Dinner Parties - My Biggest Surprise! What’s Yours?
In 1972, having dropped out of graduate school (Far Eastern Studies) and possessed about food, cooking and all things Chinese, I opened a catering business in my hometown of Santa Barbara. This was before I had learned that sometimes less is better when it comes to dinner parties. My typical menu involved 10 to 14 courses and required days of shopping, chopping, mincing and dicing. Dinners turned into theatrical culinary kung-fu events with me racing between the kitchen and dining room to explain every presentation. In fact, five minutes before my first hired catering event, the hostess increased the guest list from eight to 12. No matter, I had enough food to feed thousands.
At one such event, a couple I didn’t know personally commissioned me to prepare a Chinese banquet for 16 guests. I usually preview the kitchen, but for this event everything was arranged by phone. The home was one in a series of stately Spanish-style houses near the Santa Barbara Mission. The front door was already open, so I walked into the living room, accepted a warm welcome from a group assembled around the fire, and proceeded to the kitchen to “inspect.” I hate a cluttered kitchen, but here were wonderfully empty counters and a center island the size of New Hampshire. Out I went to my old beat-up van to make countless roundtrips, unloading dozens of little containers of stir-fry sauces, marinated meats, chilled lobsters, tea-smoked duck breasts, homemade mu shu wrappers and trays of dim sum—all ready to be steamed, pan fried and boiled. What chaos! Thirty minutes of organizational frenzy later, an elegantly dressed woman appeared in the kitchen. Ah, the hostess! Her first words were, “Who are you, and what are you doing in MY kitchen?” I had transposed the numbers of the address. Wrong house! The real client lived next door!
What’s been your biggest surprise?
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
Hi Hugh,
I just love this story. I will be hosting our first bookclub meetings in January where all members have purchased your book and will make one entree and bring it to the club for all to sample. I will share this great story with them. Thanks
Bonnie
Dear Idetrorce,
I’m intrigued by your comment. What don’t you agree with in my blog post?
-Hugh Carpenter
Hi bb,
Thanks for your comment. I’d love to hear from members of your cookbook group about their biggest surprise (s) giving a party.
-Hugh Carpenter
Hugh, your writing ability is what makes this story! What a tale! I have not had anything quite this dramatic, but I do remember having a couple over for dinner and cooking a souffle-sort of main dish. I kept checking the oven to see if it had risen. But, alas, I’d forgotten the eggs or something. I think we ordered pizza, or maybe it was OK as is…albeit a little flat!!! Or maybe it was on to dessert: the best part, wouldn’t you agree?
Hi Hugh, I had a Brazilian black bean soup recipe that Diana and David liked, so I agreed to make if for dinner at their house Christmas eve, for her birthday. I started cooking several days before as soups and stews always taste better the second or third day. Instead of cooking the soup, and then putting it away in the refridgerator for a day or two, I kept it at a very low simmer (as I often do with a stock) for 2 days. The evening of the dinner, I packed up the covered vat of bean soup, swaddled it in a towel, and drove over to Bernal Heights. We walked in the door with the pride of new parents, presenting the soup with a florish. D & D openned the lid with expectation, and inhaled deeply. I was confused by their expressions of horror. Diana gasped: “Deb, the soup smells like a dirty diaper!” The beans had fermented with all my slow cooking, and ended up down the storm drain when I drove home to bring the only substitite I had in the house — Costco mini quiches! That was 15 years ago, and I have never been able to make Brazilian black bean soup again. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Deborah