Many, many moons ago, I vacationed in Costa Careyes, Mexico, at a fabulously expensive resort of the same name. The casita we stayed in had one of those infinity pools and was featured in Condé Nast Traveler’s “Room With a View,” which closes the magazine every month. (Location hunters note: These locales were collected in one magnificent volume named Condé Nast Traveler’s Room With a View, published by Assouline in February.)
It couldn’t have been jazzier. Herb Ross and Lee Radziwill dined with our group one night. We also befriended neighbors Susan Sontag and Annie Leibovitz by sharing rides. (We always had the car, so for them I suppose it was a friendship of necessity.) At the end of our stay, I decided we should host a tiny cocktail party to say goodbye to all our new pals and invited them before learning that the hotel restaurant would be closed. It was Easter Sunday and, of course, everyone in Mexico is Catholic. There was, however, a beach hut that sold passable, if slightly oily, garlic shrimp skewers and little shredded fish cakes about a half mile away. Trudging back, sweaty, sandy, and late with the leaking foil pouches, I thought, “Gee, for $1,500 a night, this should be easier.”
And therein lies the rub. Sometimes the most glamorous settings come hand in hand with the most unglamorous of obstacles. I asked some party pros if they had ever encountered this. These are their stories.
Jacques Pepin, chef and author
There was an annual event in Philadelphia called ‘The Book and the Cook.’ I have done it many times; I have done so many cookbooks. I was asked to cook at a local restaurant for the evening event, and two occasions come to mind.
It is not easy to be a known chef and cook in someone else’s kitchen. You bring the food for your menu, but you need an onion or you change a recipe and you need to rely on the kitchen where you are a guest. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, you don’t know where anything is, your reputation is on the line.
So one year I cooked at Le Bec Fin, which is owned by Georges Perrier, who is also a friend. It was so easy. He and his team greeted us, opened up every cabinet, cooked side by side with my team, and the result was magnificent. We collaborated and made a meal even better than the one I had planned.
The next time, I arrived with great confidence for a repeat performance. We got to the restaurant—I don’t want to say the name. It was dark, empty, and unwelcoming. There was nothing in the refrigerator. As a few staff came in, I was frantically asking, ‘When is the chef going to arrive?’
‘Oh, he’s taking the day off, and he gave most of the staff off, as well.’ Well, you do what you have to do, which in this case meant starting at the grocery store.
David Stark, David Stark Design and Production
“We did a project in Caracas, Venezuela, during the time that Hugo Chavez came into power. There were demonstrations daily. We set our tents up during the coup.
We were busy trying to get thousands of peonies from Europe through customs. One trial shipment worked, the next didn’t. Peonies are not native to Venezuela, so labeling the boxes ‘Rosas Peonia’ ended up being the trick.
But meanwhile, it got so dangerous that the event was postponed for a whole year. We dropped everything where we stood, hired 24-hour security, and fled.
Fast-forward a year and everything was just as we left it. We just got up onto the ladders and continued draping.”
Christina Grdovic-Baltz, publisher, Food & Wine
“At our annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, which is held in June, we do something every year called the publisher’s party. We do it at the summit of Ajax, sending the guests up by gondola. We have done the party so many times up there, I’m not sure where to begin.
We’ve had every kind of weather. One year, for the theme of water and ice, nature responded on cue and gave us a snowstorm. It was crazy, but fun. We served ice wine, which is cold-fermented. When it is cold, we give the guests blankets for the gondola. When it rains, we come up with ponchos.
But the real enemy of the gondola is wind. We have never had so much wind that we have had to cancel, but we’ve been close. Some guests get scared on the way up and just don’t want to get back in. We send them down in Jeeps, but I hear that riding down that way is even scarier.
But being up there is magical. Once all the guests have arrived, we turn off the gondola and people are captive, in a nice way. Cell phones don’t work up there—so far—and during a crazy, busy weekend, guests aren’t constantly looking at the clock or thinking about what wine seminar they’re missing. Everyone loves it, but you worry.”
Cyd Wilson, Director of creative development, In Style and People
“Several years back, In Style was asked to host a 450-person party at the Cannes International Film Festival, in partnership with a talent agency that shall remain nameless. Colleagues suggested the four-star Hotel du Cap, built as a chateau in 1870, on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. We thought it would be turnkey.
The magazine’s then-editor, Martha Nelson, and I arrived the day before to find that our party space, the Eden Roc, was really a pool café by day, complete with white plastic chairs. No decor or lighting whatsoever. Did I mention that the hotel only accepts cash, which no one had mentioned? And that I don’t speak French?
The hotel manager in his tuxedo hunted in the basement for vases, candles, anything. In the end, the hotel staff bent over backward, and guests like Harvey Weinstein, Sean Penn, and Prince Albert of Monaco helped make for the most talked-about party at that year’s festival. I’d relive it all again in a second.”
