the dreaded marigold christmas kitchen party

every year during the week before christmas, i traditionally take the whole kitchen staff out for dinner and a night of festive holiday drinking. this year, we decided instead to have a party at my place. what you see above is a picture of some of my absolute favorite people in the whole world and the reason that i believe that i'm the luckiest chef in cleveland. i consider myself so fortunate to be surrounded by so many great cooks who, even more importantly, are great people and my closest friends. as an extra treat this year, i managed to concoct the deadliest holiday punch of all time. recipe available on request. it went especially well with the keg of great lakes christmas ale. yikes! happy holidays, everyone, and our wishes for a truly fantastic new year.

here comes the flood...

photo and article reprinted from the cleveland plain dealer and cleveland.com

CLEVELAND — A crowd gathered at East 38th Street and Lakeside Avenue this morning. Police and flooded roads kept them from getting to get to work.
Holly Brennan, 23, of Concord Township, is an event planner at Marigold Cafe & Catering. She tried walking across the flooded street and made it only two steps before being forced back.
"I think it's pretty crazy," she said. "It's really making our day pretty behind. We had several events today. We are definitely behind. I'm worried about it. We need food to be delivered in about a half hour."
She had seen a television broadcast about the break, but "I had no idea it would be this bad," she said. "It's very cold and its deep."

just so everyone knows, the follow-up to this story is that we did in fact get all of the food out to our events thanks to a lot of hard work from joan, holly, roseann, mike, gary, and our drivers: brandon, wyatt, allen, and james and everyone lived happily ever after. joan finally made it back to her car somewhere in cleveland. roseann was appointed to head up FEMA by the new administration, mike and gary were signed to a two-man cooking show on wadsworth's public access channel, holly ended up marrying the second fire fighter from the left in the above picture, and the drivers will be working on the next season of discovery channel's storm chasers.

for more flood related fun, video footage, and the full version of holly's big on-camera interview, visit:

http://vimeo.com/2555842

coming this january to an unexpected location near you...

tis the season...

ah yes, the holidays are finally upon us. here at marigold, our elves have already been busy getting ready for all of the wonderfully festive parties that occur around town in the next few weeks. we have one giant weekend of events under our belts and we're looking forward to dropping some more catering magic down our clients' chimneys really soon. the shot at left comes from the galleria this past saturday night. apparently santa was away from his big green chair, so i decided to fill in for him for a minute. ryan's been a good boy all year (more or less) and stopped by to jump somewhat heavily onto my lap....i don't know how santa does it. anyway, i hope that he and all of the other good little boys and girls at marigold get something wonderful under their trees this year and always.

something big is coming soon...

ha! even though no one reads my blog...or at least no one admits to reading my blog, i'm throwing in this teaser post announcing news to come. we've cooked up a really cool idea that's currently taking shape in our evil lair. i'll post more when all of the details are firmed up, but we're calling the idea ben and greg's renegade lunch project and we're incredibly psyched. oh boy, doesn't it just make you wonder?