Local caterers prep for holiday parties.
City’s top fi rms fi re up the stoves for festive season’s feeding frenzy
In the catering business, they are called “war stories.” Think of a dinner party disaster, like the mousse that didn’t gel or the cake that burned, and magnify it hundreds of times.
With the high- octane Christmas season about to rev up, it’s whiteknuckle time for the companies that know how to pump out canapés, hot dinners and to- die- for desserts for hundreds as fast as a sleigh streaking through the night.
Two key ingredients for any caterer are an ability to stay calm and to think through problems as they arise, said Debra Lykkemark, founder and owner of Culinary Capers, Vancouver’s largest catering firm, with about $ 8 million in annual revenue.
She has had her share of trials, surviving disasters that could have sunk her reputation like a fallen soufflé, only to rise instead as the poised chatelaine who plays instant host to many through her company.
Her war stories are grist for gripping scenes in a movie.
There was the time a dog ate a good end portion of a Phantom of the Opera cake that was the pièce de résistance at an art gallery event.
Her heart still pounds when she recalls the sheer terror upon discovering the foul deed less than an hour before the cake was supposed to be served.
She carefully lifted the white chocolate mask — thankfully still intact — off the chocolate cake, cut off the sullied corner and ran down the street to the florist to buy a dozen full- blown roses. Laying the roses over the missing portion and tucking the stems under the mask, the result was spectacular.
There was the call in the middle of the night from the chef in her Culinary Capers kitchen in Beijing. ( Her company has a spinoff branch operation in the Chinese city, which was set up during the 2008 Summer Olympics.) He had this problem. He couldn’t get a meringue to hang together for a pavlova he was making for a dinner at the Australian consulate.
Thinking quickly, she told him to break the meringue into chunks, throw them in the oven to crisp them up a bit, then layer them with fruit, lemon curd and whipped cream in wine glasses like a trifle.
“They loved it so much, they called it pavlova parfait,” she said in an interview in her bustling headquarters on West 3rd. “They are still ordering it to this day there.”
Then there was the dinner at Lost Lake near Whistler that resulted in a cryptic note to self: “Don’t forget there are bears there.”
Just before the event, a decoration featuring branches with red berries had to be whipped off tables as the furry interlopers approached.
That got her thinking. Maybe stashing the dirty dishes in a tent overnight as originally planned wasn’t such a good idea. The bears were apt to trash the place. So she hastily made plans to toss the greasy, sticky mess into the truck, lock it and drive it to a safe location.
Rain, sleet or hail
Unpredictable weather can also give rise to considerable angst.
For her first job on the Great Wall of China, Lykkemark woke up to gale- force winds and freezing temperatures. About 120 people were set to arrive for a four- course meal at noon in the gorgeous outdoor setting.
What to do? Serve the meal on the buses? Not quite the same. Then the gods smiled. The wind stopped and the sun came out at 10: 30 a. m.
She and her staff ran around frantically to set up the event, which went off without a hitch.
She had a similar close call with nature at a ritzy 50th wedding anniversary at VanDusen Botanical Garden for one of the city’s elite couples. The bride wouldn’t hear of having any kind of a canopy in case it rained.
Of course, it drizzled all day, meaning staff couldn’t set up for the event. In desperation, the event planner ran to Costco and bought every pop- up tent they had so they could set the tables.
“It looked ridiculous, all these gorgeous tables with these stupid little tents all over them.”
Again, the gods smiled. The skies cleared about an hour before the event was to begin. The tents were whisked away. “She had this absolutely gorgeous, magical dinner under the stars.”
One of the city’s other top caterers, Susan Mendelson got in on the ground floor with her business. She started The Lazy Gourmet in 1979 as a store on W. 4th Avenue where, as the name suggests, lazy cooks could bring their dishes to be filled with gourmet food.
From humble beginnings that included a simply produced, but popular, cookbook called Mama Never Cooked Like She anticipates revenues of $ 7 million this year.
Like Mendelson, Lykkemark built her business from the ground up. It started in 1986 when she and two friends each kicked in $ 5,000 to buy a little coffee shop called Culinary Capers on Broadway Avenue.
From there, they started simple corporate catering, delivering sandwiches and baked goods, and then begun receiving more elaborate requests for dinner parties and special events.
With the company still just treading water about five years later, Lykkemark bought out her two partners and started to outgrow the coffee shop with its rickety old oven.
After discovering a big commercial kitchen attached to a nightclub in the Plaza of Nations, she sold the coffee shop and moved, focusing strictly on catering.
“From there, I never looked back,” she said.
When the nightclub closed its doors, she relocated to Main Street, eventually outgrowing those digs and moving to her current space on West 3rd in 1999.
Mendelson said she can’t believe how the catering industry has grown in Vancouver. Companies like hers and Culinary Capers have turned the business of cooking into high art.
“I think we keep each other on our toes,” Mendelson said of Lykkemark during a telephone interview from Hawaii, where she now spends about a third of the year. “There’s nothing like great competition to keep you constantly reinventing yourself.”
Both have had to adapt to the new flavours of the day, hopping on the gluten free bandwagon of late and making sure that there are vegan or at least vegetarian options on almost every menu. Kale is trendy. So are panzanella salads. Clear tabletops are in. Linens, not so much.
Festive frenzy
Caterers rev up their kitchens well in advance of the festive season, stocking their freezers with gravy, stocks, cookie dough, pastry, stews and the like, which can be thawed, baked, shaped or caked then crowned with finishing touches before they are shipped out the door.
They whip up old favourites for revellers who want to entertain at Christmas without the fuss of doing the work themselves.
Customers flock to The Lazy Gourmet year after year to buy brie en croute, which is served warm in a round chafing dish. There are occasionally new twists, such as the addition of a sage- flavoured mushroom cream between the brie and the pastry. Sometimes, it is served with an apple and cinnamon or some other type of fruit compote, but its basic composition remains the same.
Every year to stay fresh, chefs come up with new twists on old favourites, and some brand new creations. This year, The Lazy Gourmet is offering gnudi that has ricotta cheese as its basic ingredient but gets tarted up with a bit of brown butter sauce, crispy sage and grated reggiano.
Culinary Capers has cooked up imaginative gluten free hors d’oeuvres like a turkey ricotta meatball and sablefish with miso on spoons.
Both caterers offer a mini turkey dinner in a martini glass or on a crostini with everything you would normally have — turkey, stuffing, cranberry, perhaps a bit of mashed potato or yam — in a small portion. Mini Yorkshire puddings are also a big hit at Christmas. Lykkemark estimates she sells around 10,000 of them in the four- week Christmas party season that usually begins in the last week of November.
There’s nothing like great competition to keep you constantly reinventing yourself. SUSAN MENDELSON OWNER OF THE LAZY GOURMET
And then there are calorieoozing desserts. Again, the trick is to find a new take on an old staple. Cheesecake may become cheesecake pops, dipped in chocolate, sprinkles, crushed peppermint.
The Lazy Gourmet makes a Christmas version of a Nanaimo bar with white chocolate on top and a candy cane filling.
Culinary Capers has taken the coffee chocolate macaroon and inserted a little pipette with Baileys in it. Baileys isn’t quite your cup of tea? Try the coconut macaroon with piña colada.
Once the flurry of pre- Christmas parties is over, caterers switch gears, with many offering a fully made Christmas dinner to be delivered to your door. Or at least one with all the fixings and instructions.
The key to successful catering, said Mendelson, is understanding what the customer wants. “If we ever fall short, it’s because we didn’t listen closely enough.”
To be successful, Lykkemark feels you have to have wellestablished systems, carefully listing everything from ingredients for bar garnishes to uniforms in the correct sizes for staff.
Another key is having a vast repertoire of well- established recipes. “If we give Mrs. Smith a particular item one day and a year later she calls back and orders that item and she gets something that doesn’t taste or look the same, she is upset.”
Now gearing up for her 36th Christmas in the catering business, Mendelson said it’s her longtime staff and her clients who keep her motivated. Because she has been around so long and built up such a loyal client base, she has catered bar mitzvahs for kids and their kids. She has catered weddings, baby namings and memorial services and funerals all within one family.
“I’ve created friendships. Our clients become part of our lives. We certainly feel connected,” she said.