Robbie Nowlin (Figuratively) Sets A Good Table
I’m sitting across a couple who would at any other dinner party probably not be the right fit. Their conversation points are brash. Their chit chat with the newspaper food writer is a tad… off. The lottery system that had won them entry to the night’s event was indeed fortuitous, but the regaling of the table of their ordeal was the same ordeal just about everyone else had to go through — a hair trigger response to a Facebook post.
Chef Robbie Nowlin and artist Justin Parr’s monthly Wicked Nights at Wickes is the epitome of a casually presented but very fancy dinner. There are certainly many different walks of life here, taking in cuisine that makes arguments and always ends up being the party that one would expect these guys with these boisterous personalities to put together. However, any good dinner party is about the people as much as it is about the food. The selection of guests is an element of the dinner just as considered as stringing lights or the subtle shot glasses holding tea lights strewn about. A party is planned and these are its attendees, though if the dude I’m sitting across who was suddenly invited weren’t there, despite his resoundingly noting, he probably wouldn’t have been replaced by the CEO of Merrill Lynch.
It’s a big deal, going to the dinner. We’re seated together. We’re testing our palettes’ boundaries. We’re on a journey together, but it helps to ease up just a touch with the oohs and aahs. Still, they were here. They were fun. Their jokes, though surface level, landed. They were of the table. They may have still been embarrassing themselves a tad — at any other fancy dinner, they may have most certainly moreso — but it’s Southtown. There couldn’t have been a more casual fancy dinner party, and the host only recently decided not to give a dildo away as a gift to one of the lucky guests. Coarse is always just around the corner here. It wasn’t… but it could have. This is part of the table, too.
Such is the essence of the table — where artists and writers and land owners and bartenders and lawyers and so many others are here having a meal they’ll never have again and sharing a time they’ll never recreate again. It’s the fifth month of Wickes, the dinner where the only repeat guests are Justin and the splendiferous Mike Casey, it’s all happening in his backyard after all. For this reason, it’s difficult to speak on dinners past; all that can be said of them are likely rumors and innuendo by now, mysteries long forgotten under the influence of too many of Jeret & Jorel Peña’s cocktails. Perhaps this is as it should be, one of those little mysteries a community can keep for a while. That they could say they were there, and not the CEO of Merrill Lynch, eating a six-course meal where the most delicious part probably came from someone’s front yard.
It’s a dinner that proves a point. It was light but fulfilling, it put its focus on the vegetables and freshness. Chef PJ Edwards, a graduate of St. Philip’s College’s quite stellar culinary program and is currently the sous chef at Gardner in Austin, had a point to make about what a meal should be and he and Robbie’s friends from Citrus, the restaurant at downtown’s Hotel Valencia where Robbie is executive chef, presented everything exquisitely with all the detailed focus of everything else here. Yet it’s a dinner that is still a party. It proved its point. Everything was great. It was a very good Cabernet sauvignon. We’ll all remember the argument. But then dinner ended and the party stretched on.
Others wandered through, as any good parties are wont to embrace. People filtered out (including the host, briefly). The house still isn’t quite set in order the next day, as any good party probably has considerable cleanup afterwards. These are details, too, surrounding the table. He had to get these tables. Someone had to set up these tables. Someone had to place these settings. Someone had to tear this all down when it’s over.
And someone has to spread the legend. Justin, the permanent guest is part of the legend of the table, photographing each moment that everyone else isn’t posting on Instagram #WickedNightsAtWickes. This account is perhaps part of it, too. But perhaps just hearing from anyone regaling about a dinner Robbie Nowlin threw, whether hosting it or certainly when he’s cooking it, is spreading of the legend, too. That couple was part of the table. They have a story to tell. They get to spread the legend.
Take that John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch before its 2008 buyout by Bank of America. You’ll have to check Facebook next month like everyone else.
