Food & Art Collide As Poi Dog, Musi, & Crochet Artists Team-up for a Summertime Pop-Up at the Fitler Club
Food & Art Collide As Poi Dog, Musi, & Crochet Artists Team-up for a Summertime Pop-Up at the Fitler Club
Kiki Aranita of Poi Dog, Ari Miller of Musi BYOB, and local artist Caitlin McCormack are teaming up for a one-night only pop-up dinner and art show they’re calling SNACKBAR at Fitler Club, taking place on Thursday, July 22nd with three seatings beginning at 5:15 p.m. at The Garden located at 1 South 24th Street in Philadelphia.
The family-style menu, priced at $95 per person plus tax and gratuity, will feature a blend of Poi Dog’s Hawaiian flavors in collaboration with Musi’s fine-dining style of cooking, showcasing Aranita, as well as Miller, who earned Philly Mag’s Best of Philly honor for Best Chef in 2019. Reservations can be made at http://sevenrooms.com/events/thegarden.
The menu will include Maui lavender salmon poke with salmon caviar over a puffed rice crisp; a gamtae seaweed sorprese pasta dish with yuzu butter, and roast pork with guava Katsu BBQ glaze with coconut & collard lu’au as the main entrée.
The event will also be centered around a series of crocheted works of art by Aranita and McCormack, who worked both separately and collaboratively throughout last year’s period of isolation to build the summertime food cart of their dreams in art form. McCormack, a Philadelphia-based fiber artist, has crocheted 10 cotton sculptures, some mounted on wood and others suspended on small hooks, displayed at The Garden, while Aranita will have 10-14 mixed media, wall-mountable crocheted fish tins, as well as other crocheted snack foods on view and for sale throughout the night.
“This SNACKBAR event is an attempt to recreate the laid-back joviality of a beach vacation in the midst of a pandemic,” said Aranita. “Through the use of accessible craft materials, Caitlin and I have put together these pieces of art that represent more than just food for us. Caitlin is such an incredibly talented artist, and I’m very excited for her work to be showcased during what should be a fun and delicious night at Fitler Club, who we are all very grateful to for hosting us for this collaborative effort.”
Poi Dog was a restaurant and food truck which served the Rittenhouse area Hawaii-rooted cuisine for nearly eight years before closing due to the pandemic. It has grown into a retail sauce company, which has seen Aranita showcase her flavors on a national level.
