Food

The fifth course at the same Blue Plate dinner was called "Things Aren’t Always As They Seem." It was meant to surprise the guests, with cheese molded to resemble summer fruits, pumpernickel “dirt,” chocolate-covered “grasshoppers,” edible “pebbles,” and grilled bread.

F10-Catering in Palm Springs, California, created an Indio corn station featuring a variety of dishes all made with local corn. Items included Indio corn fritters, made with bacon, arugula, and sweet chili sauce; corn blini, made with creme fraiche and caviar; corn panna cotta; corn and roasted papilla chile tamales; and more.

The Purple Pig in Chicago serves a turkey leg confit. Large turkey legs are cured overnight with fennel seed, black peppercorns, cayenne pepper, salt, and sugar, then confited in pork fat with rosemary, sage, thyme, and garlic. They are served with a salad of endive, fresh parsley, and crispy fried lentils, and finished with agrodolce.

For a winter wonderland-theme party, New York-based Peter Callahan used actual snowballs to serve cocktails. The tray was laid with shaved ice to hold the snowballs in place, and the team carefully measured the amount of the drink to commensurate with the time the guest could comfortably hold the snowball—no gloves required.

At the opening of the new City Market Social House, Los Angeles-based Wolfgang Puck Catering debuted “Rose and Lemongrass Infused Dew Drops.” Chefs used a spherification process that allowed guests to eat gazpacho right off of a fresh-cut rose bud.