Chef composes themed menus for pop-ups
A duo of longtime culinary professionals has started Menuette, a business that hosts pop-up events at local eateries.
The flagship is a monthly Opus pop-up dinner series at The Korner Pub in Mt. Lebanon, but Christian Schulz and Rebecca Nicholson also have started brunches, happy hours and other events in additional locations.
The name Menuette is based on Mr. Schulz’s past as a musician and a student of music. He shifted professionally from music to kitchens but never lost his musical interest. He believes that when it comes to creating menus for popup dinners, it requires the same thoughtful tracing of themes that a composer would use for a musical composition.
Ms. Nicholson is the front-of-house manager and studied hospitality at Penn State University before working at hotels, restaurants and catering businesses in New York, California and back home in Pittsburgh.
The two Dormont residents met
about three years ago while working at Block 292 in Mt. Lebanon and later at Senti in Lawrenceville. Previously, Mr. Schulz had also worked for the now shuttered Crested Duck Charcuterie and Root 174.
It “started becoming not enough, working in other people’s restaurants,” Mr. Schulz explained. When both he and Ms. Nicholson talk about their goals in the culinarybusiness, “making people happy” is the first thing out of their mouths.
Mr. Schulz began to think about how “there’s this other side of me [music] that I’m not really sharing with people anymore.” He decided to apply musical composition techniques to food, andMenuette was born.
The Opus (translates to work in Latin) dinner series “treats each menu as a body of work,” he said.
The next dinner, Menuette, Op. 4, is on Tuesday and is being billed as “an evening of thoughtfully composed dishes with beer pairing presented in three movements,” or courses. For each such dinner, Mr. Schulz tries to follow a theme throughout the meal, based on what’s in season at the time. For this dinner, he will feature summer gourds — specifically cucumbers and melons — in each course.
Once he had his theme, he began searching for a contrasting theme that would complement cucumbers and melons. He settled on “plants related to the thistle” — artichokesand sunflowers.
Then he needed “something to bring it together, a coda or cadence,” and he chose beans, which provided “a starchy base to pull all those flavors together.”
The three-course menu features:
• Presto: Seared scallop, cucumber and miso broth, melon, buttered beans and sunflower tahini.
• Andante: Artichoke ravioli, bone marrow butter, tomato coulis and toasted hazelnut.
• Largo: Sweet and crispy duck, fermented radish, cucumber melon puree and crispy fava beans.
Despite his own seriousness with the musical themes, he says he’s not out to educate diners to death, so he doesn’t really carry the musical theme through the evening. He’s just out to “make people happy” and give them a good meal.
Dinner is served between 5:30 and 9:30 p.m., and diners can arrive and leave as they please. Tickets are $40, and diners must be ages 21 and up.
For now, dinners are capped at 25. Eventually, the duo hopes to serve 40 at each of two seatings in one evening.
Earlier this month, Menuette served brunch at Black Forge Coffee House in Allentown, held a happy hour event with fancy appetizers at Hitchhiker Brewing Co. in Mt. Lebanon, and provided food for “Swayze Day” at The Korner Pub, where Patrick Swayze movies were screened. Seven events, soon to be announced on menuettepgh. are in the works for September.
The events have brought The Korner Pub a handful of new customers, part-owner Rob Full said, noting he hopes Menuette also will provide the food for an upcoming 75th anniversary celebrationfor the bar this fall.
Eventually, the duo hopes to take the Menuette concept to a brick-and-mortar location, Ms. Nicholson said.
For now, “we’re starting to break out, and we’re learning a lot about what people respond to,” she said. “We have the freedom to do things that are a little out of the ordinary.”