right and after 18 years in California she found herself well established as a nationally known player in the art crafts marketplace.
“I moved to the east coast because all my business was over here. I was doing craft shows —the Smithsonian shows and the shows in Boston, New York and Chicago. And I also wanted my daughter to see life on the east coast —to see a different part of the United States.”
After the World Trade Center attacks and 9/11, her jewelry business dropped off radically. “People became less interested in purchasing luxury things. I knew I was going to have to re-think everything and find another way to make a living!” she exclaims.
Two years ago her friend John Shields was approached by staff at the Space Telescope Science Institute on San Martin Drive with a proposal to take over the management and re-design of the cafeteria that they had. John was too busy with his own restaurant, Gertrude’s, to consider it, but he suggested that they talk with his friend Irena.
“I have always had a great passion for food and loved cooking beautiful food. All my friends said I should go in that direction at this point in my life, so I thought I would try it. I started a catering business in 2002.”
“John thought that my cooking style would be a good match for an International environment such as this one. When I came to talk with them I presented my food. A bite is worth a thousand words. I said: ‘Maybe they like it – Maybe they don’t.’ This is the kind of food I do. And they liked it!
It was a very big step for her to take —designing her own professional kitchen, creating a full menu, doing the interior decorating and hiring staff. “John and Gerard Billebault, from Brasserie Tatin, and other friends in the food industry came to help me design this open kitchen. We put all the plans and ideas together, working on it for eight or nine months.”
Today the once dismal cafeteria has been completely transformed. A warm and lively Spanish-leaning décor is balanced by the serenity of the dense little forest viewed through the wide windows that form one long wall of the space. World Beat music, an orange and gold color scheme and real fresh roses on every table fill out a mood that is inviting, comfortable, contemporary and stylish.
The Institute was open to bring in an alternative to the usual cafeteria food. A really homemade, healthy food to the University environment and perhaps an even greater transformation came in the form of the new menu Irena created. “Before, this was a really lousy place for the food, Irena laments. She built her menu around quality, fresh ingredients combined with a multi-cultural approach to recipe development. Her patrons come from all over the world and Irena offers them healthy food prepared with a sophistication that is unique for this type of venue. “The Astrophysics Institute at Harvard came to us and wanted to see how we were having success with a healthy and elaborate approach to food within an institutional setting.”
Irena also enjoys celebrating foods in their different cultural backgrounds. This year the celebration of the Mexican Day of the Dead ran from October 23rd to the 28th and featured a special menu that included Yucatecan soup, albondigas, quesadillas with cactus and mushrooms; shrimp tacos; chicken enchiladas with green sauce San Luis style, tamales with chicken picadillo, flautas, Flan, rice pudding, Vanilla Ice cream with roasted pineapple and rose petal sauce. Wow!
Azafrán serves breakfast and lunch on weekdays, and offers a good selection of vegetarian items as well as weekly soup, entrée and dessert specials. The café is not open nights or weekends but Irena operates a growing catering business from her kitchen on the campus. Use of the dining room for special functions is restricted to people or organizations affiliated with Hopkins and the Association of Universities for Research and Astronomy, but she also does a thriving off-site business. “We go out for a lot of private parties. We often go the American Visionary Museum —which I love because you can be so creative there!” She explains, “We don’t often go in for a lot of huge, hot meals. We are known for our multi-cultural approach to menus, mainly of hors d’oeuvre, tapas, etc. What we do is very international. There’s a Latin touch, obviously, but the flavors are from everywhere —North African, Mediterranean, French, everything and everywhere… We are known for that and for our creative use of flavor. We do nothing bland; everything is highly flavored.”
In all of this Irena continually credits her staff: “Without them I would have no business!” As she introduces the chef Ted Gowrie and workers in her kitchen, the pride she has in them, the esteem she has for them, is nearly a visible glow. Describing her catering staff she explains that: “I try to always hire people that I know because it is important to me that my staff be lovely, lovely people… that they have a beautiful smile, elegance and a kindly concern with making the guests happy and pleasing them. I think that is the most important thing.”
A practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism for more than 30 years, she credits all this environment as a reflection of what she calls her Good Fortune. “In my spiritual practice we don’t talk of ‘Luck.’ When you practice everyday, this form of practice leads to incredible transformations in your life and you come to really, really want to do your best, to be the best, kindest person you can be, to live the best life that you can, to contribute to humanity” she insists, “And that will attract Good Fortune to your life.”