The low-lit Tuscany Ballroom in The Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes greeted guests with a scene they didn’t quite understand. The occasion was billed as the group’s final-night dinner, but no tables or chairs were in view. What did greet their senses was an expansive carpeted space, edgy music mixed live by three DJs and their digital tech toys.
An opaque silk scrim on the opposite side of the ballroom was splashed with abstracts in light, with a lineup of women and men in black standing at attention in front of it. Facing the line were translucent acrylic cocktail tables for two. Framed place cards on each tabletop paired each guest with their favorite beverage and dinner partner.
Suddenly, part of the 21-foot ceiling began to move.
The closer the polished aluminum truss got to the carpeted floor, the more obvious it became that for this occasion, it would function as something more than a piece of rigging. Bedecked with see-through acrylic panels and exotic floral arrangements, the pipe and bar was destined to be a very flashy dining platform.
No white linen for this event’s five courses—this was a different kind of contemporary elegance.
As the “table” rested at appropriate height, the black-clad lineup broke formation, with each server retrieving an acrylic chair from somewhere in the low-lit theatrical environment, and then approaching their assigned guest with a chair, a smile and an introduction as their “personal butler” for the evening.
As diners took their seats at the “table,” a light behind the scrim revealed a group of high-hatted chefs onstage. They were huddled over the assembly of a first course: sea scallops, tomatos and greens. At stage right, a pastry chef shared the spotlight as she created a delicate five- or six-foot floral arrangement of dark chocolate blossoms and pastel accents.
The culinary theatrics continued through five courses, all with matching wines. Guests weren’t conversing about the day’s business as they tasted each presentation, but were instead occupied with what the performing chefs would show them next: lobster medallions, foie gras, Kobe beef tenderloin, and a finale of roasted figs with gingerbread ice cream.
At one point during the culinary theatrics, Chris Gabaldon, Ritz-Carlton’s vice president of sales, summed up the evening’s objectives to participants, who were attending the brand’s recent Luxury Meetings Forum.
“We are taking the dust off the lion and the crown,” he declared.
Translation: Our brand logo has always meant quality and luxury, but we are moving beyond traditional white cloth dining. Stuffy is not our norm. If your objective is to wow your audience, here’s the kind of culinary event we can deliver for you. Give us some creative latitude and we promise you we’ll take the boring out of your banquets, buffet and breaks. Your group—even those who have seen and done it all—will take home experiences they won’t soon forget.
Why Culinary Theater?
Memorable F&B occasions are certainly nothing new, but chefs traditionally have plied their art behind kitchen doors. Blame the new trend toward showy meetings culinary events on the celebrity chef phenomenon.
Cooks are out front, whether the stage is a ballroom, a cruise ship culinary theater (see sidebar) or a resort show-kitchen. Some of them even sing while they serve up the foie gras or encrusted crustacean.
Gabaldon cited one upcoming event at The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai for illustrative purposes: Attendees venture into the surrounding desert for a nighttime event in a Bedouin tent, complete with dancers, fire and animals.
“Drivers for such memorable, splashy culinary occasions have to do with cultural trends among generations,” Gabaldon continues. “Collecting life experiences is trendy, as opposed to the ’90s, when everything was about showing off one’s wealth. The events of 9/11 had a big impact on all our lives. People and life experiences are important. Our customers tell us they want special life experiences, because they realize a person can only do so many things in life.”
Setting the Stage
Where does the creativity for such sensory occasions come from? Usually it’s a dual effort by the creative heads from both the special events and culinary staffs. In destinations such as Montreal, Orlando and Las Vegas, theatrics combined with dining has become the daily bread.
“Food has become very much center stage on people’s minds as to what is important in being creative,” says Mark Wells, director of creative services for Hello Florida Inc., and the special events engine behind most of The Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes’ culinary theatrics.
“Customers tell us they want a spectacle—something more, they tell us—and almost everything has a food component,” Wells says. “In the old days, you had tables laden with help-yourself platters and heated chafing dishes. Now, we do action stations that include a chef who asks you what you’d like, makes it, and then serves it to you. We’re moving beyond that now, to ‘kiosking,’ a fancy term for an action station where you have smaller food items that are fully dressed. Little plates are for each food item, and they are presented by the chef, who is trained to create visual impact and emotional connection to the food they are serving.”
Anthony Sansone, program manager for Schaumburg, Ill.-based Total Event Resources, agrees with Wells.
“People are really into their food,” he says.
For the grand opening of a new facility in the Chicago area, his firm had servers dispensing desserts and espresso drinks from large electric tricycles that traveled through the event site. The newest craze, he points out, is having dinner and desserts lowered from the ceiling on rigging.
“If you have chefs flambé at a food station with live fire, or roll sushi, that can be quite entertaining,” Sansone says. “It’s also popular to dress waiters as some character, and then have them break out of character to do the serving. And depending on the group, it’s usually a good idea to steer clear of a cafeteria line set-up, especially if you have 500 people to feed.”
Theme Menus
At Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Assistant Vice President for Special Events Becky Martino presides over about 100 resort events annually. The events range from high-end occasions for 16 people to Independence Day, New Year’s Eve and Super Bowl parties for hundreds. Entertainment, special events, banquets, engineering, and facilities departments all cooperate to stage the events, as they do for private customer occasions throughout the year.
“The theme for New Year’s 2007 was 007,” she says. “The films figured into the music and the decor, with features like shadow dancers behind screens. Our martini ice bar was very popular last year, so we repeated that. Dinner was four courses, and followed a big cocktail party where we served heavy sushi, crab legs, shrimp, and caviar. Dinner finished about 11:15, when showgirls posing as Roman statues came to life to pass out take-home souvenirs.”
One of Martino’s favorite New Year’s Eve triumphs during her 10 years at the resort is a chocolate lounge.
“I just let my mind go on that one,” she says, “and we did it after dinner on two levels. You know, we do Rome like nobody else, so that was one occasion when Roman fountains and goddesses dished the chocolate.”
Mandalay Bay Resort in Vegas has just added a group dining department dedicated to building events in its 17 restaurants. Within the options array is rumjungle, a restaurant with dancing firewalls, spirited music and tropically inspired entrees that create a feast for the senses.
In the city that gave the world Cirque du Soleil, culinary arts combine seamlessly with theatrics. Montreal’s Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth is one of the city’s prime meetings facilities, and the hotel’s catering director, Armando Arruda, says his staff mounts food-focused events both on- and off-site for all kinds of budgets. Historic Windsor Station is only a couple of blocks from the Fairmont and its spaces provide a palette for lots of creativity, he says.
“We’ve used the marble atmosphere and huge sweeping stairs at Windsor Station to stage events using a Madame du Pompadour event with little salons for four to five tables, Persian carpets and chandeliers—a good way to break up a large space. The circus theme is popular here in Montreal, too, of course. Though we can’t use the Cirque studios, we can use circus theater schools elsewhere in the city to put on some great occasions.”
Great occasions don’t have to break a budget, Arruda says, a planner just needs to reveal their budget and the creative juices can flow from there. Food stations themed like a Parisian bistro and waiters attired in French attire can be one budget-friendly idea. Although creativity can be affordable, he says, you can’t serve a mediocre menu when you are doing a splashy presentation.
“A nice salad, filet of chicken with a sauce, and a beautiful dessert can do very nicely,” he says. “You don’t have to serve foie gras all the time.”
At Hilton San Francisco, Scott Baublitz, director of sales and marketing, says his hotel’s events service staff and culinary combine creativity to create culinary “wow” even for meetings breaks, like the recent occasion when they presented the food culture of the City by the Bay. Food was set inside picture frames, and guests had to reach through the frame to get the edible elements.
“People like to be around food and cooking,” he says, “Today, it’s about hitting all the senses. Even if they don’t participate, guests can stand and watch how food is prepared. Planners are looking for something that engages their attendees, and we look at it as an opportunity to add value to their experience in our hotel.”
Baublitz mentioned Iron Chef team-building competitions he’s been part of where staff chefs head up several teams from a business group who must come up with a menu, restaurant theme and marketing piece.
“They get judged on the quality of food they prepare,” he says.
The main thing to remember when planning a culinary event with theatrical touches, he says, is that you can’t be ordinary. The food has to be great, but so do the entertainment ingredients. Then, they’ll eat it up.
Pun intended.
