Rock on, Patagonia!

So, catering for Patagonia was EXCELLENT. (This is why the blog has been silent for so long, folks. My apologies). Anyway...Dan, my catering partner, and I arrived in Ventura, CA at 7 p.m. last Sunday. The Patagonia folks were kind enough to put us up in a hotel on the beach, provided us with a rental car, and paid our food bills while we were there. Dan hired a local caterer, Ernest Romero, who turned out to be a diamond in the rough. Short, squat and swarthy -- a combination of Mexican/Native American ancestry -- he was the top chef at the freakin' FOUR SEASONS HOTEL IN BEVERLY HILLS before chucking it all because, in his words, he couldn't take the corporate bullshit anymore. So, he caters in Ventura, supplying his homemade sausages to a local butcher shop and, oh, he's also a trained pastry chef. Which turned out to be an unexpected bonus because he doctored up my banana pudding recipe to a FINE example of dessert (i.e., added three kinds of liquor, including bourbon, spritzed on the Nilla wafers, in the custard and on the whipped cream. Too bad y'all weren't there to receive a sample).

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were all prep days. Our task was somewhat easier because Ernie supplied us a crew of about six people to do the drudge work of chopping veggies, whipping the custard for the pudding, shredding cabbage for coleslaw, etc. (The menu, a real Southern pig pickin', was: Brunswick stew, hush puppies, pulled pork, cole slaw, an assortment of grilled veggies and salad for the vegetarians, and banana pudding, which Patagonia's design director, Lee -- a former prep school classmate of Dan's who also met me while he was living in Portland and working for Nike -- called the "piece de resistance."). I had expected to be doing most, if not all, of the drudge work, so I was pleasantly surprised that that didn't happen. I did plenty of work -- pulling pheasant and rabbit from the bones for the Brunswick stew, and let me say that if I ever cook either of those damn birds again, they will come de-boned or I will likker up before I start -- pulling pork, making the roux for the Brunswick stew (which I stirred for about 45 minutes before realizing the flame on the propane-propelled stove had gone out), oiling and salting the hog before putting it on Ernie's rig, consulting on the pudding -- but it was great not to be totally exhausted by the time Wednesday arrived. I got a good amount of sleep, which helped, too.

So by 5 p.m. Wednesday we were ready to serve. Dan and I manned the pig, which we dressed up with an apple in its mouth, pineapples on either side and edible flowers at the edges -- and my hands quickly cramped up "tonging" the meat (using tongs to place the meat on people's plates). The line went on forever. Forever! Turns out we served 500 people at an event that wasn't supposed to draw more than 300. Luckily Dan had bought 30 more pork butts and a bunch of extra ingredients for the side dishes. Bottom line: Almost no food was wasted, and Ernie thoughtfully arranged the leftovers to go to a homeless shelter nearby (and the Patagonia cafeteria, where employees gorged on banana pudding the day after the feast).

The event was for the company's annual sales meeting, so they flew in people from all over -- Asia, Europe, distant parts of the U.S. -- and I got into some fun conversations with a guy from Bloomfield, NJ ("I'm from Hackensack! We played you guys in tennis!" I said), and a guy who'd grown up in North Portland, lives in LA and really misses Oregon, and a couple who just moved to SoCal from Lake Oswego. We were invited to the company's fashion show for the Spring 2013 line, and heard all about the company's great year and plans for expansion (13 stories in China next year), its involvement with a movie about dams and the controversy surrounding the building of them and whether they need to be torn down, etc. etc. People were warm and genuine and they swooned -- I mean swooned -- over the food, all of it, even the dessert (my responsibility, and I think I've finally convinced Dan that desserts are, in fact, important. It's not all, or even mostly, about the meat).

Patagonia's founder wasn't there, but his wife and son were. We signed books, gave away Dan's barbecue sauce (recently voted the official Eastern Carolina barbecue sauce of the Democratic National Convention, which is being held in Charlotte this year), then stumbled onto our planes on Friday morning. When we got back, we heard that the meal had been the talk of the sales meetings on Thursday. Oh, and the wife of Patagonia's founder inquired whether Dan and I are "mobile." As in, could we travel elsewhere to put on a similar show? Yes, ma'am. Have knives, will travel.