…not a bar & restaurant…

Another day I was invited to a “speakeasy”, these prohibition

era bars where you need to know the hows and wheres

and the passwords to get in, as probably everyone

knows about but me, and funny enough, they had a

Washington State Liquor Board license, just like me…

I’m not a chef. I’ve been cooking professionally for many years, 3 continents, 11 restaurants, some great reviews, one bad one… but I’m not a chef. I’m a guy that cooks and loves doing it. No jackets – white, black or any other color – no embroidered name, no hats and absolutely no tantrums! Well, one or two, maybe…

All Nations Soccer Bar & Restaurant is not a bar, nor a restaurant. It’s my house.

Cooking is the most humble form of art. We still enjoy books, plays, tunes, paintings, created by artists long gone and often it gives us a false sense of eternity, of grandeur. If you cook a great dish it can be reproduced but that particular creation, that special moment when ingredients combined perfectly – for your palate and your guests, at least – is unique and gone with the meal. It brings us back to our finitude and brings us to the daily celebration of life. A meal cooked and eaten with love and passion, with family and friends has a magic that we should hope would be never gone as a custom, as part of so many cultures.

Cooking is also the only art form to touch all senses: the flavors, scents, the texture, the colors and shapes, and so many sounds to go with it. That’s why my bar is a liquid kitchen!

I have a profound admiration for plates constructed as sculptures, abstract praises to the art of cooking. And elaborate dishes that take forever to get ready and have so many steps you feel like you’re climbing Machu Pichu. But I also love the simple: a steak rubbed with coarse salt, grilled on a live fire. A caipirinha: cachaça (not rum! not vodka!), muddled limes (not lime juice! not lemons!), sugar (not simple syrup!) and ice. Simple and delicious, genius! It also makes me think of how easy it’s to bastardize cocktails, dishes, concepts, like some of the filthy places around town which only sell inedible garbage but call themselves a deli…

In spite of my admiration for the fancy, sculpted dishes that are a wonder for the eyes, and (not so) quite often a feast for the palate I get tired. I want simple. I can’t wear a tux to the party of life everyday. I guess I’m a simple person by option and by nature.

So my house/restaurant/bar has no pretense. It’s a soccer bar/restaurant that celebrates soccer as a cultural phenomenon. A place that wasn’t started because of the Sounders (the project is 3 years old and came alive as a way to help Sister Communities/All Nations Cup survive). A bar where you can have a classic drink properly made, where we make several infusions and have a very nice selection of spirits not because it’s hype. I made my first infusion when I was 17, and de-bastardized cocktails were always a trademark of my restaurants.

Food is also simple but ingredients are very good and as authentic as possible, and preparation has no shortcuts. Here nobody is “your server (servant?) for the night” but you’re treated properly and you feel at home if anything that I said above rings a bell. You’re not the patron but our guest and the guest of the crazy bunch that works with me. We’re not hype, we’re not trendy. Our concept of a social club, where regulars are members and have several advantages, was started in London, in my cafe – Rio – in 1995!

My goal was to come up with a place where I could experiment, where I’d like to come and have fun working there, trying new recipes, new infusions and cocktails, working with my music projects, being creative. I think I just managed to do that. I just hope you’ll enjoy the ride as much as we do.

Sounders—Way More Than Just A Business

For most foreigners from soccer countries it is very difficult to understand how a team that should belong to a city could be uprooted and carried away to another city on the other side of the country.

It’s ridiculous for us to imagine Santos FC in Rio de Janeiro, Boca Juniors in Rosario, Barça in Cadiz. Arsenal in Leicester? Absurd! Well, we have to mention the great fiasco of Wimbledon moving to Milton Keynes, but it is an exception that confirms the rule.

For us a team belongs to a city, or even a neighborhood, and that’s it. It’s your team and nobody would be brave or crazy enough to try and change it. And this is as true in Brazil as it is in Spain or Korea.

So, it’s a worrisome affair to put your heart and passion into a club that will literally disappear (Sonics? What Sonics?). Transferring a team to another city should be classified as a serious crime against an entire town.

Now, let’s talk about MLS. Moving the Earthquakes out of San Jose was a bad sign, ugly stuff in my opinion. Are we going to cheer for “our” club, just to have it taken away from us down the road? Much more than other sports, soccer teams become an addiction, a case of benign sickness. The way passion is building around the Sounders, losing it – suddenly moved down to, say, New Orleans – would be a disaster.

The love being built for the Sounders by Puget Sound folks is a lesson and a sign of things to come. Soccer will take over, it will grow, and although it won’t replace other sports, it will be as great as football (the other kind, the “egghand” one; Great game, wrong name…), or basketball.

I’m not a sociologist, anthropologist or any “logist” out there. Just passionate about soccer. But I can think of a few reasons why the Sounders are such a phenomenon: the Sonics leaving; the passion for soccer without a muse in this state; the small town turning into a big city; the very clever move to keep the Sounders name – if it happened the way I think it did it was brilliant! Great Chess Master’s move!

But at the end of the day what counts is this: Seattle fans showed for the first time in US soccer history that a team is more than just a business. They proved that there is a non-quantifiable value, an intangible characteristic that traditional teams in the world have, that go beyond the business. And this value belongs to the fans.

The only owner of the Sounders whom I know a bit about is Adrian Hanauer. And knowing that he’s a Seattle guy through and through, and was willing to lose a ton of money with the old USL Sounders, making sure we had a pro soccer team in town, I believe he will never even dream of moving the team. I think that the other owners are getting it also. Passionate ownership? I hope so.

The Sounders are already a tradition. I see a behavior towards them that normally takes years to build. A great team? Not yet, not yet. But it will probably come. But if it happens or not they will need a lot of bad decisions, of screwing up beyond belief to destroy what is coming.

I don’t want to take credit away from the ownership, or from the marketing, but what Seattle is showing is that soccer is about us, it’s about the fans and the passion we put into it. The Sounders are the soccer team of Seattle, of the people of Seattle. We are the first city in the USA to have a true soccer squad. One that belongs to the supporters as much as it belongs to their owners.

I haven’t seen much of it – always cooking and serving – running from the kitchen when fans shout in the restaurant, trying to see the replay, but I must tell you: It feels good to be in a soccer city again…

Hello world!

We Breathe it since a very young age…

I got involved with soccer the day I was born. In Brazil soccer, or futebol as we call it, is in the air; we inhale it on our very first breath.  As Pelé wrote in his autobiography Brazil is a country where if you see something rolling you kick it so it keeps rolling. If it is laying still you kick it so it starts rolling. If it is too heavy to move you go find something lighter, then you kick it…

I’ve played with leather balls, rubber balls, plastic balls, tennis balls, sock balls – no spelling mistakes here, socks filled with wet newspaper – squashed cans, rocks…you name it!

When I was little I played with Pelé. We – my brothers, my friends and I – would pass in front of his house on our way to play soccer on the beach in Santos, the town where I grew up. The already great, world famous Pelé would stop us and play for a little while on the pavement. Or he would walk by when we’re playing on the beach and play with us for a few minutes. We were naïve and simple: a bunch of kids having fun with the king, probably the most humble king ever.

By the time I was seven I saved money for 6 months to buy a leather soccer ball. Some 40 years ago a proper soccer ball in Brazil was expensive and for very few. It generated the expression “the owner of the ball” that’s used in Brazil to these days.

At that time the really great feeling wasn’t having a soccer ball but being able to play with the real thing. My first ball didn’t last very long, though. Playing on sand, cement and asphalt it had to be made of rhino’s leather to last. But I tried to make it last longer. Following the advice of the “experts” I got cow’s lard from the butcher and rubbed the ball with it so the stitches wouldn’t dry or rot. Oh, man! That brown, greasy thing was a thing of beauty for us, the stinkiest ball I ever had…

When I was around ten, which in Brazil means being a soccer veteran, we started a team on our street. Because I was the oldest, I became team manager, coach, doctor, and goal posts builder. Goal builder: One of my first failures in life. We bought pipes from a scrap yard to make our goals on the beach. Luckily we found out that the cross bar was too heavy for it’s length. Now, when I remember, it scares me to imagine a powerful shot hitting the “wood” and the heavy crossbar falling on a kid’s head.

I was also in charge of getting us “uniforms”. Well, cheap T- shirts with numbers on the back – my second huge failure! No, I’m not depressed about it. It’s just funny to remember. We understood really early that failing some, getting some right was part of life. For Brazilians life is not necessarily a looser/winner race. Don’t get me wrong; we hate to loose. In Brazil being second is as bad as being last. If your team manages not to be relegated at the last game there is a party to celebrate. The second place gets nothing! But soccer has this amazing closeness to life that no other sport has. It’s an unpredictable game. You try several times and never know if you’re going to score. That’s why a goal is so exhilarating. It’s, as in life, a coronation of several failed attempts.

Throughout my childhood we kept playing. On the beach, on the streets: ” Car coming, car coming! Stop the ball! Miro, move your goal posts (his slippers)! Frankie, don’t move ’til the car passes or I’ll kick your butt, little cheat!” We, a bunch of neighbors, lower to middle class kids, united by a passion that would grow up with us.

Sandra, the only girl I saw playing soccer for years and years, once beat little Frankie so hard we almost felt sorry for him. Almost…She threw him on the ground, punched him in the face a few times and filled his mouth with as much sand as she could. He was so ashamed we didn’t see him for 3 days! He thought that, being the smallest kid on the group; she – the girl – was the only one he could stand up to. She was a source of wonder for us. Bike stripped of silly accessories, pedal breaks, played soccer – starting right side mid – and she beat little Frankie fair and square!

At age eleven a started playing “futebol de salão”, literally, court soccer. A game that would become the futsal we have nowadays. Paulo Miraylesku and I, the only two “cariocas” (born in Rio) of the team, both goalies, both special: him, fast and good; me, fast and, well…kind of lousy. But I went on “goaling” for years: high school, university, even water polo!

One should wonder how, if I was not such a good goalie, I got to play the position. Easy, in Brazil if you are a lousy player you end up in goal.  But not if you own the ball, the owner of the ball plays whatever position he wishes to. So I kept praying all my childhood that the owner of the ball would want to play goalie.

I also played left “ala” in futsal, left wing in field and beach soccer. Lefties are not such a common thing, you know, they don’t have to play so well:

-       ” Can I play?”

-       “Are you any good?”

-       ” I’m a lefty”

-       “Good, good! You’re in…”

The first time I broke my left leg – my third fracture in a row of 12 – I kept playing street soccer. The heavy cast on my leg, with its metal “stirrup” and tick rubber step made me the most feared defender in the history of Primo Ferreira Street! Straight after my days of glory were gone (the doctors removed the cast after just 30 days!) I went back playing futsal and wondered why my foot hurt so badly every time I kicked the ball. It took me years to realize that, probably, it had some thing to do with my just healed fracture…

It was in a game of futsal, that, already 30 years old, I tried a sharp pass while running, tripped over my left foot and had my twelfth fracture; a very bad one that left me crippled on crutches for 8 months.

I have even combined soccer and “rock climbing” in Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro – the biggest and most unfinished stadium in the world! A friend of mine and I, in a wonderful show of teamwork and acrobatics would climb from the lower cheap seats (so cheap you watch the game standing up – there are no seats! – with the field at your eye level) to the more expensive seats for a better view. Wednesday night Maracanã games; I’ll miss then forever…

Years later I moved to England, got saddened with their “Don’t juke! Kick the ball up front”; with the English five-a-side and their walls. My elder sons only wanted to play for fun, no space for my coaching. I became a mere spectator of it. Soccer went into a kind of limbo for years!

But soccer is like an old passion, a burnt out bonfire: it looks like just a pile of ashes, but if you blow upon it gently for a while, it starts burning all over again.

Sam Hassan