A special event is blooming in Tucson. 5 Points Market, the Barrio Viejo darling known for its brunch and specialty food boutique, is hosting a rare dinner service. The menu is a collaboration between chef Kusuma Rao (@ruchikala), who hosts storytelling dinner parties, and the 5 Points natural wine program. The dinner features north-Indian-inflected sourdough pizzas, thoughtful pairings and treats like a black cardamom affogato for dessert.
“This is fun,” said Rao. “If me and Jasper [Ludwig, of 5 Points] were running a pizzeria, this is what we’d put out there. My Aramsay dinners have a seven-hour story attached to it, and a creative process that’s ridiculous. This is just Desi pizza vibes! Jasper got really excited about creating ambiance to bring red checkered tablecloth pizzeria vibes. Just letting it be pizza is the most liberating thing ever.”
Rao had been working on their pizzas for eight years, but they didn’t want to debut until they were sure the temperamental dough and flavors could be made consistently.
Those who are able to snag a reservation on the 5 Points Square site for the event, which took place the evenings of Feb. 4-5 in addition to this upcoming weekend Feb. 11-12, will enjoy a selection of three of Rao’s pies: Aloo Methi, made with potatoes and bitter, maple-y fenugreek; Saag Paneer, with a spinach base and both shredded and cubed cheese; and red-sauce black cardamom lamb bolognese. “I aggressively flavor my food,” said Rao. They describe the food loosely as Indian-fusion: it’s a composite of all the flavors Rao has loved.
Chef Kusuma Rao stretches their dough at their pop-up pizza event at 5 Points Market & Restaurant, Tucson, Ariz., Feb. 5, 2022.
Kumi magic
Rao knows their food is magic. Their friends might even call it that, after a 7-to-10-course dinner party Rao calls Aramsay, an Urdu phrase that evokes the ease of Sunday mornings. “Kumi magic!” friends gush, in the glow of an elaborate, intensely flavored, intimate meal. While Rao appreciates the compliment — they truly love creating these immersive experiences — Rao has a different word for what goes into their performances: unpaid labor.
“When people hear their work being described as magic, it conjures this image of you pointing your wand at something and it turns into something delicious,” they said. “But it’s standing in front of the stove, scraping the fond from the pan, getting the texture of something perfect with repetitive spins on your wrist, and kneading doughs that are kind of stubborn and not relenting, continually doing it until it’s right.”
In an industry with notoriously tiny profit margins, there is not much room between paying fair prices for agricultural and service work and charging accessible rates to diners. The margin is even smaller when, like Rao, you’re a perfectionist, determined to workshop each menu item until the flavors are each added at the right moment.
“I can’t eat the food I cook at these pop-ups. It might as well be compost to me; all I can taste are my mistakes,” Rao said. Their father, a prolific hobbyist painter, spends hours a day for a year on a painting. When it goes up on the wall, the whole family is in awe of it. “We’ll all think it’s a photograph,” said Rao. “But every six months he will take it down and put it back on the easel. And I think that’s where I get it from.”
Rao grew up in Tucson, watching their mother labor for days, alone in her kitchen, preparing regional Indian food for visitors from across the subcontinent. “She’d be making a dish from a place she’d never been to, but she wanted them to have that experience,” Rao said. “It was a puzzle with a missing piece, and she would labor and tinker until she got it right.”
Though Rao has moved part-time to Portland, where their partner went to grad school, they still identify as a desert rat. They’re the real-deal Tucsonan who wears black in the summer and drives without their A/C on. The heat and aridity here, the representation of Sonoran and Indigenous cultures, the wide open skies, are all inspiration for Rao. “My body is an extension of this desert. I interacted so much with our dirt as a child. I have a lot of romanticism about being in the dirt in the desert.”
While Rao loves the whimsy and thoughtful conversations they’ve found in their Portland community, and they learned to love the trees that cut into the horizon, they said, “I feel like Tucson has more powerful and raw and deep truth. There’s an intense depth here.” Before bringing any recipes to Portland, they debut new menu items in Tucson, and workshop with their lifelong friends. “I always go through my emotional process here,” they said.
Savanah Sandate, assisting chef Kusuma Rao, gets a special order vegan pizza out of the oven during a pop-up pizza party at 5 Points Market & Restaurant, Tucson, Ariz., Feb. 5, 2022.
Making work sustainable
Rao defines their work as whenever they’re on their feet: while logistics and planning can be stressful, the labor is to stand for 16-hour days in the kitchen, using their limbs in the repetitive, taxing motions that make food delicious. Then they go to sleep knowing the next day will be exactly the same.
“It’s always the conversation that happens from 10 p.m. to 1:30-2. You’re thinking about all the things that happened. All the ways you feel squeezed. Can I do this? I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be stuck in this system doing this again,” Rao said.
“It’s hard to be so passionate about something,” they said. “I don’t think I’m good at anything else. I taught myself to cook when I was 13. It’s the only thing I’ve ever applied myself to consistently, every single day. It’s this thing I do want to share.”
There are so many unsustainable elements to their work: we haven’t even mentioned the fact that Rao often couldn’t afford the meals they create for and sell to others. Additionally, Rao holds themselves to brutally exacting standards. “When I hire someone to help with prep, it’s hard to navigate. I would never want to subject them to how I treat myself,” they said.
But working with 5 Points has given Rao a new perspective. “A team — it’s not something I’ve ever had,” they said.
“Being able to pass on responsibilities and have it be so well taken care of… While there are unknowns, there’s also the expertise of other people that I don’t usually get to lean on and am really grateful for. I work all the time by myself. Now I get to realize the people I’m working with have experience in all these situations I’d never know how to move through,” they said.
After these pop-up pizza events, Rao will go back to hosting their outrageously intricate dinner parties — by themselves. Now, though, they know what it feels like to work with the natural support of a community with a common goal: creating unique, moving experiences with food. Seeing other people do their magic makes doing yours feel just a little bit more sustainable.
