20th Annual Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards
Tales of the Cocktail Foundation brought us on as caterer for the Spirited Awards at the Fillmore, 600 guests on a July night in New Orleans. The room needed to eat well standing up, sit down for a long ceremony, and still have something to look forward to at the end of it. We built the food around past winners of the awards with some local favorites added in.
Chef Jen Sherrod and Chef Brandon of Elysian Events ran the raw oyster bar, eight sacks shucked on site with cocktail sauce and mignonette, plus the savory stations: creole red beans + rice with smoked onion. They also executed most of the featured past winning restaurants: Jewel of the South's calas with Steen's butter, Dante's burrata salad and pesto pasta, Cleaver's pork belly mac + cheese with white cheddar and crispy parmesan, and meatball and chorizo bites. Chef Jamie Simpson of Chef's Garden built a vegetable station of two bites, one with tomato and one tucked into a squash blossom. Chef Hope Liberto of Bae's Bakery baked 40 custom six-inch cakes. One cake went to every table with its own server, pre-set before doors. Her dessert bar opened at 8:30 with cake balls, macarons, mini cake shooters, and petit fours.
Elysian also supplied equipment and ingredients to the Moebius Milano station so their charcoal-grilled lasagna could finish crisp on site. Stations opened at 6:00 and ran until guests took their seats at 7:30. Our team handled rentals, bar glassware, water and champagne service at the tables, and a staff meal during the ceremony. Every station served on bamboo, and Realcycle handled composting, recycling, and gray water.
Event Partners
Producer: Tales of the Cocktail Foundation, The Fillmore New Orleans
Chef Partners: Elysian Events, Chef's Garden, Bae's Bakery, Moebius Milano