Finding the common ground between two chefs with different culinary points of view might pose as a challenge. But for chefs Rhea Rizzo and Carlos Garcia, their differences were precisely the point.
For one night at Dominion Cellar, the two came together for Common Ground, an intimate 50-seat dinner that placed Rizzo’s Asian-leaning cooking alongside Garcia’s European sensibilities, with fine wines providing the thread that tied the meal together.
The collaboration began rather casually. “It was Roxanne Lee (co-owner, alongside husband Bill Yuen) who expressed the idea of a collaboration at Dominion,” says Rizzo. “At first I thought she wasn’t serious,” she laughs. “But when she asked the second time, I then looked at dates to make it happen!”
It wasn’t so far-fetched since Rizzo was already well acquainted with Garcia’s cooking. She had been a fan since the chef opened The Black Pig years ago, particularly remembering his lamb dish and his desserts.
“The first time I saw his baguettes, and they were the tiny ones, I thought to myself, now that’s a beautiful baguette,” she recalls. “Not a lot of people may know this, but his desserts are always on point. He’s one of the few male chefs who actually do it so well and is quite intentional about it.”
East Meets West at Common Ground
When it came time to building their menu, dividing responsibilities proved surprisingly easy and straightforward.
“It was almost immediate when we had that first meeting. I was assigned Asian/Eastern and he was naturally Western/European cuisine,” Rizzo says. “No one said, ‘Hey, how about we do it the other way around?’”
Rather than create dishes together, each chef stayed within their own culinary vocabulary. That was intentional: the goal was to see how two distinct cuisines could sit side-by-side without any of the two having to compromise its identity.
“There was no collaboration dish as we wanted to stay true to the two cuisines marrying well—even with their own inherent complexities—plus pairing those two with just one type of wine.”
Rizzo stuck to her guns and produced delicious renditions of Asian favorites like miang kham composed of saba and oyster, gulai ayam featuring barramundi and sambar embe, a bun cha of etag and fish sauce espuma, and a beef rending of short ribs and grilled pako.
Garcia, on the other hand, matched her repertoire with an ensemble of equally stellar plates—blue crab with crustacean aioli and crispy potato, foie gras on toasted brioche with cherry and Port wine, beef ragout lodged inside a tender braised onion, and lamb ribs with sweet corn and pickled mustard seed.
That last element became the real bridge between them.
The Wine Brought Everything Together
Rizzo helped shape the progression of the wine pairings, beginning with Champagne alongside the opening snacks before moving into Riesling and a restrained Chardonnay. The whites had enough acidity to complement the pickled notes of the otsumami and the lighter curry of the gulai ayam, while also matching the refinement of Garcia’s European dishes. From there, the dinner moved toward sturdier reds as the meat courses arrived.
The two chefs didn’t need to cook the same food—or even cook a dish together—to create a cohesive meal. Instead, East and West were allowed to remain distinctly themselves, meeting somewhere in the middle over a very good glass of wine. And perhaps that was the real common ground.
Frequently Asked Questions
Rhea Rizzo is the chef and owner of the restaurant Mrs. Saldo’s.
Carlos Garcia is the executive chef of The Black Pig, Fiddle Leaf, and Dominion Cellar.
Common Ground was the one night collaboration between chefs Rhea Rizzo and Carlos Garcia. It was an intimate 50-seat dinner where they served both Rizzo’s Asian/Eastern food with Garcia’s European cooking.
Each chef presented their own culinary creations and paired them with various wine pairings. Some of the dishes Chef Rhea Rizzo made were the gulai ayam featuring barramundi and sambar embe, beef rending of short ribs, and otsumami. On the other hand, Chef Carlos Garcia served beef ragout, lamb ribs with sweet corn and pickled mustard seed, and blue crab with crustacean aioli and crispy potato.
