Cafe Nordo Fêtes the Modern American Chicken

Cafe Nordo, a demented homage to the mundane chicken is in the second to last weekend of its run at Theo Chocolate. You’ve got five chances left to catch the best show cum five-course dinner in town.

“Some enjoy leather, some enjoy chains,” intoned sous chef Opal Peachey. “Here at Cafe Nordo, we enjoy chickens.”

Part of the cast of Cafe Nordo, including your dinner: Henrietta the Chicken

 

This was Saturday afternoon. As four-thirty rolled around and the lengthening sun rays spilled through the high windows of Theo Chocolate’s warehouse in Fremont, I was watching the performance element of the forth course of Cafe Nordo come to a close. The cast-cum-wait staff were finishing the clearing of tables while Peachey gave her monologue, a stirring homage to the evening’s guest of honor, Henrietta the Chicken, which the diners will have just finished consuming.

A new project by Terry Podgorski and Erin Brindley, two of the driving forces behind the now-defunct Circus Contraption, Cafe Nordo is a five-course, prix-fixe dinner celebration and exploration of the Carnal Food movement and the work of Chef Nordo Lefeszki. A little like dinner theatre but not, Cafe Nordo opens Thursday night and runs Thurs.-Sat. (except Halloween) until Nov. 21. Arrive around 7, seating is by 7:30; tickets are $85 in advance (but remember, that includes a five-course dinner with four wine pairings, and yes, it’s 21-and-over).

The entire affair is sort of like ethical consumerism on crack: these days, everyone’s concerned that their food is grain-fed, organically grown, ranged freely, and ethically slaughtered. Carnal Food takes the idea a step further and seeks to emotionally and intellectually engage you with the life and death of your food in deference to the near miraculous process which got it onto your plate, recounted in performance even as you eat it. It’s fun, a little disturbing, occasionally bordering on the perverse—latté activism infected with a viral strain of radical Marxism, intent on reconnecting you to your means of production over fine dining.

While I didn’t get a chance to sample the food, the menu is available online; that said, descriptions don’t do it justice, based on the pictures I saw. While I don’t want to give anything away, I’d suggest you give some thought to what, for instance, chicken consommé over pâté saffron dumplings might look like.

What I did see was the cast of six, featuring three of my favorite local performers, which should be enough to see you on the show/meal in its own right.

Opal Peachey’s probably the least well known of the three. It turns out she mostly works on the technical side, but I caught her in a small play called Pretty Girls back in July, a show produced by Peachey and two collaborators that started as a project at Cornish. Not only was the play intellectually challenging and conceptually ambitious (particularly for such a small theatre), but Peachey delivered a stunning comic-satiric performance, making me wonder why she doesn’t wind up onstage more.

Carter Rodriquez, one of the waiters, has been around the Seattle theatre-scene for years, but I remember him mostly from the Edge Theatre Ensemble’s stunning production of Brecht’s Mother Courage and All Her Children last year, when he played the cook opposite the incredible Betty Campbell as Mother Courage.

And then there’s Becky Poole, experimental comedienne and performance artist, who moved to Seattle after a fairly successful career in New York, including voice-over and music work for Discovery Channel and Nickelodeon. I’ve never her seen her comedy, but was amazed by her solo performance piece murder, hope in January at Annex Theatre, as well as by her turn in Sunday Service at Northwest New Works in June, opposite Sarah Edwards, Erin Jorgensen, and Paige Weinheimer.

Backstage, Poole caught my eye and, with a sardonic grin, admitted, “My entire career, I’ve managed not to have a food service job, and now I’m playing a server.”