FOOD
A baker’s true colors fly with Argentine alfajores and queer tango
Andreas Ozzuna takes asado seriously. Which is surprising, because Ozzuna is actually a baker, the owner of Wooden Table Baking Co. and Wooden Table Cafe in Oakland, where the specialty is Argentinian sweets like alfajores and conitos.
But the importance of asado becomes clear in the center of Ozzuna’s lower Oakland hills backyard, which is gorgeously landscaped with large stepping stones and shrubs. For there sits an Argentine parrilla, a wood-fired grill hand-built from cement, bricks and a cast iron grate.
Ozzuna — who prefers the pronouns “they” and “them” — stands proudly at the parrilla on a sunny day that makes you forget it’s winter, patiently charring tri tip, a whole chicken with cut lemons and a dozen butternut squash halves, while friends chat happily over red wine and cheese. “The key to an asado is that it takes a really long time,” they say jokingly. “All day.”
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In South America and Ozzuna’s native Argentina, asado refers to both the tradition of grilling meat over a fire, as well as the social event itself. “Asado is more a ritual than a simple food,” says Graciela Montaldo, professor of Latin American cultures at Columbia University in New York. “It’s a strong tradition from the Argentine pampas (the fertile South American lowlands), where gauchos would kill a cow in the middle of the desert to cook and eat.
“Today, asados are for special occasions, like weekends, birthdays and celebrations.”
While growing up in San Isidro, just outside of Buenos Aires, Ozzuna’s maternal grandfather worked as an asador, cooking asados for wealthy clients. Their grandparents would host family asados during holidays and celebrations, using animals raised on their land.
Here in the Bay Area, asado takes on even more importance for Ozzuna. For them, it’s a place for community, acceptance and queer tango.
Ozzuna immigrated to San Francisco in 1998 at age 28, partly because life as an LBGTQ person in Argentina was difficult. (Note: This has changed since they moved. Argentina legalized gay marriage in 2010, before the U.S.). Ozzuna was born female and came out as gay at age 15. At the time, they weren’t accepted by their family — another thing that has since changed. They currently identify as nonbinary and prefer gender-neutral pronouns.
“Back then, gay people didn’t exist in Argentina. You had to hide,” they explain. “I was arrested in a gay bar there and held for a while, so when I came to San Francisco and hung out in the Castro, I would hide when I saw cops. I was scared.”
It was here where Ozzuna found their chosen family, a group of queer women, including a few Argentine immigrants, their wife, Citabria, and their very social French bulldog, Olive. This monthly asado, Ozzuna explains, is a celebration of everything they were rejected for in Argentina. “It’s important to keep me going,” they say.
“All of us at the table are queer, many are immigrants and we’re intersectional,” says Ozzuna’s friend and fellow Argentine immigrant Julieta Barcaglioni.
For Ozzuna, no asado is complete without dessert. Their bakery business, Wooden Table, centers around alfajores, which they learned to bake from their abu (abuela, or grandma). Alfajores are Arabic in origin and spread from Spain. In Argentinia, they are often made from two soft shortbread cookies sandwiched with dulce de leche and rolled in coconut flakes. At the bakery, they like to experiment with flavors, including lemon ginger, snickerdoodles and chipotle chocolate.
But today’s dessert is as Argentine as it gets: torta alfajor rogel. Essentially, it’s a giant, multilayered alfajor cake made with thin, crispy cookie discs and topped with dollops of Italian meringue, a nod to Argentina’s large Italian population. It’s the same recipe that Abu would make for birthdays and celebrations. It was nostalgia from growing up cooking and baking with Abu that inspired them to make the switch from geology to baking in 2011, so the cake is a fitting tribute to Abu.
To assemble the cake, Ozzuna cradles a massive pastry bag filled with pounds of dulce de leche. “It’s like a big, fat baby,” they say. “It’s a lot of dulce.”
“No such thing!” shouts Barcaglioni. Ozzuna’s arms start to shake from the strain of trying to extrude the dulce from the bag as Barcaglioni cheers them on, yelling “Esa! Esa!” Another friend, Florencia Manóvil, joins the cheering section as Ozzuna finishes the meringue topping and uses a small blowtorch to brown it.
Barcaglioni points to herself and Manóvil. “We are all Argentinian, immigrants and queer, we all immigrated in 1998, and it’s really special,” she says, highlighting the ways that Ozzuna has created an Argentine queer community in the Bay Area.
The night ends the way it always does, with a bit of queer tango. Ozzuna met their wife, Citabria, in the local dance community, and she teaches lessons in a dance studio in their backyard. As guests change their shoes, Ozzuna’s friend Karen Lubisch talks about a Berkeley group she started seven years ago called Abrazo Queer Tango. Ozzuna and friends are members, but the concept of queer tango isn’t one I’m familiar with. Ozzuna’s friend and professional dance partner, Ginger Daniel, explains: “Queer tango is an opportunity to disrupt the heteronormative rules of tango, who leads and follows. We’re bucking the patriarchy and system through dancing.”
As Ozzuna leads with Citabria, several other female partners join, embracing and moving with the music.
Tango is more than a hobby for Ozzuna — it’s a passion. With Daniel, they won a bronze in tango in the Gay Olympics last year.
“There was a time when I didn’t feel comfortable announcing who I was as a business owner,” Ozzuna says. “But today, it’s on the window of the cafe: immigrant-run, LGBTQ owned. I’m proud of that.”
Wooden Table: 2300 Broadway, Oakland. www.woodentablebaking.com. 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Friday; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, and until 5 p.m. Sunday.
Leena Trivedi-Grenier is a freelance writer living in the Bay Area. Email: food@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Leena_Eats
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