This is an obvious question - do you love to cook?

Juste: I love to eat.  And I think some cooks forget to cook for themselves at home because maybe they get sick of it  - the smell, the clothes, and the environment.  So they might punish themselves at the end and eat a pizza from a fast food joint.  And if I did that, I don’t know if I’d continue doing this because I feel like I deserve a good meal too.  So that’s what I mean when I say I love to eat.  And I think that’s been a pivotal moment for us – because when we come home late at night we have a meal and a glass of wine and have the experience at home that we’re providing for our customers.

Ricardo:  My dad recently asked me if I’m getting enough sleep, and usually we don’t close the shop until 2am.  And I usually go to the gym at night, and then I come back at midnight sometimes to our 2 dogs.  And Juste and I enjoy dinner.  I have a glass of wine at night.

Juste:  He gets grumpy if he doesn’t.

Ricardo:  We don’t have much time because we’re working so much.  And Juste and I just unwind after a long day and have a cocktail and a glass of wine.

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Who does the cooking at home?

Juste:  I do!  Ricardo does the dishes.

Ricardo:  She’s very particular in the kitchen, she’s really good and she’s very fast.  We try to keep it clean for dividing up the labor.

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So you guys are both coming from 2 very different parts of the world, and you guys are learning about each other, does that influence anything here in the restaurant?

Juste:  Strangely, I think Lithuania and Argentina have similarities in their cultures  - not necessarily in religious or political views – but Ricardo and I both share the value of frugality.  For me that comes from being in a repressed society where you don’t have an opportunity or resources available to you so you make the best of what you have.  And for Ricardo its similar because your government was flipping every few years, and there wasn’t much stability.

Ricardo:  Yes, we’d often have a “crisis” every 10 years.  If you’re from the U.S. it seems abnormal – but that’s just normal because that’s just the way it is.  And Juste would come down with me and there are still kids playing outside and people are still living.

Juste:  I think the difference though is that Lithuanians are more “grumpy”.  So Argentinians are more outgoing and more about family and extended family – the generational living all under one roof.  But I grew up very secluded in an apartment complex.  I knew my neighbors though.  But when I went with him down to Argentina, the whole family is surrounding me kissing my cheeks – a whole horde of people.  For me it was kind of different.

Ricardo:  For Argentinians family isn’t just your mom and dad and sisters or brothers, it could be someone who lives next door – we might still call him uncle, or my dad’s cousins cousins cousin.  He’s just an uncle.

Juste:  I consider myself American at this point though.  So even though I have my Lithuanian heritage, I consider myself American.  But I think Ricardo still holds his heritage and culture a little closer.  But I think maybe he’s past that point because Argentina isn’t home anymore.  The name could be changed, but it still doesn’t change the background and who you actually are.

Ricardo:  And if I do go back, they’re going to say “hey you’re a foreigner”.  I’m basically changed now.  I still have the memories, but I’ve changed.  And we live our lives here.

Juste:  But the lifestyle here has become a part of us.

What was the concept for the restaurant before you took it over in 2015, and has it changed at all since then?

Juste: Then and now we’ve both had the same philosophy of quality, and sourcing the ingredients properly and paying a lot attention to that.  But what changed is the influence of the food – and of course, as a cook, my background has been reflected in the menu.  So before it was more American-Asian.  There were a lot of Asian ingredients, and the head chef and the chef de cuisne were both aisian – Chinese American and from Myanmar.  Now what we do – I’m European, and Ricardo has a lot of influence from Europe as well because Argentinian food has a lot of Italian and obviously Spanish influences.  So we’ve melded more of that into the menu.  And we don’t call it fusion – its just my life.  Its just the way I know food, and I use ingredients the way I see it fit, and I don’t really think about it in terms of why, or how it will look, or if its going to be gimmicky.  Usually the idea of fusion is associated with food experimentation that loses certain fundamentals of cooking with specific ingredients.  But for us, our method is seeing a purpose for the ingredients we’re using and for us its heavily influenced by European flavors and techniques.

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How do you tie that idea to the fundamentals of cooking – and how do you decide to veer off course from those traditions?

Ricardo:  Our rule is to break the rules.

Juste:  But its not intentionally breaking rules for no reason.  I just do what seems to make sense to me during my creative process.  I have a vision for something, and sometimes it just comes to me.  I know a specific ingredient from another dish, and I’ll try it in something new as an idea or an experiment.  So my process is very experimental.  And Gnocchi for example is a traditional Italian dish that we’ve experimented with.

Ricardo:  So my dad would always prepare it, and Juste would make it for me.  But she’d get an idea to add beets.

Juste:   Because beets are super Lithuanian!

Ricardo:  So an ingredient like this for Juste is very natural to work with.

Juste:  Its not like I grew up with that – but beets in Lithuania are like a peasant food that are really cheap, really hardy, and right now in the U.S. beets are really popular and trendy.  Its like the Kale of the root vegetable – and there’s always something in the spotlight.  So I just added it into the Gnocchi and it makes the color rich and vibrant.

Ricardo:  The fusion is you – its your background.  Not just an ingredient – but its what you know personally.

Do you ever experiment and present something that doesn’t resonate with your customers?

Ricardo:  We only present things that we know are a good dish.

Juste:  My view has evolved a lot about that.

Ricardo:  For us sometimes its about naming it on the menu in the right way.  For example, we have a dish that’s very Lithuanian – its called Barsotto.  And that name doesn’t exist.  So Juste came out with that name, and tried to explain what it is with the name.

Juste:  So it’s Risotto, but instead of rice we use barley.  And barley was something that my great grandma used to feed to pigs, and when she would cook it, I remember it would just smell awful.  So we also used to eat it in soups, and it was just an everyday grain that we used.  So I just though why don’t we make a risotto out it?  And it works really well, and I’ve added some other Lithuanian ingredients – whipped crème fresh and kąstinys – its from my mom’s region where she grew up.  Its basically sour cream whipped with a bit of butter and you eat with a hot potato, and you add cannibas seeds and garlic to it.  It was such a weird thing, but its similar to flavored butter.  And we add that on the barsotto and a bit of dried mushrooms.

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Is there a mainstay dish that has resonated with customers – what is your signature?

Juste:  Our pork was the dish that stayed on the longest.  It was pork confeit steak.  It’s a shoulder or pork butt cooked in oil slowly, and then we slice it and then seer it off so it looks like a steak but its confeit so its very tender and soft.  I don’t think we ever took it off the menu.

Ricardo:  That’s a dish that people come in and reorder and we’ve had it for several years.

Juste:  But we play with the seasons as well.

Ricardo: During the summer (coming here in a few weeks) we do a soft-shell crab for a base of our customers that want that, and they start asking for that.  We usually do it for a few weeks, and that’s a really popular dish, and customers come specifically for that dish.  And that’s how our menu works.  And we keep our menu small.  Because we’re a small restaurant.

Juste:  And I like that, and I just keep trying to make the menu smaller and smaller.  But its funny, because it’s a small space, and we bicker like a family back in the kitchen – not in a bad way.  But our staff all really know each other.  But sometimes you get tired of each other, but that’s how family is, and you get over it, and keep working together.  But we keep that vibe in the back of the house.