The Player, Stan Hochman
Sit down dinner for 1,300? Peachtree & Ward can cater that, does it every year before the Antiques Show.
Veal chop for 200 wedding guests? Peachtree & Ward serves that all the time.
Asian-influenced menu for a huge office party? Peachtree & Ward will whip up Vietnamese shrimp rolls with eggplant and scallions and provide the plum dipping sauce, properly purple, clingingly thick.
They do 500 events a year, 65 in September alone, preparing quality ingredients in huge quantities. But will they take on the intimate romantic dinner for two, all champagne froth and the tinkle of delicate crystal?
Jon Weinrott, president of Peachtree & Ward, answers with a story that tells you all you need to know about this Willow Grove enterprise and the way it has grown through the years.
"This youngster called us," Weinrott said. "He was a kid, maybe in junior high school, wanted to give his parents an anniversary Sunday brunch, just the two of them. We sent a chef and a waiter.
"Years later, we ran into the parents at an event. They remembered how their son had called three caterers and that we were the only ones who treated him seriously.
"In our mission statement, we say that it's our aim to create enduring memories for our customers and for ourselves."
Weinrott is 46, lean, glib, with a passion for food that shimmers in his voice and turns it the consistency of crème brulee. The path to catering success has been full of twists and turns, all of them fragrant with herbs and spices and lessons learned.
He's from the Philadelphia suburbs. Attended Harriton High, breezed through Tufts, majored in creative writing and photography, then got an M.A. in English. Didn't like the meal plan at college, so he cooked his own dinners.
Cycled from here to Alaska, sleeping outdoors, cooking at campfires. Remembers the first cookbook he ever owned, "Uncle John's Bread Book," a thin paperback.
"I wasn't sure of myself in those days," he recalled. "So, I'd do things exactly as the recipe stated. I'd learn later that bread making depended on humidity, on other factors. Once, I remember the board stuck with dough, thick, clinging, it took me an hour to clean it up. I realized then that I couldn't follow recipes exactly." He has been dancing to the tune of his own whisk ever since.
In this case, the avocado has fallen far from the tree. His grandfather was a bank president, his father an attorney, his great uncle a judge.
"I can remember," Weinrott said, "being taken out to dinner when I was 12 and ordering things even though I didn't know what they were. When I got older, I learned to cook them by visualization. Go home, try to replicate what I had eaten."
Later, this fascination with food sent him cycling through France. "I remember one dinner at someone's home, outside of Paris," he said, his nostrils flaring to recapture the aromas of the evening.
"The husband came home from work, the wife had been preparing leg of lamb. And she apologized for serving it with green beans and not white beans. Tradition, so important in that country, meant serving leg of lamb with white beans."
Weinrott taught for a while at the Baldwin School. Had some photographs accepted at juried exhibits. But his idols seemed out of reach, so he changed direction and headed for the kitchen.
While in college, he'd worked at Casa Mexico, in Harvard Square, assistant lunch cook and dishwasher. Managed a food co-op in Somerville, Mass. Later, he took a job in Eugene, Oregon, working the midnight to 8 a.m. shift, making desserts, baking breads.
Weinrott returned to Philadelphia and went to work as a busboy at Deux Chiminees. Worked his way up to pastry chef. Lusted after a job with Georges Perrier, but that waiting list was longer than the saber Perrier uses to slash open champagne bottles.
"And then I met Lori," Weinrott said. "She was working as a salad girl at the Commissary. She'd studied French Literature at Yale, written her thesis on Proust, in French. Met her on a blind date."
They married. She worked at Russell's, he worked at Morgan's, names out of Philadelphia's restaurant past. And then, one day, Lori announced that they were going to Martha's Vineyard.
"A friend of hers from Yale told her about Jennifer Phillips, (of the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.) who needed a chef," he said. "This would be our first opportunity to work together. We would make a different lunch, a different dinner, every day for eight weeks.
"We'd develop the menus, except on the days when she'd catch a bluefish, and that's what we cooked.
"We'd go to farmers on the island, explain that we wanted zucchini this size (he holds his thumb and index finger in a half-dollar size circle).
"She entertained about four times a week. I remember her saying we had to be there that Sunday because Lillian Hellman was coming for lunch. That's all we had to hear.
"We wound up making breakfast, too. I remember someone walking in one day, saying, 'Good morning, I'm Bob Woodward.' Henry Kissinger would be there for cocktails. It was a thrill."
Summer ended, autumn's chill rekindled wanderlust. Back to France, for a year. "I remember eating a meal at La Truffe, which was on Front Street." Weinrott said, the nostrils flaring once again. "Jean-Francois Taquet was the chef then. A wonderful, outrageous meal, the different textures, the different flavors, the different looks. I knew we had to go to France.
And when they returned, the breakthrough chance to cook together at Joel Assouline's restaurant, Two Quails. "And from there, a brief but memorable tenure at the Fairmount Firehouse (now Jack's).
"We were obsessed with quality ingredients and basic flavors," Weinrott said. Inevitably, philosophical differences with the restaurant owner cropped up like weeds in an herb garden.
"And then," Weinrott said proudly, "someone who had been a customer at the restaurant called to hire us to cook a dinner for them. And that propelled us towards catering.
"We were 'Jon & Lori' then. Lori designed this little card with stick figures wearing chef's hats, hers with curly hair. We still thought about opening a restaurant, but a Manayunk deal fell through."
In December, 1985, they bought a three-story building in Manayunk, renovated it, construction still buzzing while they hosted their first party the following May.
"We were your basic Ma and Pa operation, living upstairs, cooking downstairs, making all of our sauces," Weinrott said.
"We vowed we wouldn't do more than one party in a day, never do large parties back to back. I had worked one catering party in my life. We learned through the people we hired."
They operated as Peach Street for a while, a spinoff from Pechin St., where they had lived. When they bought out Wendy Ward in 1992, they became Peachtree & Ward.
They employ 25 people on a regular basis, the staff zooming to 200 some nights. Some of the top chefs in the city have worked in their kitchens, including Derek Davis, the wizard of Manayunk, and Brasserie Perrier's Francesco Mortarella.
"It's a win-win situation," Weinrott said.
And how has Peachtree & Ward prospered in a competitive field? "Consistency," Weinrott said swiftly. "Plus, we're computerized now. We know who has worked at so-and-so's house in the past. Next time, that same person goes back.
"I'll talk to the host and hostess in advance. There's someone who doesn't eat meat, we're prepared, they get something else. You have to satisfy your customers and occasionally you have to surprise them.
"You have to be innovative. Our customers are eating at Le Bec-Fin,
at Buddakan. They go to New York and eat at Daniel, at L'Espinasse.
They come away knowing what they want.
"We do a lot of small dinner parties where the host is trying to lure someone away from another corporation. They can't have that dinner at their country club or at Brasserie Perrier."
Peachtree & Ward offers holiday menus that range from $30 a person to $105 (butlered hors d'oeuvres; pomegranate, haricot verts, jicama and walnut salad; beef Wellington; roasted beets, peppers, onions, tomatoes; gingerbread pudding with cinnamon sauce; coffee).
A recent spinoff is Peachtree-to-go, food that the customer reheats and serves. There's a Sunday football menu designed to ease the pain of watching the Eagles struggle. For $30 a person you get Cajun crab cakes, country mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, a salad, fried onions, peppers and mozzarella sticks and German chocolate cake.
After a recent event that Peachtree & Ward catered at the law firm of Mesirov Gelman Jaffe Cramer & Jamieson, Pamela McCarthy, the firm's director of marketing, could hardly contain her enthusiasm. "What sets Peachtree & Ward apart from other caterers is their creativity and imagination," she gushed. "At our event, their clever use of demitasse spoons to hold smoked salmon as an hors d'oeuvre was a great hit. You never have to worry about the food if they're catering an event."
On the creative front, the company is currently developing plans to offer wine-themed wedding showers. Jon's brother Jim is a wine importer and distributor. Peachtree & Ward works with Greg Moore in New Jersey on wine-related events. Lori continues in an advisory capacity, working with long-time clients.
They have two kids. Sam, 9, inquisitive, but not daring when it comes to trying new foods. Sophie, 3, is more adventurous, eager to try sushi. They are members of the warm and welcoming congregation at Mishkan Shalom and they do their share of charity dinners.
There have been some enchanted evenings, some unique settings, on land, at sea. Is there a most memorable one?
"It's an emotional one," Weinrott said, his voice turned raspy. "We got a call from a couple who were planning their daughter's Bat Mitzvah.
"You have to plan these events years in advance, and at the time, the little girl was seriously ill, to the point where they didn't know if she'd live to be Bat Mitzvahed. But we went along with the plans, hoping that she'd make it. And we catered that Bat Mitzvah."
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