Adding 300 dogs to a Ritz-Carlton ballroom filled with chocolates and pastries seems like a recipe for disaster. Yet yesterday’s seventh annual Sugar & Champagne Affair benefiting the Washington Humane Society was surprisingly calm, with scarcely a bark or growl to be heard. The event brought together chefs from more than 20 of the area’s top restaurants, offering owners and their dogs a chance to sample a variety of champagnes, chocolates and desserts.
Tara de Nicolas, the Washington Humane Society’s director of marketing & communications, who helps plan other dog-inclusive events such as the organization's annual Bark Ball, explained why canine guests don’t run wild: “They’re so shocked to see 300 other dogs, that they’re all on their best behavior.” Aside from a few pups who strayed from their owners and an Italian Greyhound who hopped on a table and walked through plates of banana-chocolate cake at Locolat’s station, the majority of the dogs in attendance behaved themselves.
Just in case, “valet barker” volunteers were on patrol to clean up after any accidents. This is the second year that the Ritz-Carlton has hosted the event. “They knew what they were getting themselves into,” de Nicolas said. And although de Nicolas worried that the icy weather might have kept guests away, this was the event’s biggest year to date. “It’s so fun to bring your dog to a party and at the end of the day, people didn’t want to miss that.”
Hosted by Ellen and Todd Gray of Equinox restaurant and Salamander Resort & Spa, who help each year to coordinate the participating restaurants, the event included a raffle and a program honoring Washington Humane Society officers. Restaurant chefs gave cooking demonstrations for the 100 guests who bought tickets to the V.I.P. reception.
But the real focus was food, offering sweets of all sorts, from fancy cupcakes by pastry chefs at new eateries such as Art & Soul, Ici Urban Bistro, and Hello Cupcake to high-brow treats like Brasserie Beck’s apple and frangipani tarts with dark chocolate mousse. There were more than just treats for humans: Barkley Square Gourmet Dog Bakery’s Bark Bar featured fancy dog biscuits, and chefs whipped up dog cookies to pass out at their stations. Some of the treats—like the chicken stock-flavored, dog-bone shaped beignets provided by Acadiana—even looked good enough for human consumption.
