
I’m not as good as the Cinco Jotas carver yet, but I’m working on it. “Now that I do it every single night, I really have a lot more appreciation for the people that do this for a living. In New York City, it’s really rare to see.”Ī post shared by Bar Vinazo got a whole jamón-slicing kit for my 21st birthday, so I’d done it a few times before Bar Vinazo opened,” she says. But hand slicing all different types of jamón is everywhere in Spain. Because they’re only fed acorns, the fat is very sweet and it just melts in your mouth.

#Elsewhere bar brooklyn free#
The Ibérico pigs live free range for about two years. Cinco Jotas is a little bit higher quality, so you won’t see that everywhere.

You’ll go into a bar and they’ll have a few hams hanging behind the bar. Hand slicing in Spain is very, very common. “I grew up going to Spain at least four months out of the year: two months in the summer and two in the winter. “My parents found it really important for me to keep my roots and my culture,” Garcia-Nevado tells InsideHook. The founders of Mercado Famous give us tips and tricks for presenting and enjoying cured meatsĬarving the ham, which sells to restaurants for a little more than $1,000 per leg and is available alongside dishes including seafood fideuà and pollo en pipitoria, is a skill that Garcia-Nevado became interested in while visiting her family in Spain. Born in Barcelona and raised in Brooklyn, Garcia-Nevado serves slices of Cinco Jotas ham she cuts by hand at a can’t-miss carving station, in cheese-filled croquetas and as a garnish atop cocktail rims after its been ground into dust. Prior to Bar Vinazo opening on Seventh Avenue in the heart of Park Slope in Brooklyn, one of those master carvers came in to educate chef Silvia Garcia-Nevado and her staff about the art of slicing Cinco Jotas for customers. Dried in caves in curing cellars that provide the optimal temperature and humidity levels for Cinco Jotas’s lengthy process, the hams, which can give off more than 100 different odors, are monitored by a master sniffer who has to sign off on the quality of the meat prior to a master carver going to work. The comprehensive process Cinco Jotas uses requires a master sculpturist to expertly prepare the ham before a salt manager buries each one in Atlantic sea salt by hand. And though Courtney did not sneak in any Real Estate numbers like he did at that 2019 Kingston show, the extended codas on a few tunes did bring his main band to mind, most notably on Many Moons’ “Foto” and that LP’s show-closer, “Airport Bar.” Unlike larger, more prodigiously-attended Real Estate shows, which due to further vantage points are often best enjoyed by closing your eyes and basking in the alluring music, this more intimate setting allowed one to focus attentively on Courtney’s exquisite singing and guitar playing, and to better appreciate his delectable songwriting flair.Located in the Spanish province of Huelva, the town of Jabugo is where pork purveyor Cinco Jotas has been producing 100% acorn-fed Ibérico ham using a five-year maturation process that’s remained unchanged since 1879. Taking advantage of the warm, resonant acoustics of Elsewhere’s smaller Zone One room, Magic Sign’s two best numbers, “Outcome” and “Corncob,” shimmered beautifully to open the show, as did the lighter, sighing “Terrestrial” and wistful “Living Rooms.” Meanwhile, Bond’s brisk, snappy drumming kicked the set’s one harder song, “Sailboat,” into high gear. And once again, they were up to the task, providing the same crisp, full-bodied accompaniment to these dozen songs that they gave to Cut Worms.

Sure enough, my Nostradamus-like instincts proved true, as keyboardist Andrews, bassist Keven Louis Lareau, and drummer Noah Bond did indeed join the lanky, bespectacled Courtney on stage. And second, New Hampshire’s John Andrews & the Yawns were opening the show, so the possibility lingered in my mind that they might be called upon to back Courtney for his set, as they did in stellar fashion for Max Clarke’s Cut Worms in May at Manhattan’s Bowery Ballroom.

For one, his new sophomore LP Magic Sign is a beguiling delight, bettering his 2015 debut Many Moons, and even rivaling any of Real Estate’s five full-lengths thus, the prospect of hearing its songs live tantalized. Having seen Real Estate frontman Courtney play a hushed, low-key show by himself at BSP Kingston in Kingston, NY in 2019, the announcement of this solo gig three years later held more intrigue.
