Sharing: The Occasion of a Dinner Party
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
When Padma first announced that we were having a dinner party that night in our very own house, I was so excited. I love dinner parties. I love attending dinner parties and I love throwing dinner parties.
I realized quickly upon arrival back at the house that we were not guests at the dinner party, of course, but I was just as happy to be cooking. Especially for an all-start line up of chefs, including the likes of Tom Douglas, Nancy Silverton, Tyler Florence, Govind Armstrong and Takashi Yagihashi? I was stoked about this challenge from the start.
I felt lucky to draw Tyler Florence’s knife and to be paired with Brian. When we opened the refrigerator to find a tub full of California staples, I was entirely at ease; I felt right at home cooking in our cozy kitchen with familiar ingredients to boot.
Dinner parties marry cooking and eating so beautifully, diners and chefs are often intermingling to create a real communality in the food, which is served with equal parts ceremony and humility. A great dinner party is marked by an interesting blend of people, after all, as much as the quality of the food on the table. It often inspires good conversation, new ideas and collaboration, for this reason, as naturally as it does full bellies and satisfying groans.
This June, a small farm in Casper, CA slaughtered 50 or so of their lambs. I drove up there to pick one up and brought it back to hang for a few days in my walk in refrigerator and then broke the whole thing down with my good friend and long time Left Coast Catering chef, Paul Tang. It felt truly momentous, butchering that lamb. So I decided to host a party to celebrate, with several lamb-centric courses and a smattering of my own all-star line up: Dan Ripley of Dan Ripley Catering; Jonathan Beile and Jennifer Spiegel of Fork and Spoon Productions; Yasha and Carrie Aginski, film producers; Edie Lerman & Kevin McCullough, top California cannabis defense attorneys; Paul Tang; my right hand lady and friend, Miss Marianne Jackson; and finally but not least, the love of my life, manager, PR agent and photographer of Face Collective, Henry Dombey. We ate lamb tartar, herb rolled leg of lamb, chard ravioli with lamb sugo and roasted rack of lamb with plenty of wine. And we ate until we were so full and so happy, the laughter in the room reached a volume that made speaking difficult. That night was for me, what life is all about–community, friends and great food.
© Henry Dombey/FACECOLLECTIVE
I launched my private dining venue, 2150, in February with this kind of dining in mind: an intimate setting where guests and cooks could interact and share a common experience. A restaurant doesn’t always allow for the sharing of moments, and in fact seems hardened fast against them–consuming the life of its chef with hard work and discouraging her socialization with friends and family, let alone diners. But in a dining room, there’s more gray area between cooking and eating and I wanted to foster that kind of hospitality. The dinner party I threw to celebrate the opening of 2150 was where Marcia Gagliardi first encouraged me to go to the casting call for Top Chef in the first place. You could by now guess that I have a real affinity for dinner parties. The course of one’s life can change over a well stocked dining table.
The night we cooked for the Macy’s Council, I believe I caught a glimpse of the more human side of our judges. They were relaxed, enjoying one another’s company, engaging in forthright conversation and appreciating the food, even some of the less successful dishes. Of course they were also taking notes for their inevitable critique, but none of the dishes on that table were so bad as to taint the mood of that crowd. You could tell because they were actually enjoying themselves.
We had our own dinner party that night after we finished cooking made of wine, cheese, salumi and conviviality. Amidst the stress of this show, it’s nice to be able to put egos aside and come together once again, as we should, in the food.