You can check out the menu at eatypsi.com

See you soon!

Bad Fairy and Wonder Woman

Don’t forget to spread the word about our Kickstarter Campaign.

http://kck.st/MfC9CG

We are excited to open Bona Sera Cafe and with your help you can have some of the favorite dishes from us anytime!

Bad Fairy and Wonder WomanClick to view slideshow.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/164888723/bona-sera-above-ground

The June 9 dinner will feature some fabulous entertainment and a wonderful menu based on your requests! Come celebrate life, love, food and fun with Bona Sera.

Entertainment will be brought to us by Jesse Kramer’s Juice Box. Check out the link for the bios and samples of this hip-hop, post bop, pop and funkified fusion band.

http://jessekramerdrums.com/Jesse_Kramer_Drums/Juice_Box.html

This dinner will benefit SOS’s Food Program. You can read more about this non-profit organization here: http://www.soscs.org/.

All donations go to our chosen organization after the cost of food and all of your Bona Sera crew are volunteers. Bona Sera sources ingredients locally whenever possible so your donations support the charities AND our local farmers/business owners.

Suggested donation for this dinner is $65.00-$100.00 per ticket. Simply respond to this e-mail us at bonaseraclub@gmail.com and let us know how many spaces you wish to reserve, your donation amount and any dietary restrictions. We will send you a request for payment. Once you make your donation your registration is complete.

This menu is based on suggestions from you, of favorite Bona Sera dinners or versions of past dishes.

Fan Favorites

1st course: Tom Yum shrimp and Grits with Pancetta and White Cheddar

2nd course: Asparagus Terrine with Creamy Feta

3rd course: Pre-Pork Pork: Rhubarb and Chili braised Pork Belly with Pea Spaetzle and Pickled Beets

4th course: Duck Breast with local greens, goat cheese and wine braised figs served with Wonder Woman’s Lusty Lemon Vinaigrette

Main course: Squid 3 Way…Stuffed Squid, Al Dente Squid Ink Pasta and Fried Tentacles

Dessert: Molten Date Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Dinner will begin promptly at 7pm. Remember all dinners are BYOB and ticket holders will receive the secret location and instructions 2 days before the dinner. Vegetarian options are available. We are happy to accommodate vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, or people who love pork!

See you at dinner and don’t forget to hold onto your forks!

Bona Sera

In the meantime, you can hire us to cater any event, party or celebration! Roos Roast will be making us our very own special blend: Bad Woman Brew, available to taste or purchase by the half or full pound next weekend when we are serving!

And some big news for us…we are being awarded the Awesome Foundation grant for the month of April! Check them out at: Awesomefoundation.org

By the way—-when is that next underground dinner? We are thinking soon, so feel free to send sugestions for your favorite charity, theme or what you want to see us wear.

Thank you to everyone for believing in us

But, you can join us for dinner at Mix MarketPlace on the corner of Washington and Michigan in Ypsilanti next weekend.  Dinner will be from 5-9pm on 3/30 and lunch on 3/31 from noon-5pm.  We hope to see you there.  Details of the menu soon…But rumor has it that Tom Yum Shrimp and Grits will be on it!

Porchetta!

So first news…we are sold out for the March 3rd dinner.  So if you didn’t get your ticket, check with us early next time.

We have a busy weekend.  Tomorrow we will be at Selma Cafe doing up some Shrimp and Grits and Porchetta.  Then you can catch us Saturday at Mix Marketplace.

Hope to see you all soon.

Bona Sera

The March 3rd dinner will feature some fabulous entertainment and a wonderful menu that we like to call Spring Breakdown.
Come celebrate life, love, food and fun with Bona Sera.

Entertainment will be brought to us by “The Resurrection of the Cool”. Check out the attachment for the bios of this incredibly talented group!

This dinner will benefit a local initiative: Friends of the Frieghthouse. You can read more about how your donation will assist this cause here: http://www.foyf.org/

All donations go to our charity after the cost of the food and all of your Bona Sera crew are volunteers. Bona Sera sources ingredients locally whenever possible so your donations support the charities AND our
local farmers/business owners.

Suggested donation for this dinner is $65.00-$100.00 per ticket. Simply respond to this e-mail and let us know how many spaces you wish to reserve, your donation amount and any dietary restrictions. We will send you a request for payment. Once you make your donation your registration is complete.

Spring Breakdown Menu:

1st course:
Mushroom Breseaole with Mortadella Bread Crumbs

2nd course:
Tom Yum Shrimp and Grits with Sriracha Butter and Pancetta

3rd Course:
Busted Borscht

4th Course:
Grapefruit Pistachio Salad with Grapefruit/Vanilla Vinaigrette and Goat Cheese

5th Course:
“Monketta”–Roasted Monk Fish with Pancetta and Blood Orange Sauce

6th Course:
“Pearagon” Almond Cake with Pear, Taragon and Lemon Creme

Dinner will begin promptly at 7pm. Remember all dinners are BYOB and ticket holders will receive the secret location and instructions 2 days before the dinner. Vegetarian options are available. We are happy to accommodate vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, or people who love pork!
See you at dinner and don’t forget to hold onto your forks!

Bona Sera

That first night we started off at Marty’s Martini Bar in Andersonville for some good and dirty martinis.  The nice thing about Marty’s is that you can order a large or small martini, which must be a great option for those with somewhere to drive or those who are just stopping in for a quick one….excellent in theory, but we wouldn’t know. We enjoyed it for what it was that night…dark, sleazy and a bit cliquey (great to watch when you’re an out-of-towner).

We cabbed it to dinner…ahhh AVEC. Warm, inviting, casual and creative, there’s a sense of serious foodie bliss in the air when the door closes behind you. It’s obvious that the entire dining room has come to sample, to savor and play and not just fill up.  Food Porn Index: HIGH.

avec, avec

We sit at the bar where we can see all the action. The wine starts flowing and we decide to order what turns out to be an amazing duck sausage with maple in brioche.  A dish we still keep trying to recreate but with no luck.  All was excellent, some sublime…we sampled brandade, dates with chorizo and the charcuterie board.

Morning, morning, got a late start thanks to the bottle of red slurped at Avec, Wonder Woman opted for a refreshing and freshly made apple ginger carrot juice at the health food store on the nearest corner, which sounded good to the Bad Fairy as well until she happened to look across the street. Hmmm….what is this “Italian Beef”. What’s the ruckus?  Why all the fuss? Best to take the short walk and test, eh?

Thin slices of shaved beef DIPPED in beef jus WITH cheese and sport peppers and then DIP the Italian roll in the jus as well. WHAD’YA GOT  TO SAY, UH? Drippingly delicious.

Another Chicago favorite that we visited is Anteprima in Andersonville where we met God for an appetizer of duck proscuitto, a beautifully grilled flank steak over arugula and then finished with a fig infused grappa. Anteprima is usually busy but has an incredibly warm, communal dining atmosphere full of peeps that appreciate simple but elegant high end Italian classics with an occasional twist. God made us drink more grappa.

That night, THAT SAME NIGHT, Wonder Woman needed a late night snack at her old favorite, La Pasadita, La Pasadita, La Pasidita, three taquerias within a block of each other, owned by the same family on Ashland in the Wicker Park area.  Great people watching, juicy, pungent and just spicy-right steak tacos hit the spot. Killer salsas, though the roasted one is a favorite, work well with anything and that includes the burrito supreme, but we’re not mentioning who had room for that (the Diety).

Carbonara Verdure

April brought the next dinner and our idea was to recreate a 1940’s Jazz Supper Club. We researched some old fashioned dishes and came up with a great menu that incorporated some of the old favorites we found with some new twists and local vendors (the now well-known Lansing shrimp for the Shrimp Louie).  Carbonara Verdure went from the germ of an idea to a realized oozing fruition and we experimented with cold asparagus terrine, braised lamb, flatbreads and a semifreddo, all of which turned out to be one of our favorite Bona Sera dinners ever. Our experience of meeting with Vincent York and learning about how his program really influences young people reaffirmed our commitment to doing these dinners. We had some incredible music and the Ann Arbor Swing Club dancers were there to get people moving.

We began planning for our next dinner soon after the Jazz Supper Club…something we had been wanting to do for quite some time…a pig roast!  We found a great method of doing the pig Cuban style (http://cuban-christmas.com/hall_o_fame.html). Now who could we possibly trust to be pit-masters, feed the fire every 15 minutes, watch the skin crisp, imbibe steady quantities of beer? Hmmm….trusted, juicy pit-master update next post!

We somehow seemed to do that while practicing our “bring home the bacon” jobs or as we like to refer to them, our “hobbies”. But Bona Sera is our passion, our expression of creativity and what keeps us going…It is what we wish we could be doing for real…full time. Because of Bona Sera we have met some really incredible people who have become great friends.  Together with their passion and all of our commitments Bona Sera has become a really incredible community fixture.  Bona Sera may best be known for The Bad Fairy and Wonder Woman, but truth be told, we are both just a small part of who Bona Sera really is…Bona Sera is you.  Bona Sera is all of our volunteers from dishwasher, to server to kitchen helpers to musicians, our pimp, everyone who has opened up their homes and the diners.

For 2011 we have bigger aspirations to fulfill lifelong dreams and continue the exciting work in the community, but, before we get to those thoughts…let’s review our year of food:

Time: New Year’s Eve 2010

Humiliating Event: “Iron Chef” competition

The chefs were Bad Fairy and Wonder Woman of course, Big Daddy and Loualicious.  The rules were that Fuego supplied 5 secret ingredients.  We were all given chicken as the protein and allowed to bring one ingredient as an option for all chefs to use.  The secret ingredients were:  rice, chili peppers, chocolate, cauliflower and Coco Lopez.  We had 45 minutes to prepare our dishes.  The heat was on in the kitchen and as is usually the case with cooks, fair play went out the back door.  Mis en place was stolen from cutting boards (so much for super heroes’ reputations for fairness, civility and all that…), pots were moved or taken over on the stove.  And we all produced interesting dishes:  Bad Fairy did a chicken coconut curry rice soup, Wonder Woman did a seared chicken breast with a mole sauce and creamed cauliflower, Big Daddy created some kind of chicken with a molded coconut rice accompaniment (imagine an innocent collection of rice whose mother has decided to give a bowl cut to…) and Loualicious presented the most stunning dish, coconut r ice pudding with chocolate points and a lot of other shit all over the plate.  So it was a close call, but in the end The Bad Fairy was the righteous winner (but Wonder Woman believes that she only won because she is soooo Bad).

Big Daddy's Mac and Cheese

Our first  Bona Sera dinner happened in late February. We had an idea to do a dinner featuring comfort foods and after a few glasses of wine, came up with what we thought was a great menu. Hmmm….venue…venue…? Wonder Women thinks…hey let’s really challenge ourselves and do a dinner in a warehouse space?!!  So the warehouse space seems interesting and we can turn it into a cool spot…right?  This dinner occurs on a frosty February evening in an enormous barely heated ginormous football field of a building… the dining room space was pre-warmed with space heaters that had been left on for the entire previous week .  We had a shop vac powering a plastic utility sink, folding tables for prep and plating, a few camping burners and 3 stoves that were about a 2 minute walk from each other.  The dining room was a good 60 feet from the kitchen area and it was so cold for those of us cooking that we could see our breath.

Some of our favorite courses included Big Daddy’s award winning Mac and Cheese and Wonder Woman’s s hsalted caramel ice cream.  Bad Fairy is still pissed; Wonder Woman feigns contriteness and snickers behind her lasso in a thoroughly unladylike way.  But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…right? Bad Fairy hates platitudes.

Truth be told, with each dinner we have continued to perfect our recipes, our ability to cook and create in unfamiliar spaces and organize dinners with our guests’ best interests at heart.

We WILL continue…