The next time you feel you’ve overreached by planning a sit-down dinner for 12, think of Syd Berkowitz, Kevin Savoy, Eddie Monjaras, Sean Kavanaugh and Matt Antonovich, who managed the making of more than 7,000 sit-down meals last week.
On the same day. Two lunches and two huge dinners at the same time.
Antonovich and Centerplate Catering were put to the test last Friday: In addition to serving a family-style lunch to a conference of 300, the chefs had to lock and load for lunch and dinner for 2,500 Hispanic professional engineers, and Gov. Bill Ritter’s inaugural dinner for 2,000 of his closest friends – give or take a security detail, late-subscribing political friends and media.
That meant a battalion of chefs, sous chefs, local chefs, culinary students and visiting chefs from Texas, Arizona and California were in the Colorado Convention Center’s mammoth kitchen before sunrise. Executive chef Antonovich arrived late – 4 a.m. Later that morning, he took a break to talk.
“Cooking a meal for 5,000 people is the same as cooking for 10 or 12,” Antonovich says as if he really means it. “You have to arrange the three courses into blocks of time, so that at the same time you’re doing one thing over here, someone else is doing the next thing over there.”
It clearly doesn’t occur to him that most of us don’t have kitchens large enough to prepare three meal components at once, let alone the 250 he commandeered for the governor’s gala. Even so, Antonovich’s team had been at it for three days, separating meat, produce, fruit and condiments into the order in which they would be needed. They even hand-carved vegetables into little marble-sized “pearls” to accompany the main course, beef Wellington.
Mo Starr, sous chef at Invesco Field, brought a crew to help “push” the line – accelerate the pace. There were 20 people doing only salad.
Sean Kavanaugh, executive chef for Centerplate at the University of Phoenix stadium in Arizona, says he flew in to help.
“I don’t think Centerplate has ever had anything this big,” Kavanaugh says. “We’ve even got people out on the loading dock assembling salads. I’m just jumping in wherever I’m needed. Earlier I was piping whipped cream on a dessert, before that I was slicing radishes. When the Wellingtons go out, I’ll be on hand to make sure they’re plated properly. Whatever I’m told to do.”
The governor’s three-course dinner began with an “Aspen” salad of fresh romaine and leaf lettuces, bacon, blue cheese and cherry tomatoes. An assembly line of visiting staff and culinary students, taking cues from a photograph of the salad as it’s supposed to look, lay the leaves just so. The next person adds the tomatoes, the next, the bacon, and finally blue cheese finishes it off. The beef Wellingtons have already been assembled and chilled overnight and primed for the special convection ovens that bake and brown them. From there they go to holding ovens that will keep them warm but not cook them.
Andy Henderlong, chef de cuisine, explains how this balancing act works.
“For a dinner of 2,000, we have to bake them at 350 in shifts, check the middle shelf after 15 minutes because the temperature is usually coolest in the middle. So this is my best friend until they’re all done,” he says as he pulls a thermometer from a sleeve pocket. “It’s all about timing. And because this dish is served medium rare, I have to make sure the Wellingtons are moved at the right time to the holding units that will keep them at what we call a ‘holding temp’ of about 150-160.”
Meanwhile, down a long corridor another dozen men and women are plating dessert, a chocolate cup filled with white chocolate mousse and topped with biscotti crunch and garnished with a colorful wafer of white chocolate.
Dizzy Whitaker is a former convention center chef who surfaces periodically from retirement to help out for monster events like this one. As he talks, he removes yet another tray of white chocolate that has been poured onto an edible multicolored transfer sheet.
He breaks the slab into chunks that create the finishing touch. By 1:10 p.m. the crew had completed 1,890. Only a hundred or so to go. There is a constant swirl of silent people. Everyone is on a mission.
In the corridor around the corner from the salad assembly line is another production line: Hundreds of chocolate cups filled with a blackberry swirl mousse await plating.
Latecia Martinez and Bua Tacotoni squirt puddles of chocolate sauce onto dessert plates that will hold the cup and be garnished with giant blackberries. As the plates are finished, the cups are added, loaded onto a tray, stacked in a rack and wrapped with plastic wrap from a giant roll. Then it’s off to a cooler to await service.
As Denver police officers walk though the center on a security sweep, executive steward José Cozarez regards the substantial tower of salad plates left from the earlier 2,500 diners.
“We had 25 people working all day, and we’ll have 25 working tonight, just doing dishes,” he says. “These machines will run for the next 24 hours, washing probably 32,000 plates from food, and 40,000 pieces of glassware, knives, forks, butter plates and covers.”
Somehow, from their sequestered place in giant walk-in coolers, the “Wellington Wall,” rows and rows of stacked trays of beef Wellingtons, are lined up, ready for baking. There are even vegetable Wellingtons for those who don’t eat meat.
“We usually figure that in a gathering this large about 5 percent of the diners will be vegetarians,” says Carmen Callo, executive sous chef. “You can almost count on it. It’s all good as long as everything goes according to plan. Me, I’m counting on this evening being over.”
And by 9 o’clock, the food army’s work was done.
