They do weddings. They do bar mitzvahs. They do birthdays, anniversaries, openings, reunions, conferences – you name a type of event, and a caterer has been there. Guests may leave the party with bulging waistlines, but a caterer’s leftovers are often in the form of stories. Some of our local caterers and chefs share some of their favorites here.
Richard Paolo’s favorite memories center on events at Bryant College, where he owned and operated The Junction, a restaurant and catering company on campus. Today Paolo owns Great Foods Inc., which encompasses a catering company, Harborside Pizza and Deli in Providence, and the Vanilla Bean ice cream store in Matunuck.
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“We did everything,” Paolo said. “College kids would make their own pizzas and name them – some of the names were pretty creative, but you wouldn’t want to print them. We tried to make the biggest ice cream sundae. There were hundreds of gallons of ice cream and gallons and gallons of toppings. It was fun.”
Traditionally, the college welcomes students back for spring semester with a special party. Paolo remembers one year, when the event was hosted by Bryant’s Century Club:
“It was foods of the century, one for each decade,” he said. “Every half hour they’d change the music and the food – whatever the food was for the decade.”
Paolo’s menu included Spam Wellington, lime Jell-O and his own version of a TV dinner.
“Swanson TV dinners was for the 50s,” he said. “We had a pan of corn, a pan of mashed potatoes, the apple cobbler on the side. We served it on divided plates.”
But Paolo’s favorite events center on ice cream sundae events he has done for companies.
“They’re fun,” he said. “It’s a cheap way to make an employees’ day. You can buy somebody a lobster, but nothing compares to an ice cream sundae. You get hundreds of workers on line making their sundaes along with the CEOs.”
Some events aren’t as planned – or planned at all. Jim Agnew, senior server at the Gatehouse Catering Company and Restaurant, related a story that happened a few months ago:
“[Executive Catering Chef] Frank Maragos was working in the restaurant,” Agnew said. “The restaurant was closing. The phone rang at 11:00 p.m. It was a woman, and she sounded very desperate: Hollywood moguls had landed at Quonset and needed their plane restocked by 9:00 a.m. the next morning. It took us a while to figure out it was a real phone call.”
The moguls, whose names Agnew would not disclose, were traveling by personal jet from the Caribbean to Napa Valley, California, courting investors for an upcoming project. They requested Beluga caviar, lobster, shrimp, oysters, whole roasted chickens and desserts.
“We called our suppliers and pulled in every favor we could,” Agnew said. “People stayed up all night long.”
The exhausted group delivered the food to the plane on time, complete with reheating instructions, and the moguls were back en route.
“Then we came back and prepared three jobs of our own,” Agnew said. “Some people worked 36 hours without sleep. We were surprised that we could pull it off. We say we can do anything, but that was pushing it.”
The Gatehouse is not the only company to deal with surprise in the line of duty.
Erin Carrera’s company, Chef du Jour, is a personal chef service.
“We cook in clients’ homes,” Carrera said. “In one day, we cook two weeks of meals.”
The chef leaves the prepared food, along with reheating instructions, for the client.
“Many times, our clients are not home,” she said. “One of our staff went to a client’s home in East Greenwich with all the pots, pans and utensils she’d need. She set up and began cooking. Suddenly, someone burst through the kitchen door and yelled ‘Who’s in my house?!'”
The chef was cooking at the wrong house.
“The house was wide open,” Carrera said. “It was almost identical to the one where the chef was supposed to cook. We call that chef ‘Chef Goldilocks’ now.”
The company delivered the food to the correct client, and presented their “surprised client” with a Chef du Jour gift certificate.
“Needless to say, that will never happen again,” Carrera said. “Generally, things go as planned.”
Another personal chef said he ran into trouble when he let somebody else do the cooking.
“One of my clients lives on the East Side,” said Douglas Stuchel, president of the Nomadic Chef, a personal chef and catering service. “The first time I was cooking for her, I was attacked and bitten by her cat.”
Stuchel had to go to the hospital; the bite went almost to the bone.
“The lady was very apologetic when I came back to finish my job, clean up and go home,” he said. “She offered me some pie her granddaughter had made.”
Stuchel ate the pie, then went home.
“I got sick as a dog,” said Stuchel, who suffered chills and vomiting about four hours later.
“The next day, the lady called and told me that the pie had food poisoning,” he said. “She said her granddaughter was sick and had to go to the hospital, and they traced it back to the pie, and she hoped that I wasn’t sick as well.”
The lady is still one of Stuchel’s clients.
“Ever since then, she has been very apologetic every time I’ve cooked for her,” he said.
