Please forgive my lengthy absence from this blog. For the past 2 years, I worked on an event that began, in person, in Pittsburgh PA, on June 28, 2009 and which concluded last Tuesday, 7/08/09. It was an amazing learning and doing experience, which I will do my best to share with you, despite a dearth of photos. My camera didn't come out of the suitcase until our "victory dance" dinner Monday night in a hotel restaurant after the event was concluded.
1 : a skilled cook who manages the kitchen (as of a restaurant) 2 : cook — chef intransitive verb — chef·dom \-dəm\ noun.
Author
Michael Ruhlman, at p. 86 of his book
Elements, defines "chef" simply as: "leader. . . ."
Beginning on Tuesday June 30, I took on the role of chef supervising a crew that would comprise over 250 individuals by the end of the event. Our mission: to feed as many as 1900 people who were anticipated to be guests at the
AM/FM American Mensa Annual Gathering 2009. As someone with no formal culinary education, who does not cook for a living, I do not use the term "chef" lightly, but I do believe I earned it this time. Our mantra, as demonstrated by the "Easy" buttons our AG Co-Chair
Mary Lee Kemper handed out to her committee, was: "That Was Easy."
Prior to the event, there were seemingly millions of tiny (and not so tiny) details that I had to organize. I had to rescale the menu/shopping list numerous times, as we went from an initially anticipated crowd of 2000, to as low as 1400, then back to 1500 - then, as a last minute surge of late registrations came in, our actual (approximate) number of 1880. At times, budget constraints seemed dire, forcing more changes.
Then, there was sourcing all of the needed equipment and supplies, and negotiating with multiple vendors to make the budget work and to obtain the many things we needed, which no one vendor could supply. I would like to thank Kelly Easterling of
Sysco and Andrew Smith of
Gordon's Food Service (GFS), my primary food vendors, for all of their help - Kelly even made a personal delivery of nacho cheese to us on Friday that ensured we didn't run out. And Andy got us chili for our dispensing machine - a hard-to-source item in Pittsburgh - at the very last minute after we learned that when Sam's Club says an item is "delivery only" - they mean it! The local Coca-Cola distributor provided the vending machines that you'll see in some photos below, that enabled us to serve large quantities of cold pop (or soda) to our masses at all hours. We had to work closely with the hotel to ensure that our cadre of electrical equipment wouldn't pop any circuits. And we had to get all of this food to proper serving temperatures, and get it on the tables (with back stock ready to serve from either the kitchen or the hot or cold boxes). Also - thank you to Joann Garvin, CMP, of
destination PITTSBURGH - though I was ultimately unable to afford her - she really knocked herself out to try and help us; I was thrilled to learn that she did organize the event's local tours.
I would like to give special thanks to local business
Rosie's Pierogies, which delivered175 dozen Potato Pierogies swimming in butter and onions (yum!), hot and ready to serve for a terrific price. Also, a shout to
Isaly's, which is still a Pittsburgh company, and which gave us an amazing deal on 400# of their famous Chipped Chopped Ham and BBQ Sauce. And thank you to Heinz, North America and Linda Goedert and Audra Flemming. Heinz gave us a generous donation from their Company Store that covered almost all of our condiments!
Also, thanks to Pat Rodenbaugh and the
Robinson Township Sam's Club, Club # 6575, which accommodated our every request and took awesome care of us. I'm not normally a Sam's Club kinda girl - but these folks really impressed me, and they really do cater to businesses.
I cannot be as kind to Restaurant Depot. Though the folks in the Cleveland store were nothing but helpful, the Pittsburgh store had no use for us. Though I faxed our order almost 2 weeks in advance, they ordered nothing on it, and we had to make due with what they had on hand, supplemented by Sam's Club. But we made due, and all turned out well.
Three local Mensa groups agreed to lend equipment and supplies: Cincinnati, Cleveland and Dayton. And of course, the local group that owned the AG bid, Western Pennsylvania Mensa ("WPAM") lent its supplies, and an even greater bevy of supplies were obtained/lent by WPAM's RG Hospitality Chair Caren Bachman, as well as by Volunteer Coordinator Nita Jones and her husband Ernie, who used to have a catering business and has all of these wonderful toys!
Also, I must mention the team of volunteers who combined to produce over 400 dozen (that's over 4800) cookies - which were all consumed by sometime Saturday afternoon or evening: Virginia Plottel, Caren Bachman, Judy Gissy, Dave Plottel, Betsy Hetzler, Linda Kellner, and Dana (sorry - I don't have your last name). And the one and only Gerry Riley - who budgeted and sourced all of our beer (some of the most amazing microbrew I've ever tasted!), wine and root beer, and who took responsibility to serve it and to ensure that we complied with Pennsylvania's alcohol service laws.
And so, my "final" spreadsheets in my notebook, "final" orders placed, borrowed equipment and supplies lined up - my team began to converge on the
Omni William Penn Hotel on Monday, June 28. Please note that I took very few of the photos below, and I am grateful to the various photographers for giving me permission to post their pictures.
The Entrance to the Omni William Penn Hotel(c) 2009 Jamie Fritz, all rights reserved, used with permission.
Hospitality consisted of two adjacent ballrooms on the 17th Floor of the hotel - the majestic Grand Ballroom, and the Art Deco Urban Ballroom. The larger Grand Ballroom contained all of the seating (on 2 levels), as well as all of the beverages we served, craft brewed root beer and a freezer full of vanilla ice cream for Root Beer Floats (an innovation I started at Cleveland's bi-annual Regional Gathering, which I consider one of my Hospitality Signatures), and tables holding all of our "dry" snacks - various types of chips and salty snacks, candies, cookies, brownies, dried fruits, several varieties of nuts, and similar items.
A view of the Grand Ballroom, as we were getting things rolling!(c) 2009 Jamie Fritz, all rights reserved, used with permission.
You can see the Coke machine, and the beverage/snack tables lines up on the wall to the left.
Grand Ballroom from the Balcony.(c) 2009 Jamie Fritz, all rights reserved, used with permission.
Grand Ballroom from the Balcony.(c) 2009 Jamie Fritz, all rights reserved, used with permission.
AG Attendees enjoy their Nosh in the Grand Ballroom."Used with permission Copyright 2009 by Freya Harris, All Rights Reserved"
A slightly better view of all the snackies!"Used with permission Copyright 2009 by Freya Harris, All Rights Reserved"
A plaque explaining the Art Deco Urban Ballroom.
(c) 2009 Jamie Fritz, all rights reserved, used with permission.
The magnificent light fixture atop the Urban Ballroom.(c) 2009 Jamie Fritz, all rights reserved, used with permission.
The initial set up for the "Specialty Nosh."(c) 2009 Jamie Fritz, all rights reserved, used with permission.
The part of the Urban Ballroom that I don't yet have photos of was the part in front of those velvet ropes - which was open 24/7 throughout the event, and had a huge variety of cold nosh (kept at temperature with, respectively, a commercial salad bar and a home-made
bain marie) and on one side of the room, a freezer with ice cream novelties, and on the other side, a refrigerator with milk, V-8 Juice, Hard Cooked Eggs, yogurt, and backstock for many of the snacks on the tables - hummus, cheese cubes, veggies, dips, fruit - we also had plain water packed light tuna, grape tomatoes, whole wheat pita bread, and pepperoni slices.
The empty serving lines await more Nosh.
"Used with permission Copyright 2009 by Freya Harris, All Rights Reserved"
We had 4 identical lines serving the "specialty" nosh, and 4 identical lines serving soups - my plan had been for the soup lines to be identical also, but because I ordered 3 identical deliveries of many different kinds of soup over the 5 days, that proved impractical. Virginia Plottel was in charge of soup service - and she did an amazing job, especially the first two days, when we suffered both a broken steam oven in the kitchen and a broken crock pot. Both problems were remedied by Friday, so we were more successful in serving more of the soup. I don't know how she managed to stay awake and working for so many hours.
Many attendees asked for recipes for the soups - as we revealed to them, NONE of the soup was home-made. ALL of the soups came from
GFS. They are neither canned nor frozen; rather they are chilled and ready to use ("RTU") from plastic bags designed to be boiled. A terrific product, which people really enjoyed.
The "start" end of one of the serving lines."Used with permission Copyright 2009 by Freya Harris, All Rights Reserved"
Several people contributed to the design of the speciality service area. The goal was to prevent lines of people waiting for anything from minutes to hours to get the food, and to assure the attendees that we had enough of everything that we planned to serve.
AG Co-Chair Mary Lee Kemper did the original drawing for us. After we worked it a few times, our Concessionaire, Caren Bachman, took it over and helped it to come alive. AG Co-Chair Marc Lederman added some final suggestions as we got closer to the event.
The idea was to combine the best of two previous AG set-ups - 1998's Yvonne Porter's "inverted I" and 2007's Birmingham's multiple serving lines. Thus, we planned to keep a "margin" of several feet around the perimeter, to allow us to refill the tables without getting in the way of service, with each serving line its own "I", with one side being specialties, one side being soups, and the top of the "I" holding utensils and papergoods (other than plates/bowls, which were at the beginning of the lines) as well as condiments/salad dressings. We also used
Visqueen under anything that might muss the hotel - and someone, I think it was Caren - suggested using it to line the table cloths on the serving tables - a brilliant idea that I intend to employ at gatherings going forward.
This set up worked so well, that even when we had our worst lines Saturday afternoon (and yes, Mensans being Mensans, some did insist on lining up when they saw activity buzz behind the lines, even after it was apparent that there was plenty of everything for everybody), the lines were gone within 10 minutes. I was very proud of that - I've been at AG's where people waited in line for an hour just to get a hotdog or a sandwich - the only waiting at our AG was for the lines to actually open - and there was no pre-posted time for that (though one thing I was not happy about was that we couldn't get the lines open earlier - guess I just needed more practice at this!).
This looks like the set up for the Isaly's Chip Chop Ham Sandwiches and Halusky (Noodles & Cottage Cheese) nosh."Used with permission Copyright 2009 by Freya Harris, All Rights Reserved"
Each day of the AG, we served a different variety of "specialty nosh". Wednesday, we featured the Pittsburgh Maurice Salad, an entree invented at the William Penn.
As the website of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette explains it:"Around 1934, orchestra leader Maurice Spitalny explained to his waiter at the William Penn Hotel how he wanted his salad prepared: julienned ham, turkey breast and Swiss cheese on a bed of greens, tomatoes and hard-cooked eggs, with a mayonnaise dressing."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06201/707009-106.stm#ixzz0LGeT8QPh&D. The dish remains on the menu of at least one restaurant at the William Penn to this day.
We served many pans of Maurice Salad, and had several left in cold storage for service Thursday afternoon. We also had a Four Bean Salad for those preferring Vegetarian.
Thursday, we served Potato Pierogie in Butter and Onions delivered to us hot and tasty by
Rosie's Pierogies as our vegetarian option.
Pierogies from Rosie's Pierogies of PittsburghPhoto (c) 2009, yabazuba a/k/a Rimas, used with permission.
Thursday also featured that classic Pittsburgh staple - Kielbasa & Kraut.
Kielbasa & KrautPhoto (c) 2009, yabazuba a/k/a Rimas, used with permission.
My husband, Bob Osterman, spent hours combining hundreds of pounds of kielbasa (which had been butchered by our dedicated volunteers on Tuesday night) with large quantities of a regionally sourced sauerkraut (thank you again, Andy at GFS) on the stove and panning it up for service (or storage). We were again fortunate to have enough left over to serve the next day (with due respect for time and temperature, which were controlled).
Friday's Specialty Nosh was Isaly's Chipped Chopped Ham in Isaly's BBQ Sauce, which also of course has a story. In order to get the fabulous price I mentioned earlier, we had to take the ham in loaves. Since one of our volunteers had access to a professional slicer, though, we figured that would not be a problem. Our dedicated former caterer, Ernie Jones, had agreed to slice the ham, and on Wednesday he fired up the big slicer to chip-chop it (which involves
very thin slices). A few moments later - a horrible "ping" later - a 2 inch pin was broken, and the mammoth slicer was slain. What to do now???? Ernie fired up his home slicer, which he'd brought as a back up (you can't have too many up back ups for AG equipment, folks). He sliced 400 pounds of ham on the much smaller, lower-powered cutting machine (it took two days) - and we were very, very grateful to him.
Saturday's Speciality Nosh was a sandwich spread, accompanied by cole slaw, and a Pittsburgh Corn Salad which I pulled from the Three Rivers Cookbook, published by Child Health Associates of Sewickly, Inc. in 1973.
In addition to all of the cold snacks and the daily specialty noshes and soups, we also had the Concession Stand - equipped and run by Caren Bachman. She procured two nacho cheese machines (one of which also was a chili dispenser), and two hotdog roller grills, which helped to make the Concession Stand possible, as well as another nacho chip warmer to add to the one WPAM already owned. I added sauerkraut, popcorn, Cracker Jack, and Hot Soft Pretzels (a last minute idea that allowed Restaurant Depot to redeem itself a little and which allowed us to make good use of our lone oven). I tried to get a cooked onion sauce for a dog topping (one of the AG Co-Chairs is violently allergic to raw onion), but that was a Restaurant Depot ball drop. Still - I don't think anyone noticed. How come? Because we kept the hotdogs coming! All 5,000+ of them! We also rented a third roller grill, so there was lots of real estate to keep the dogs flowing (and an alternative if either of the two Caren had bought used had run into trouble - that "back up" thing again!).
As a caution to future AGs - unless you have a mammoth size grill and a way to close off access for the 10 minutes it takes for the dogs to get above 165 degrees, you must have a plan for pre-cooking the hotdogs in the kitchen (hotdogs have become notorious in recent years for carrying
listeria, even though they come "fully cooked"). My plan, for two years of planning, was to use the steam oven in the kitchen to quickly heat pans of dogs, to be held in a hotbox (and to heat the bags of soup quickly and in quantity the same way). Unfortunately, the steam oven died Wednesday night (as we were using it for this purpose). It was repaired Thursday morning, but died again later than night. So - there were some delays refilling the hotdog machines those days. However, Richard Mill, the hotel's Executive Steward (and my savior, on several occasions over the weekend), got the two tilt skillets in the kitchen open and was showing my crew how to operate them before I had a chance to complain about anything - and with one skillet each for hotdogs and soup bags Friday and Saturday service was much easier. But they still ate them faster than we could heat them - no hotbox was ever necessary!
The Concession Stand in Action"Used with permission Copyright 2009 by Rawligh Sybrant, All Rights Reserved".
Attendees enjoy making their own nachos and topping their hotdogs.
Concessionaire Caren Bachman dishes it out."Used with permission Copyright 2009 by Rawligh Sybrant, All Rights Reserved".
Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings, we (or rather, Caren, Virginia, Coffier Colleen Baltis, and the wonderful meal managers who took the 6-12 shift) put out a Continental Breakfast. Thank you to the fabulous
Brueggers Bagels located in the Omni (531 Grant St, Pittsburgh, PA 15219, P: 412-471-9249) and the Manager, Bill, who provided our bagels for breakfast - I also had a very unexpectedly fresh and tasty Chicken Tarragon Sandwich (Diced chicken, almonds, red onions, cranberries, lemon tarragon mayo, tomatoes & lettuce on hearty white bread) on Monday as we were packing out.
On Sunday, Caren and Virginia served up leftovers starting early in the day; there was still food left when the Hospitality doors officially closed at 1pm. As for those leftovers in the coolers - they were all donated to two local charities (hope I have their names correct - I never got any business cards from them) - the Pittsburgh Women's Mission and the Pittsburgh Food Bank. So on top of feeding 1880 Mensans for five days, we had the satisfaction of giving something back.
I don't know if I'd ever want to do AG Hospitality again. I was a little disappointed that so many of our attendees came into the Urban Room with a sense of entitlement - that they had paid their registration fee (under $100 for just about everyone for the 5 days), and that meant that basic manners did not apply (mind you, we know that some Mensans lack common sense and/or "social skills" - but that does not excuse anyone, in my book, from
basic common courtesy). Some refused to accept that there was a method to our madness - even though the food wasn't coordinated with any of the tours, programming, or "mealtimes", and that we weren't telling them what was to be served (I was afraid they'd line up and then swarm - which some did anyway). Most important: there was plenty to eat at all times. And some of these folk would say "I've had all that, I want something else" - that comment blew my mind every time I heard it repeated.
Still - whenever I or my team needed something done - it seemed that at least one someone , and often more than one, always appeared and helped - far too many wonderful people to mention by name - but please know that Bob, Virginia, Caren and I appreciate you! And the truth is that the wonderful people far outnumbered the difficult people. Especially Bill Young - who didn't stop restocking pop and water machines the entire weekend, and who constantly updated me on products that needed replenishing. And CE Reutter, who was always willing to make a run in her pickup truck, and who helped me organize shopping lists while 10 other people were in my ear and/or cell phone. It was so illuminating, dealing with all of the "real world" issues that real chefs deal with - the phone constantly ringing with vendors or others needing you, such that you can
never get into the kitchen and cook! Thank heavens for those who jumped in - Bob, Ernie, Virginia, Caren, and Kit Hope (who worked Halusky), the lady who helped me finish the Maurice Salads (was that Wendy, who bought me a dozen roses that disappeared from Hospitality before I could get them to my room?), and all of you who lent your arms and hands.
Thank you also to the wonderful groups who took shifts in Hospitality - you made the jobs of both Volunteer Chair Nita Jones and myself a little easier - from my perspective, you were a "team" before you even checked in! Hells Ms (again taking a full 24 hour shift - thank you Sue Barnes for filling in for Skinner - who is hopefully healing as I write this), GaySig, GenX Sig, The Smart Life- please leave comments if I've left anyone or any group out! You are all vital to making the Hospitality effort work!
And another huge thank you to the hotel's Executive Steward Richard Mill - who seemed to be enjoying us and what we were doing, and who gave me, among many other things, an amazing tour of the food service operation on the "K" level of the hotel (it occupies a full city block) and introduced me to Executive Chef Jacky Francois, who I'm sure had much better things to do than spend any time on our Hospitality issues.
So - didn't I take any photos at all? Well - I did bring my camera to dinner on Monday evening, 7/6, when Bob and I enjoyed our second dinner at the
Tap Room. Ironically, we ate almost the exact same meal that we'd enjoyed right before the AG started, on Tuesday 6/30.
Description of the The Tap Room from the Menu
Fish and Chips
The first time I enjoyed this - I was genuinely surprised. I expected food service fish and limp fries. Instead, I got pristine pieces of fresh fish, breaded in house and expertly prepared. The fries were properly fried twice. Though the second incarnation wasn't quite as spectacular as the first, it was still very tasty and satisfying.
Cole SlawOne of our tablemates enjoyed this side with her fish platter.
BurgerThere are three different burger selections on the Tap Room menu (which isn't available on line). Bob had one on Tuesday with bacon and other goodies; this one from the following Monday had a different bun and aoli. Both were cooked to medium rare and delicious.
All of the Tap Room's food (except the Chili, which is served from a soup holder in the bar) comes up fresh from the "K" level of the hotel. I was unexpectedly impressed.
Tuesday was time to head home. However, before we departed, we were determined to sample the original
Primanti Brothers' restaurant in the Strip District. It was worth the visit - our visit in September 2007 to a Primanti suburban outpost hadn't impressed - but the original was wonderful.
My Cheese Steak
Bob's Hot Sausage & Cheese
Prep Line in the Left Side Kitchen
Prep Line at the Serving Counter on the Right SideIf you really want to experience Primanti's - go to the Strip and sample the real thing.
The AG experience left us both exhilarated and exhausted. We learned so much. We experienced so much. The best part of the experience was the many Mensans who went out of their way to tell us how much they enjoyed hospitality - more than one (including the unabashedly opinionated Abbie Salny) told us it was the best AG Hospitality they'd ever enjoyed. That was both thrilling and humbling - our vision of Hospitality was shaped by many who came before us - most notably, Yvonne Porter of CDAG 1998, Victor and Gail Mariani from Philadelphia 2000, and Boston of 1994 (I think it was 1994 - who was the individual, if someone knows?). As any Hospitality Chair knows - we are always "borrowing" good ideas from other gatherings and other Chairs' way of doing things. I thank all of you who came before me, over the past 17 or so years, for teaching me so well the best (and sometimes the not so best) ways to do things.
Finally - a request of all of you readers - please feel free to augment my thank yous and descriptions in the comments - I'm sure I've missed many folks who deserve mention. I'm finishing this at home, without access to a lot of emailed info in my office computer - but I really wanted to get this posted tonight. I thank all who enjoyed the 2009 AG, and even those who didn't, for attending and making this an AG for Mensa to remember.
While I have no pending plans to cater for 1900 people again any time soon, I wouldn't be adverse to a reasonable request - and of course, Bob and I will be working at the Queen's Croquet (to be held Labor Day Weekend this year) - I am, after all, the Queen's Victualer. Bob and I will also be guest cheffing at the Cincinnati RG in December ("Cam-A-Lot") and hopefully running hospitality if Cleveland has an RG in 2010 or 2011. So - keep those cards and letters coming - and remember- life is too short to not play with your food!
