To commemorate its 100th anniversary, culinary brand Le Creuset, in collaboration with Secret Supper, is reintroducing its acclaimed multi-city dinner series, La Carte by Le Creuset. For the centennial, the ticketed dinners will take place in New York City, Chicago and San Diego, and will be curated by some of the most esteemed chefs in the game.
Ahead of the debut dinner in New York City on May 15, curated by James Beard finalist Chef Fariyal Abdullahi, who serves as the executive chef at Hav & Mar—one of the city’s sensational new seafood hotspots—Blavity sat down to chat with Abdullahi about her vision for the dinner, partnering with Le Creuset and bringing her Ethiopian heritage to her cooking.
How her upbringing in Ethiopia influenced her cooking
“Growing up in Ethiopia inherently meant I ate seasonally, when products were at their best,” she says. “I was also fortunate enough that my family was as close as one could get to their food source. Every Friday, my mother would pick us up from school, and on the way home, we stopped by a mutton farm to make our protein selection for the following week. Once selected, the mutton would get placed in our trunk and come home with us, where I would watch it get slaughtered. My mother would then expertly butcher and mise en place different cuts of the animal for different dishes, such as tougher cuts for braises and fattier cuts for quick stirs, and prep it for the week. This instilled in me, as young as age three, the gratitude that a life was being lost in order to nourish us.”
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