A Big Hola from Buenos Aires!

Getting started in a new space.

Although most of those of you who are already subscribed or following me already know me from either my SaltShaker blog or social media, given that this is my first Substack post, a little introduction feels in order.

I’m a semi-retired chef, sommelier, and food/wine/travel writer. Mostly that means I’ve reached the point where I like lazing about a bit more than working, and have the wherewithal to do so. I started working in a small Italian restaurant back in my hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in early 1973, where both the owner, “Buddy” Falsetta, and his dad, “Papa John” Falsetta, saw my interest in cooking and encouraged it. We didn’t prepare anything much more than pizzas and basic pastas, but it was a start.

At the time, being a chef wasn’t a respectable career for a nice Jewish boy from the Midwest, so I went to college and have a degree in Biopsychology from the University of Michigan, and then went to graduate school in the same at Long Island University, in NYC. Interesting as it was, it wasn’t my thing long-term, and by the early 80s, becoming a chef seemed more tenable. So I went to cooking school at Peter Kump’s Cooking School (Dear Old PKU as we called it), now the Institute for Culinary Education.

From there I worked at Mondrian, The Kitchen Club, and Sazerac House in the city. I got interested in wine and took the basic sommelier’s course, did well in it, won some awards, and while working with the wine programs at American Renaissance, Felidia, Veritas, AZ, and Pazo, went on to the Advanced level from the Court of Master Sommeliers.

Then, I packed up and moved to Argentina after meeting the young man who would become my husband, Henry. I’ve been living fulltime in Buenos Aires since mid-2005, and together we run an in-home restaurant, or dining club, Casa SaltShaker. Prior to the pandemic we were generally open 3-4 nights a week, but, again, having gotten used to lazing about, we’re now generally just open 1 or 2. Plus, he’s moved forward in his own career as a folklore and tango dance professor.

I’ve been writing about food and wine for a long time, in media outlets that include everything from my high school newspaper on to Wine Spectator, Sante, Wine & Spirits, QSF, Passport, Genre, Time Out, The Guardian, and The Buenos Aires Herald. I’ve published three books - a Spanish-English/English-Spanish food and wine dictionary, another with the same title as this Substack, that’s the story of my first couple of years here, and, a cookbook from our restaurant, called Eat Salt.

For those of you who don’t know it, I’ve been writing a blog called SaltShaker for those 19 years. It’s covered food, wine, travel, and the flotsam and jetsam of life. I’ve slowly scaled back on posting - it started out almost daily, it’s now more weekly. I’m going to continue with it, but it will mostly be limited to things related to Casa SaltShaker, recipes, and short restaurant reviews - like my series called “Bite Marks” there.

I’ll be moving the more in-depth food and wine stuff, where I really dig in to a particular topic, type of food, type of restaurant. Some of that, upfront, is economic. I’ve been writing SaltShaker for nearly two decades, and for a long time I had readers who would click on the donate button and help support both the costs of the website, but also the costs of eating out. That no longer happens, and I’ve decided to put out something that has a bit more meat to it here on Substack. I’m aiming, at least for now, for two such meatier articles per month.

Welcome to the fun!