Bel Air dinner for 12?

On Tuesday, I got an email to cater an event for 12.  It was a mix of very large (in monetary status, not width – that’s after the dinner 🙂 ) tech investors meets Hollywood.  There were a number of different movers and shakers in the tech industry: Facebook Mobile app founder, the son of the founder of Atari & Chuck E Cheese’s who has his own startup, big VCs, meets celebrity dinner (I heard Jessica Alba was coming  – she runs HONEST company – she didn’t show 🙁 ) in conjunction with a very awesome website dedicated to showcasing luxury http://www.destinationluxury.com  I did a walk through of this beautiful house in Bel Air – first I had to drive up the driveway (which was 1/3 of a mile long!)  Yeah, hella long (I’m from socal, believe it or not) but I didn’t see the Fresh Prince anywhere.  House was amazing.

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yeah, it’s sideways, (wordpress error, can’t edit) but that’s the “neighbor” :O

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When you walk into the foyer you see Art. When the light hits this seemingly random wire at 30 degree angle…it’s a chair.

I thought, 12 people, seriously, how hard can it be?  Oh yeah, except I guess people heard about the event, and it turned out to be 37 people.  My buddy drove up from San Diego to LA to prep and cook with me Fri and Saturday.  Friday preparations began with making a leek ravioli to go with a leek and lobster ravioli dish w/ lobster cream sauce, fried basil, browned butter.  I made ravioli that was packed with filling to the edges very uniformed.  Then we made some rustic style for “family” (the kitchen – a few onlookers and us) and because the ravioli dough had so many egg yolks in it, was packed with awesome flavor.  The rustic style had larger border.  Day of we decided to make ravioli, which took approximately 3 hours between mixing, resting the dough, and filling it.  Would have been fine, but there were so many people it was insane.  We had enough scallops, and everything else we tripled the number of plates (stress on the dishwasher and service was tremendous), and anyway, we got backed up because of the number of people and the relatively small stove compared to the rest of the house. (4 burners).  All good, food tastes better if you make people starve 🙂  Had a blast cooking for such a diverse and accomplished group, especially loved the Far East Movement – despite their success they were so humble and awesome to hang and drink with.
As for food preparation, we definitely didn’t plan for triple the attendees, but wanted to accomodate.  The scallop dish was a pretty easy “pickup” to send out.  As was the next dish – bluefin tuna salad.  The next dish vitello Tonnato w/ radicchio was, but there weren’t enough plates so time was wasted dishwashing.  The next was a time/nightmare.  Leek ravioli w/ lobster broth, lobster, fried basil, & browned  butter.  Manageable for 15 but 37 was a bit crazy with the way the kitchen was!  There were a couple takeaways: prepare a bunch of cold appetizers for people to nibble on if they’re hungry.   All good 🙂 Food is love and people shared their love by eating 2nds and 3rds!!!!!

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Kev Nish’s third plate of leek & lobster raviolifem

got to cook for the Far East Movement!!! Fly like a G6! Really cool guys was very fun to hang out and cook for them

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I think the food presentation suffered because there were so many people, but at least the guests [actually there weren’t too many girls] (Chriselle) looked awesome!

I didn’t get many food shots because I was so behind with the # of guests, I think there’s a scallop in the background. ^ 😛

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Nice sized U-8 scallops 🙂 first course. beet & pear puree, asparagus, shimeji mushrooms, aged balsamic & micro greens

Have a hungry day!!!!!!!

POF / Erik Sun out

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