Left Coast Catering: CONCEPT

What do you get when you mix Silicon Valley, Atlantic City, Boardwalk Empire, and a small airport? You get Google's prestigious Global Partner Summit party that we catered on February 26th for 450 VIP guests. Google came to us with a MISSION – throw a 1920's Prohibition party, with an 'Atlantic City' themed menu in the main hangar of the Palo Alto airport.

Close your eyes and imagine a giant room (industrial and yet classy) filled with staff wearing 1920's style clothing (lots of hats and suspenders) and a full spread of sumptuous treats, eats, live music, and gaming tables. You walk-in and are greeted by a bar (about the size of half a football field) filled with professional bar-tenders slinging bespoke prohibition themed cocktails. Before you can even decide which cocktail you want, a team of servers mesmerizes you with platters of passed appetizers.

As you make your way to the sides of the room you start to realize that there's STILL MORE – an oyster bar where oyster shuckers pry open cold oysters, a hot-dog cart serving mini-hot dogs (including a vegan one), a table full of Left Coast's meat-pies, a full espresso bar, giant bins of salt-water taffy – and that's only the half-of-it. This wasn't just a party or an event, this was a choreographed live art-performance with enough moving parts to make Henry Ford's head spin.

Here's the spread (any and all items can be incorporated into future menus):

PASSED APPS:

-Fried Mozzarella Bites with tomato basil sauce (Laurine's Grandma Ruggerio's recipe)

-Crab Cakes with Remoulade (we had to sleep with 3 Cape Cod sailors to get this recipe)

-Glazed Mini Meatloaf with Whipped Potatoes (we were luck any of them made it to the guests before the chefs ate them all!)

-Spinach stuffed mushroom (an appetizer favorite that has with stood the test of time)

-Corn fritter, buttermilk herb sauce (can you say hush puppy?)

-Chicken and Calabrian chili meatballs, vodka tomato cream sauce

-Beef tenderloin, horseradish cream, watercress, potato

CARTS/STATIONS:

- Fresh Oysters from HOG island Oyster company staffed by three professional shuckers (they shuck a dozen oysters before you can say 'Mignonette')

-Espresso bar with Uncommon Grounds – Molta Roba Blend

-Mini John Morrell 100% beef Hot dogs with toppings: onions and peppers, beef chili, cheese, red onions, relish, yellow mustard, ketchup

-Hand Pies - Vegetarian wild mushroom pie, parmesan crust / Turkey sausage pie, leek, sweet potato, sage crust / Beef and root vegetable pie, butter crust

-Shrimp Cocktail (think East Coast crab shack - giant cold shrimp with homemade cocktail sauce)

-Salt water taffy in giant wooden barrels