High-end apartment pop-up dinners, Dan Barber breeds flavor into squash, and how Muchacho infuses salsas with unique personalities

This week on Menu Talk, Restaurant Business Senior Menu Editor Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn, senior food and beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News, share their take on some recent happenings in the world of food and drink. Bret is settling into his new Brooklyn digs, discovering the vast assortment of pickled and smoked fish available in his new neighborhood. And buckwheat—that’s the grain of choice in the shops that surround his apartment. Pat was recently a guest at a “Nikkei Twist” dinner in which private chef Will Ono created a five-course Colombian-Japanese menu. Off-duty private chefs, restaurant sous chefs, line cooks and other culinary pros develop the menus and cook at these events. There’s also a sommelier at the dinners to pair wines. It’s a new kind of dining platform that’s becoming a win-win for both chefs and consumers. We listened to clips from Bret’s podcast with Joe Schaeffer, VP of Culinary for Atlanta-based Electric Hospitality, about Muchacho, the group’s Southern California-inspired taqueria. Schaeffer created six unique fresh salsas using a variety of chilies, some raw, some roasted or simmered, to infuse each with complex flavor.