Seeing is Believing….. Part Three… The Menu

Ah the food… Whats an event without incredible things to eat. 

The direction from Seth was for the food to be very healthy with a focus on being low fat and organic.  I immediately thought of Taste Catering because of their business philosophy of all things natural and sustainable.  I’ve known Meme of Taste  for many years and I knew she would excel with this event.  I’m the type of event producer that hires great vendors and then steps back and lets them do their job.  This is true with Taste.  I never worry about the food once I turn it over to them. 

I could write forever about every little nuance about the menu but I won’t bore you with the tiny details.  I’ll let the images and the menu take you through the culinary part of the event.

Bon appetite!

Catering By Taste

Passed Hors d’ oeuvres

Napa Cabbage and Shitake Mushroom Spring rolls With plum Sauce

Smoked Salmon, Osetra Caviar & Crème Fraiche on Petite Cornmeal Blinis

Ginger Prawns, Prawns sautéed in White Wine,  fresh Ginger, Lemon and Garlic

Chicken Satay With Cilantro Peanut Sauce

Corn, Ginger and Kaffir Lime Soup with a “swirl” of Coconut Milk, served in Demi Tasse

Tuna Tartare in Petite Sesame Cones with Wasabi Caviar

Mini Corn Tacos With a brunoise of Peppers,  Haas Avocados, and Yellow Corn Relish

_________________________________________________________________

Ice Bar

Fresh seasonal Oysters shucked tableside served with Grapefruit Tarragon Granita

Chilled Lobster, Burrata and Baia Nicchia Tomato Salad

Scallop Carpaccio with Cauliflower Puree Topped with Osetra Caviar

Red snapper Ceviche with jalapeno, lime, mango, pumpkin seed oil

_________________________________________________________________

Small Plates Buffet

Marin Sun Farms Ribeye with Demi Glaze and Cippolini Onions and Pt. Reyes Bleu Cheese Soufflé

Star Anise marinated Quail with Pomegranate Salsa served over Faro Pilaf

Watermelon Watercress & Mint Salad

Ginger Brined Glazed Pork Loin with Frog Hollow Peach Chutney and Autumn Jus

Vietnamese Style Green Papaya Salad

House made Beet Ravioli with Wild Arugula, fine herbs and caramelized Walnuts and shaved Holly Springs Goat Cheese

________________________________________________________________

Passed Sweet Ending

Valrhona Chocolate Bites with Mandarin Orange Confit

Milk Chocolate Cremeux Coupes with Indian Chai Tea Infusion

Lemon Verbena infused Crème Brulee with Berries

Light Coconut Cake with Passion Fruit-Vanilla Bavarian

Chocolate-Coffee Parfait, gianduja crumble and cardamom cream

Layered Espresso Cake with French Praline Cream

Mini Laurel Scented Crème Brulee.

Asian Pear Tart Tatins with cinnamon cream

See how Printed Velon is changing the way we do events…..

Here are some great images from designers all over the country who have discovered Printed Velon.   As you can see  there are so many ways to use Printed Velon.  In this post I’ll also give you some background information on each of the images….  i.e.who’s the designer, what the design process was to get to the end product, and how Printed Velon compares to actual fabric.  Let me know if you have any other questions.

Enjoy!

This design is by Design by Sean.  Sean had a fabric swatch he wanted to match and we were able to reproduce it in the exact colors and pattern for a fraction of the cost.  To have used the actual fabric, in the quantity needed, would have been cost prohibited. The fabric was used to cover trussing and drape sections of the ceiling.  I love the colors of the Printed Velon against the purple fabric.

This design comes from Richard Carbotti of Perfect Surroundings.  It a little hard to tell in the image but the Printed Velon is the Rococo pattern printed with black  ink on yellow velon.  Very striking. I love the way he used ribbons of the material to create a visual block and mask allot of the tent structure.  This bring the ceiling down and is a great way to lower it without completely lining the whole tent.  He also used it on the top of the tent frame and to wrap the tent poles.  Very creative use of the product.

This is one of my own designs and was executed for San Francisco Opera’s Opening Night Gala 2007. This was the first time Printed Velon was ever used.  I based my design off the Opening Night Opera of Samson And Delilah and  I worked closely with the event chairs to create a  beautiful Prussian banquet.  I searched my favorite fabric store, Discount Fabrics, to find the perfect  fabric swatches.  After some alteration to the colors what you see above is the end results.  The walls are a deep burgundy with a gold lattice pattern and  is what I call Opera Wall.  The ceiling is a beautiful multicolored paisley.  The ceiling pattern was incredible back-lite.  The room just glowed!

This is also my own design and I wont go into great detail about it because I just did a complete bilog post on just this event.  Look back for the Conservatory Of Music Gala post.

This look was put together by Hartmann Studios  for one of their in house event.  This is the Symphony pattern from the Velon Designs Collection.  I love the contrast of the all white ceiling and the printed walls.  Another juxtaposition is the traditional print mixed with the modern furniture. Very stylish!

This image comes from my friend Lara McCulloch of Regal Tents in Toronto who also writes the great blog  Ready to Spark.  The design is by Designing Trendz also out of Toronto. This is the Morrish pattern just taped to the panels of a plexi bar.  How simple to do and what impact.  Now all that white plexi furniture can now be re-purposed and become relevant again.  Since I’ve seen this image I can’t look at plain plexi furniture and not think how boring. 

Another of my own designs.  Can you tell I love this stuff!  This was the second time Printed Velon  had ever been used.  This is for San Francisco Symphony Opening Night Gala 2007.  The event chair wanted a total “WOW ” factor and I think this design hit  the mark.  I love the contrast of the black and white with the pop of fuchsia.  I found the linen and chair back at BBJ linens and  matched the Printed Velon to them.  This was a very diva look and for good reason, Rene Fleming was performing with the Symphony that night.  This being the first time this pattern had been used I named it Symphony. 

Isn’t this Crazy.  This is mine also!  This tent is for the Salzman-ManusValentines Ball benefiting Stanford Cancer Center.  This event is celebrating its 5th anniversary this year and every year it just gets crazier.  I’ll post more on these events later.  The theme of this tent was “Austin Powers Inguaral Ball” to go along with the over all theme of “Politically Incorrect”. I jumped at the opportunity to do an entire tent in vintage Pucci.  The print I selected was about $100 per yard.  Not all doable on a fund raising budget.  I made adjustment to the original pattern and recreated it for less the $5 per yard using Printed Velon.  This would have been pretty boring in a plain white tent. 

Oops!  My design again.  This is  the San Francisco Symphony Opening night Gala for 2008.  Instead of using Printed Velon I chose to go with Unprinted Velon.  The visual is spectacular and since I was using a bold pattern on the table it just felt right not to use a print on the walls. When unprinted velon is installed most people think it raw silk.  I love that!

Well that’s all for now.  I would love to here your feedback about how the designers are using Printed Velon and how you think you might  use it.

www.velondesigns.com

Happy Wednesday!

Seeing Is Believing…..Part Two-Entertainment

So my thoughts on entertainment for this event was to continue with the “Seeing is Believing” theme by giving the guests a real performer, Gloria Gaynor, and then following it up with one they weren’t sure if it was the real entertainer or not. This was Cher impersonator Chad Michaels.  Gloria Gaynor was the first to perform. The venue, Vessel nightclub in San Francisco, had a great staircase to use for her grand entrance. Of course, the only song appropriate for her to open with was her hit “I will Survive”.  Gloria descended the staircase belting this classic and the crowd went crazy.  Gloria did a few more song, all equally great, and when her set ended  Seth took the stage to introduce the next performer.  His comments lead his guest to believe that this performer was also the real deal.  The spotlight focused on the staircase to reveal Chad Michaels in full Cher drag.  Chad immediately launched into Cher’s hit “Believe”.  Jaws hit floor.  Guest believed Cher was coming down the stairs and you will too when you see se images.   Chad is amazing at impersonating Cher.  Chad did several Cher songs while constantly changing costumes, as only Cher would do, and each was more spectacular than the last.  After Chad’s performance the cake was cut, designed as several Hermes boxes stacked atop each other,  by I dream of Cake. The night ended with everybody dancing to a great DJ and Believing!

Seeing is Believing……

About a year ago I was chosen  to design and produce the 50th Birthday celebration for Dr. Seth Matarasso.  Seth, who I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for years, was on the fence about weather he should do a party or not, but after a few conversation he decided to move forward.  Together we came up with the theme “Seeing is Believing” mainly because Seth doesn’t look a day over 30.  after all he is a very successful dermatologist in San Francisco. Most of his guests were  clients and this group has seen it all so I needed step it up and come up with some really great ideas that would shock and surprise.  I think I did.  There were living Barbie dolls in bondage gear, and the real Gloria Gaynor and the incrediable Cher impersonator Chad Michaels both performed live.  I love parties like this.  It’s kinda like opening all the cages at the Zoo and letting all the animals play together!

Here are some great images of the four living dolls I had at the event executed by Greg Angelo.  The reaction from the guest was incrediable.  Most weren’t sure if they were real or mannequins.  All the male dolls were bare on the back so it was fun to watch the women, and most of the men, sneaking glances. 

In my next post about the event I’ll go into the food and live entertainment.  This was such a fun party and I just couldn’t get it all into one post.  Let me know yout thougths on this from of visual entertainment. I would love to hear from you.

 

Velon Designs Retro Collection

Here are some new patterns that I just launched on Velon Designs.  I love all these bright colors and geometric patterns.  One of my favorite interior designer is Kelley Wearstler.  Her use of color and patterns is always very exciting.  I’m currently working on the design for the San Francisco Symphony’s Opening Night Gala and her designs have been my inspiration.  I’m mixing differnt tones of green with stark whites and baby blue and I might just add in a little chocolate brown also to give it a punch.  I can’t post any images of my ideas until after the Gala on September 9th so check back to see how it turns out. I’ll be using a couple of the prints form the Retro Collection to line the inside of the tent.  Haven’t decided what color combination yet, but with a 10,000 sq. foot tent you need a lot of drama. 

Greek Key

Rounded Squares

Metro Retro

Circular Labrynth

The Economy Sucks…. There I said it!

When economy started tanking back in October of 2008 I didn’t want to believe it.  I keep telling myself this won’t affect me.  I work for rich people.  They always have money.  Well that might be the case, but the wealthy also pull back when things are bad.  I heard so many people say that they didn’t want to look bad….. and I can understand that.  The hard thing for me was to not think this was my fault as a business person.  What did I do the cause the global economy to collapse?   I know it  sounds funny but I actully thought that my business was slowing down because of something I did or didn’t do.  Maybe that’s the mind of a creative person to accept responsibility for something they have no control over.  I finally realized this had nothing to do with me and I couldn’t control what was going to happen  but there were things I could do make it through.  I had to jump in to action.  I have to say the last 8 months have been very eye opening.  I have learned allot and know that when this happens again…. and it will… I will be prepared.  I guess what I’m saying is “Sometimes you have to get on the Roller Coaster even if you’re not tall enough”.

The Great Robert Isabell…..

Im sad to learn that Floral and Event Designer Robert Isabel has suddenly passed away.  As a young man in Georgia, way before I ever knew what an event designer was, I was always intrigued by his incrediable use of flowers. They were always the parsley on the plate, never the main course.  True talent is the ability to design a room in which your eye easily travels from one point to another forever discovering new things.

This quote by Ian Schrager sums up his ability to know when to stop.

“He never tried to do too much, it was never design on steroids, yet there was always the razzle-dazzle,”

 Article from the New York Times

Robert Isabell, the floral designer and events planner whose shrewdly lavish aesthetic helped create the buzz around Studio 54 and who made Kennedy weddings and a White House Christmas, not to mention museum galas, corporate celebrations and charity balls, into occasions of glorious moment, was found dead on Wednesday in his Greenwich Village townhouse. He was 57.

The cause was a heart attack, said Alex Folger, a lawyer who is one of the executors of Mr. Isabell’s estate. The club owner and hotelier Ian Schrager, a friend, said he had seen Mr. Isabell on Saturday in the Hamptons and that Mr. Isabell had left at about midnight to return to Manhattan, but that no one had seen or spoken to him after that.

Mr. Isabell was an events planner before such a thing was common. He was known for imagining an occasion in its entirety — the flowers, of course, but also the location, the décor, the lights, the table settings, the sound — and in the eyes of many of his clients, his skills amounted to artistry. Among the style-conscious, fashion-conscious, glamour-conscious and status-conscious, Mr. Isabell was considered, in the words of Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue, “the king of the event world.”

“He was the first one that all of New York society went to for a wedding, for a gala, for a private party,” Ms. Wintour said in a telephone interview Friday. “If you could afford him he was a magician. All the great society hostesses — Pat Buckley, Annette de la Renta — used him, and because they used him, all the others wanted to use him.”

Afraid of neither simple elegance nor opulence, gifted with both taste and creativity, he used them all in the service of the joyous, the somber and the playful. He worked on Caroline Kennedy’s Cape Cod wedding to Edwin Schlossberg in 1986 and John F. Kennedy Jr.’s wedding to Carolyn Bessette on Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia in 1996. He worked on the funerals of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1994 and of her friend the horse breeder and philanthropist Paul Mellon in 1999.

Mr. Isabell created an enormous wreath of noble fir dotted with 1,500 lights dipped in blue gel for Christmas at the Clinton White House and conjured a Greek temple on a London estate for the wedding of Marie-Chantal Miller, the daughter of the billionaire Robert W. Miller, to Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece.

For the fifth-anniversary party of Vanity Fair, he turned an unused ballroom into an homage to the Copacabana, complete with gold spray-painted palm trees and a saxophone choir wearing gold Louise Brooks wigs.

One New Year’s Eve in the late 1970s, he trucked four tons of glitter into Studio 54, where it carpeted the floor four or five inches deep.

“You felt like you were standing on stardust,” said Mr. Schrager, who, with Steve Rubell, opened the club in April 1977. “People got the glitter in their hair, in their socks. You would see it in people’s homes six months later, and you knew they’d been at Studio 54 on New Year’s.”

Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, said Friday that she had worked on about 30 events with Mr. Isabell.

“He was able to take any space and make magic in it,” she said. “He had this soft rose lighting that made everyone look wonderful. And as a florist, there was no one like him. He was sort of a genius, actually.”

Bruce Robert Isabell — he legally dropped Bruce as an adult — was born in Duluth, Minn., on June 2, 1952. His father, Joseph, was a lineman for the local power company. He worked in a flower shop as a boy, and after high school, moved first to Minneapolis, then to New York in the early to mid-1970s. For a time he worked for the party planner and florist Renny Reynolds, one of whose clients was Studio 54. Recognizing Mr. Isabell’s creativity, Mr. Schrager hired him to create parties on his own.

“He never tried to do too much, it was never design on steroids, yet there was always the razzle-dazzle,” Mr. Schrager said.

By the mid-1980s, Mr. Isabell had started his own company. For a time he operated an independent floral shop in Bergdorf Goodman’s department store, but shortly thereafter, he moved his business downtown to the far West Village in Manhattan, establishing what Joe Heffernan, now the senior account executive for the company, described as “a full-service event-production house.” It has about a dozen full-time employees and has designed events all over the world, from weddings in Saudi Arabia to a casino opening in Macao.

Mr. Heffernan said the business would continue, though he acknowledged that Mr. Isabell was its creative light.

“He was the king of the ‘Wow!’ factor,” Mr. Heffernan said.

Mr. Isabell is survived by his mother, Shirley, of Duluth; two brothers, James, of Duluth, and John, who lives near St. Paul; and a sister, Cheryl Liebart of Superior, Wis.

“He had a way of seeing things, looking at things, that separated him from everybody else,” said Mr. Schrager, who described himself as Mr. Isabell’s best friend. “He put tomatoes and fruit in a bowl and it looked like a still-life painting.”

He paused.

“A guy comes out of nowhere from Minnesota,” he said. “How does he know this?”

RF-80 Event Venue……..

What is RF-8o? ……. By day it’s my design studio  , in San Francisco, where I design and produce all my events.  By night it becomes the coolest event venue in the city.  It’s really an amazing space.  It all started when a client needed a venue really quick and nothing could be found that suited her event so I said “let’s do it my design studio”. I had Hartmann Studios come in and do the draping and Impact Lighting hang some lights and with my own decor and flowers and RF-80 was created. 

Then the light bulb went off.  I could do this on a regular basis. I just needed to purchase the draping and lighting and permanently install them.  In designing the space I tried to think of everything. I wanted it to be chic and have the feel of a large urban loft.  I always loved the decor at Mecca Restaurant so I recreated that look and feel for RF-80.  Mecca had a very urban feel with traditional touches.  Their combination of dark velvet curtains, black and white photography, crystal chandelier and polished cement floors created an incredible vibe.  I wanted the same so I used similar materials. 

The great thing about RF-80 is that so much is included in the rental fee.  All the lighting, sound and lounge furniture.  All you really have to add is food, flowers and linens and you’re done. 

For the 2009 holidays I’m creating cutom designed events  that will be all inclusive of food, beverage, decor and entertainment.  This will be out on August 1st and I know the dates  will book up fast.  These events  will be presented as a complete party for 100 guests.  We will have parties  ranging from a stand up cocktail party to 5 course sit down dinners. These will be priced from $20,000.00 to $60,000.00.   Of course, the sky’s the limit when it comes to one of my parties.  I can custom design the event to fit your needs.  I’m loading up some images from past events so you can get  a feel for the  space.

 

Entrance to RF-80

Entrance Foyer

Interior Room

Loft

Main Room

Images from past events…………..

Conservatory Of Music Gala Images……

So here they are!  A few images of the Conservatory of Music Gala where I used Printed Velon.  I created this from the wallpaper sample I had in a drawer.  If you look back a couple of post you will see an image of  the wallpaper.  I had my lighting company Impact back light the Velon which gave the room a warm glow and also actsenuated the pattern.  In these images the Printed Velon photographed darker then in person but I actually like the look better.  I always think that darker colors create more drama for events.  Tara Arrowood took these images and I love her eye for event photography.  She captures the feeling of the event and also sees the details.  Would love to hear your thoughts on the the way Printed Velon was used in this Event.