Tag parties that cook portland

Parties That Cook’s Party Crew Brings Portlandia to San Francisco

1 comment By The Kitchen Whisperer Filed in Entertaining, News & Events Tagged with kale, kale salad, Little Star Pizza, parties that cook portland, Portlandia February 29th, 2012 @ 12:59 pm

Last weekend, the Parties That Cook party crew took over Bibby’s house. With her permission, of course (we’re not pirates!). We came together to say goodbye – for now – to our wonderful Operations Manger, Carolyn. She’s moving on to bigger and better things as Parties That Cook’s new Manager of both our Seattle and PORTLAND outposts! Congratulations, Carolyn!

A couple of office folk spent the day decorating according to the hilariously fitting theme: Portlandia! If you haven’t had the privilege of checking out the hilariousness that is this TV show, I recommend you do so now…

OK, now that we’ve got that sorted out, let’s continue. Bibby’s dining room was decked out in such theme-appropriate garnishes as BIRDS. There were birds on the chandelier, birds on the wall, and even birds on the cupcakes! The sign to the left says it all… There was also a dedicated shell art station giving guests the opportunity to take a moment and glue a few shells or some sand on a picture frame for Carolyn! (She’s gotta be up on current trends..)

For dinner, we ordered some absolutely delicious pizzas from Little Star Pizza (we had to give Carolyn a little taste of San Francisco while she’s still here!). Bibby made yummy (and popular) kale salad. Rosie made addictively good cupcakes and brownies for everyone to scarf up. Leave it to our witty Queen of Rules, Regulations, and Laws, Beth, to come up with the PERFECT menu placards.

Adabelle, whose name means Joyous and Beautiful, was raised with her sisters Daisymae and Maisysue on a beautiful farm, where them romped along 4 acres of rolling green hills and jumped in lots of puddles. Her diet consisted of a veritable smorgasbord-orgasbord-orgasbord of organic table scraps hand fed to her by Harold and Mildred Tucker, of Beaverton, OR.

Colin, whose name means The Victory of The People, was raised by the loving Reese family of Lake Oswego on a diet of sheep’s milk, soy and hazelnuts. Traumatized as a young chick when wee Benjamin chased him around the coop, the Reese’s took Colin into their home as a juvenile, where he spent the rest of his days coddled even more lovingly than his eggs.

Armed with this rare inside look into the lives of the animals who so graciously gave their lives for this meal, we were much better prepared to make an informed decision about which pizza to eat. Thanks, Beth!

Guests arrived ready to party — dressed as one of the many Portlandia characters! I have to say, there was a plethora of plaid and flannel ensembles and beanie-like hats. After an impromptu costume contest, we declared two winners: Chef Scott (with his bright blue goatee and facial piercings) and Bibby (with her entire flannel outfit, socks and sandals, and nose ring). Gina created a master playlist of 90s music that kept the party going until it was time to move on to karaoke.

Despite the very incriminating video-graphic evidence we have of Carolyn during this last portion of the evening, I will just say that karaoke was extremely entertaining and fun for all who showed up! Carolyn, though we are missing you already, we wish you the best in Portland! I know you’ll be great up there, and will make us all very proud.

Now come back.

Parties That Cook Reflects on a Great Inaugural Portland Event

0 comments By The Kitchen Whisperer Filed in Entertaining, General, News & Events Tagged with competition, parties that cook portland, small plates, team building portland July 6th, 2011 @ 5:29 pm

Parties That Cook is all about making event dreams come true. In our 12 years of business, we have accommodated some pretty off-the-wall requests. (We even created a new event, per request!) So when we got a call from a PwC event planner asking if we could host a corporate team building event in Portland, OR, we were up for the challenge!

To be fair, the rumors of an impending Parties That Cook launch in Portland later this summer are in fact true, so this request felt like a wonderful affirmation, albeit a challenge to pull off! Carolyn, PTC’s Operations Manager and amazing Lead Chef, offered to lead the event with the help of Crissy, our Vice President of Sales and Marketing and a wonderful chef, as well! Luckily, our completely mobile kitchen concept allowed us to transport everything we needed from San Francisco to Portland, including 30 brand new chefs knives. The venue, KitchenCru, is a gorgeous new commercial kitchen space in the heart of downtown Portland and they provided the bulk of the cookware. With this team and a great new venue, we were set up for a successful event!

The PwC group elected to host a Small Plates event with a competitive twist — and it was an intense competition! (All in good fun, of course…) Teams worked together on different small plates recipes and a group of 6 managers and partners from PwC were the judges. During the cooking, judges walked around the stations to observe participants interacting with each other. At the end, the judges conducted a great follow-up session, asking everyone how their experience working together tied into the PwC company values they’d been learning about during their week of recruit activities.

The judges, who had experienced a Parties That Cook event in Seattle in the past, thought this was one of the most creative groups they’d seen! They loved the presentation of the Fried Vegetable Samosas with Indian Green Chutney and that the Little Fish Tacos with Tomato Salad and Chipotle-Lime Crema team garnished their platter with the letters PWC made from cilantro stems.

In the end, however, the winning team was the Ground Sirloin Sliders with Smoky Cheddar Cheese. They worked well together, went above and beyond the call of duty with grilled buns, and created a great presentation.

We are thrilled that our first Portland team building event was such a hit, and surely hope that it’s a sign of good things to come! Now stay tuned for that “official” launch…