The Catered Christmas Affair

Sheer Numbers aren't in themselves a guarantee that a party will be a howling hit. But for mounting a year-end saturnalia, a crowd of upwards of a dozen or more well-matched pairs is just about big enough to be unbridled in a civilized way. However, it should be kept in mind by the host who wants to have as good a time as his guests that there's a certain point beyond which party planning should be turned over to the pros. The caveat is a very simple one: If the party's guest list goes above a score of people, call a caterer.

Caterers are masters of movable feasts. An experienced caterer is always happy to listen to the most inquisitorial host, confer with him, guide him and even on rare occasions yield to him, provided the host accepts the caterer's guiding philosophy which, stated briefly, is: Don't do it yourself.

Holiday catering has gone through a predictable evolution. The formal dinner is now as extinct as the velvet tablecloth covered with ostrich feathers. One of the nicest things you can say about any holiday party is that it turned out to be a ball. But the planned ball in which nymphs' skirts always got caught in pashas' swords is, for all practical purposes, also extinct. There are still overpoweringly opulent parties, although they're increasingly rare, like the Phipps Long Island debut last year which featured 12,000 flowers stuck into chicken wire that was run in gracious curves all over the place, and buffet tents whose silk lining alone cost a neat $5000 for the single fete. At the opposite pole in styling was the Reitman party in Cleveland which followed the Chagrin Valley Kennel Show. Here guests were served from sleek robot vending machines which supplied, at the mere touch of a button, dry martinis, cold brook trout with pink mayonnaise, Chablis Grand Cru '61 and (continued on page 136) Catered Christmas (continued from page 119) strawberry pots de crème.

In the recent history of holiday parties there was an era in which everybody stood up. To sit down and eat or drink pegged you as antediluvian. After a while the inevitable counterrevolution set in. Practically all at-home parties today are a combination of the stand-up and sit-down techniques. Guests help themselves and are helped at bountifully stocked buffet tables. Bar waiters circulate among both sit-downers and standees. The informal wall table and the light movable chair are indispensable for easy conversational islets and for keeping hot food and coffee on an even keel.

Menus, too, have matured along with the more relaxed party mood. The whole capon can still be seen resting on its pedestal, glazed with chaud-froid and honored with truffles, but alongside it are countless slices of the same family of tender capons on slices of crisp French bread. Cold roast suckling pig is the same crackling brown it was in the Gay Nineties, but it is now carved so that portions of it can be picked up and eaten with the fingers. Miniature chicken drumsticks are maneuvered with the aid of paper chop holders. Open and closed sandwiches, formerly the ensigns of afternoon tea parties, have been completely rehabilitated with sliced rare beef tenderloin, baked Smithfield ham and smoked turkey that are less pretentious but infinitely more satisfying than their soft forebears.

Hosts in search of caterers are usually guided by the oldest and most dependable of media--word of mouth. Some caterers are justly renowned for their pasta dishes. Others are luau specialists. There are hors d'oeuvres monarchs and canapé czars. Don't hesitate to ask a caterer which dish he considers his finest opus. Ask him, if possible, for samples. Many caterers have stashed away in their refrigerators or freezers specialties like beef Stroganoff. Caterers are usually more than pleased to display their china, silverware, linen, chafing dishes and other components of their mise en scène. Naturally, no caterer will be able to snap his fingers and produce an instant 12-pound cold stuffed lobster in aspic while you're waiting in his reception room. But many of them keep on file a gallery of colored photos and slides of their decorative culinary art.

Prices for a catered affair will, of course, depend on your locale and your caterer; but one can figure on a minimum charge of about $8 per person for a simple dinner (including drinks and hors d'oeuvres) on up to $16 per person for the caviar route. In terms of time, temper and money saved by not having to make all of the arrangements yourself, it is a sound investment.

If it's your first adventure in large-scale regalement, you'll want the caterer's counsel on how many celebrants your apartment or town house can comfortably hold for party purposes. To estimate how large the party roster should be, caterers will often send an advance scouting party to survey your pleasure palace. Generally a room that can accommodate 50 people comfortably at a pre-dinner cocktail party will have a capacity of about 25 for dining, drinking and dancing. In estimating the possible number of merrymakers for a sit-down affair, allow two linear feet of table space per person. In warm climates, terraces are often put to use. An adjoining study can sometimes be opened as an extension of the main party room, but the best parties are those that are not fragmented too noticeably. Caterers will always advise you, whenever there's Lucullan feasting or dancing, to plan on rolling up the rugs, moving objets d'art out of the main line of fire and putting the great Dane temporarily in exile and on leash. Folding banquet tables for the buffet as well as dining tables and chairs are part of the caterer's equipment. When the party's over, he'll restore every last heirloom to its original spot.

There are, of course, all kinds of food shops with mountains of factory-frozen canapés, meats cooked and carved by automation and stereotyped salads that you can order by phone for immediate delivery. But the fine master caterers are a different breed and a limited oligarchy. During the holidays their calendars are particularly crowded. You should therefore shop early or resign yourself to doing more of the work than you'd like. In most big cities there are agencies ready to supply bartenders and waiters for private blowouts. If your party happens to be comparatively small, and you're limiting your menu to cocktails and one superb hot dish--a curry of crab meat, for instance, which comes from your club or from a certain small bistro--it's an easy matter to order the curry, transport it via cab and then, by means of a hired butler, dispense the drinks from your own bar and the food from your own chafing dish.

Before a caterer talks about food, he'll want to know what type of party you're giving, since the menu, drinks and table arrangement will depend upon the type of wassailing you've planned. Cocktail parties need a certain food and drink ambiance, cocktails with dinner another, holiday suppers still another. A good caterer will know that the clear turtle soup which was perfect at midnight should yield to a bubbling hot onion soup when the first cold rays of the sun appear at daybreak. Though a caterer is basically a restaurateur without a restaurant, his chefs, barmen and waiters are more resourceful and imaginative than their counterparts in restaurants, because their experience in dealing with a variety of hosts and hostesses in every possible stamping ground has made them so.

Outstanding caterers not only are specialists in dealing with contingencies, but seem to welcome the challenge. In the early part of the century, the catering firm of Louis Sherry on Fifth Avenue didn't blink an eye when the elder J. P. Morgan asked for a catered party to be served in a special mansion rented for a conference in San Francisco. Sherry's chefs, bartenders and waiters in a solid phalanx, together with their accouterments of chef's knives, copper pans, casseroles, linen, silver and glassware, entrained for the West Coast precisely one month before the festivities occurred. Today, if you're celebrating in a ski chalet, there are caterers who will transport, if need be, an electric generator and a portable water tank. If the room you've set aside for guests' coats is apt to be filled with ermine and mink, they're prepared as a routine matter to provide a private detective for custodial service. If you happen to have inherited from a dowager aunt an enormous silver candelabra, antebellum style, they'll take it to a silversmith who will remove the tarnish from every last whirlycue and return it glistening like new. Caterers have delivered fresh caviar to parties on other continents. They've air-expressed blue point oysters from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Olympia oysters from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

The only assignment some caterers turn over to the host is the buying of liquor. Local beverage laws sometimes don't allow the caterer to furnish the liquid life force of the party. If this is the case, it means turning up trumps for your bank balance, since the bottle or case price of liquors bought at package stores is a modest fraction of the standard bar charges. And if your package store's manager is any sort of a reasonable chap, he will give you credit for any unopened bottles you return after the ball is over. As part of the caterer's entente cordiale, he'll advise you how much liquor to buy and his enlightenment is infinitely more valuable than that of your friendly neighborhood bartender. In estimating quantities of hard liquor, you should always count on two ounces per drink; a fifth of liquor will furnish 13 drinks, a quart, 16. For the usual drinking carnival, you should be prepared to serve three to five drinks per reveler.

The caterer, of course, will supply the barman and bar waiters. Barmen who work the big-party circuit are themselves invariably teetotalers on the job. Seldom, if ever, will it be necessary to post a guard on your liquor stores, or to tally the drinks on paper and measure the balance of liquor left in each bottle (concluded on page 264) Catered Christmas (continued from page 136) with a graduated beaker--the kind of shenanigans that go on at big hotel banquets. No virtuoso barman uses a jigger for measuring. His hand is generous but steady, and for a private jubilee, a freehand technique is the only hospitable way to pour.

When the caterer's truck pulls up to your digs, one of the first pieces of equipment he delivers is a portable bar. In apartments where space is at a premium, however, it's sometimes best to eliminate the portable bar in favor of additional dance-floor or dining space. A working bar can then be set up in an adjoining room. Drinks are prepared out of sight and passed by waiters to the merrymakers. For comfort's sake, the portable bar is best located near the buffet table and as close to the kitchen as possible.

For the glassware department, caterers will bring from three to five rounds of each type of glass needed, as well as coasters, cocktail napkins, etc. The large amount of glassware speeds up bar service and makes allowances for breakage.

In choosing your drinks, the simplest of all bar services is naturally the holiday punch bowl. Where drinking is the main focus of attention, the punch bowl is perfect. But for rejoicing around a buffet table where the stacked platters and bubbling chafing dishes are the center of interest, the punch bowl is usually bypassed in favor of the regular bar repertory. For your own peace of mind, you may check with the caterer on ice, carbonated waters, fruits, etc., but as S. O. P. these are abundantly supplied.

Fine food begets fine wine. It's only natural that the excitement of the yearend should be accompanied by the heady glow engendered by vintage grape. Either the red and white still wines or champagne are, of course, very much in order; but for a change of pace you might try sparkling French red burgundy and sparkling Rhine wine. Both can be served at a buffet and are less dry, somewhat softer than champagne, but rich, unforgettable sensations to the taste. The very fact that champagne is so omnipresent at holiday parties makes the other sparkling wines unexpected and original pleasures.

The caterer will submit sample menus to you, and this may cause some soul-searching. There are empire builders and business geniuses who are reduced to vacillation when required to decide whether the Dublin Bay prawns shall appear with Russian dressing or cocktail sauce. Our own advice is to choose the foods as you please, guided only by the ego of your own taste. If you've latched onto a good caterer, your arbitrariness will be transformed through his alchemy into gustatory wisdom.

Properly, buffet dinners have a beginning, a middle and an end. Today, the beginning often shares the spotlight with the middle. Many of the modern-day hors d'oeuvres, such as water chestnuts with bacon, aren't appetite prodders, but simply luscious eating, providing playful contrasts in textures. Cold hors d'oeuvres, such as Nova Scotia salmon wrapped around asparagus vinaigrette or celery stuffed with a purée of gorgonzola cheese, are offered well chilled, and are delights in their own right. If you want your guests to share the heavenly experience of fresh Beluga caviar or pâté de foie gras (not pâté maison or pâté de foie or purée de foie), you must spell out these requests to the caterer.

The huge cold buffet centerpieces, particular favorites of the chefs on luxury ocean liners, are seen at private parties nowadays only if they can be eaten with ease. There's an old-fashioned aspic of lobsters and shrimps in which a huge circle of lobsters placed upright like slaves with upstretched arms supporting a monarch holds up an enormous mound of shrimps decorated with truffles, pimiento crescents and the gold of hard-boiled eggs. The whole ensemble is eye-catching, but if a single supporting slice of hard-boiled egg is removed, the superstructure comes tumbling down. Needless to say, the same lobsters and the same shrimps can be served in a less unstable arrangement, so that when the crowd starts eating, the platter doesn't turn into a provender Pompeii within a matter of minutes. Cold salmon, cold saddle of venison, cold Virginia ham, cold tenderloin of beef and cold roast goose all lend themselves to this kind of easy grandstand play.

Of the hot foods served at catered parties, beef is in ascendancy almost everywhere. Curried lamb, sherried chicken hash and lobster newburg are still drawing cards, but at the present stage of our gastronomical life, they're completely eclipsed by beef Stroganoff, fragrant with mushrooms, beef bourguignonne swimming in red-wine gravy, and tenderloin of beef à la Deutsch scented with sherry. Roast shell of beef, sometimes listed as roast sirloin of beef, broiled thick shell steaks and roast beef tenderloin--all rare, sliced thin and custom carved to fit on half slices of bread--continue to gratify beefeaters everywhere.

Renowned catering houses such as Charles Wilson of New York have modernized their desserts with luscious fresh-fruit compotes and fruit tartelettes which, like so many catered foods, are hastening the day when both knives and forks are no longer a burden on civilized dining. For late, late parties Wilson brings on a doughnut machine. The very thought of it shocks the old-line pâtissiers, but when in the early-morning hours the hot plump doughnuts are tossed into a bowl of cinnamon sugar, and the fresh, steaming coffee flows from the urns, the party's final phase takes on a new warmth, a glow which will have been more than matched by the one you got when, in the midst of your happily limited duties as the catered-wingding host, you realized that you were unruffled, unharried and enjoying yourself immensely.