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FOOD
Dinner Is Served
Two Austin takes on the supper club trend
BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD
Roving supper clubs and pop-up restaurants are a very hot trend these days. Aspiring
and established chefs as well as caterers and passionate home cooks will choose a location,
design a menu, send out an email blast or a tweet, and voilà – dinner is served. The Austin
food community supports several active supper clubs, many operated by accomplished
caterers. Supper club presentations can keep catering cooks and servers working between
scheduled weddings and parties while providing an outlet for creative culinary expression.
“When we are catering weddings and parties, the menus have to suit the client’s
tastes, but coming up with supper club menus gives our chef more room to explore and
express himself,” explains 2 Dine 4 Fine Catering owner Stephen Shallcross, who hosts
Supper Friends at the Swoop House. “We thought about doing a pop-up restaurant, but
since we already had this great space and a staff that’s willing to work, a supper club
seemed like a better idea,” reports Brenton Schumacher, owner of Pink Avocado Catering
at the Palm Door, where he also hosts Bread & Circus Supper Club.
Supper Friends and Bread & Circus are two very appealing but dramatically different
supper clubs with one key element in common: Both companies work out of their own
buildings, making it possible for them to host meals whenever they aren’t servicing catering
customers. Bread & Circus offers monthly, themed affairs open to as many as 100
guests; Supper Friends presents smaller seated dinners two or three times a month. While
observing both clubs in action last week, I discovered that the personality of each supper
club reflects the influence of its home venue to some extent, and both claim very loyal and
satisfied clienteles. Chronicle photographer John Ander son was along to document the
dishes and the ambience at both parties. See more of his photos at austinchronicle.com.
SUPPER FRIENDS
AT THE SWOOP HOU S E
3008 Gonzales
www.supperfriends.com, www.2Dine4.com
When Stephen Shallcross arranged to relocate
an early 20th century Hyde Park bungalow
to his 2-acre East Austin property, hosting
a supper club in the building had never
crossed his mind. “We planned to use the
house as office space and as a nice place to
hold tastings for potential brides,” Shallcross
told me recently. Once the little house had
been moved and restored, the busy caterer
did indeed invite three prospective bridal
couples to come for the first tasting. The evening
was even more successful than Shallcross
had anticipated. Not only did all three couples
hire 2 Dine 4 as their wedding caterer, but one
bride insisted she had enjoyed the evening so
much that she’d like to dine there again. “It
was like having supper with friends,” Shallcross
recalls her saying. Not long after, he
began inviting friends, as well as former and
prospective customers, to small dinner parties,
and Supper Friends was born. What
started out as a few friends and prospective
customers getting together around the table
has now grown into a popular supper club
with about 2,500 names on the email list.
Here’s how it works. Shallcross and
Executive Chef Chris Chism design a menu
or invite a guest chef such as charcutier
Lawrence Kocurek or Uchi’s Jay Huang to
do so. The menu becomes part of an email
invitation that goes out to everyone in the
company’s email database. The Swoop
House can accommodate 24 seated diners,
so the first two dozen respondents get places
at the comfortable dining tables in the
cozy cottage. Prices range from $45 to $75
per person, vegetarian options are always
Swoop House by Chris Chism
30 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E FEBRUARY 3, 2012 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o m
available, and guests are encouraged to
bring their own wine because the Swoop
House is not licensed to sell alcohol. Meals
commence with a complementary cocktail
and an amuse-bouche while the guests find
their place cards around two big dining
tables. Once everyone is seated, the cards
are turned toward the center of the table to
make it easier for guests to call each other
by name. Recorded music plays quietly in
the background and conversations evolve as
the various courses are presented. Brides
who are considering 2 Dine 4 for their wedding
caterer have even been known to poll
their dinner companions on the popularity
of various menu choices. Espresso and cappuccino
are offered with dessert, and guests
often linger around the table, enjoying conversation
with old and new friends.
The Supper Friends parties scheduled during
the preparation of this article were already
long sold-out, so Shallcross and his staff graciously
invited some loyal club members to
join us for lunch one day last week. It gave me
a chance to sample one of Chism’s beautifully
balanced winter menus while chatting with
my dining companions about how they
P H O T O S B Y J O H N A N D E R S O N
Bread &
Circus by
Brenton
Schumacher
became regular supper friends. Everyone at
the table had high praise for the food as a big
attraction, and rightly so, but they also said
the atmosphere of conviviality was an equally
important drawing card. “I’ve actually become
good friends with a couple of people I met
through Supper Friends,” said translator Anna
Boyet, and Austin Ventures executive assistant
Cat Diederich recounted how attending
several Supper Friends meals helped her
make personal connections when she first
moved to Austin. Both Boyet and Sasha
Sessums recalled getting valuable tips about
pairing food and wines from other guests who
brought wines to enjoy with dinner. Every one
at the table shared stories about encountering
other adventurous diners who appreciate
good food and wine: What’s not to love about
a group like that?
In addition to bridal tastings and Supper
Friends dinners, the Swoop House is available
for small private parties, corporate
meetings, and cooking classes. For more
information and reservations, email
info@2Dine4.com or call 467-6600.
Supper Friends Winter Menu
by chef Chris Chism
Brisket gougére
Brie soup with shiitake mushrooms, topped
with a fried oyster
Boston lettuce salad with Rio Star grapefruit
sections, candied pistachios, smoked
Asadero cheese, avocado slices, and sangria-pickled
red onions
Scallion chicken Ballontine with Chimaymustard
sauce, gnocchi, and asparagus
Cornmeal pound cake French toasts with
Bourbon cane sauce and praline ice cream
BREAD & CIRC U S
AT THE PALM DOOR
401-A Sabine
www.pinkavocadocatering.com,
www.palmdoor.com
Bread and circuses have been a crowdpleasing
concept since the heyday of the
Coliseum in Rome. In modern-day Austin,
catering chef Brenton Schumacher and his
staff at Pink Avocado Catering put the
ancient concept to good use, satisfying supper
club guests with delicious food and
creative entertainment. The Pink Avocado
crew spends much of its time catering as
many as five weddings a weekend, as well
as special events (more than 100 during
South by Southwest alone) that require
menus specifically tailored to the clients’
tastes. The monthly Bread & Circus Supper
Club gives the crew the opportunity to flex
very different hospitality muscles, and the
entire staff gets into the act. Everyone collaborates
on the seasonal themes, such as a
family-style Charlie Brown dinner before
the holidays and the upcoming sexy vampire
motif for Valentine’s Day. Schumacher
and his kitchen staff develop menus, mixologist
Chris Gentry designs cocktails, and
sommelier Marc Sauri plans the wine pairings
for each course. Once the theme has
been decided, Mariah Price arranges for
live entertainment and decorations to
enhance the evening’s offerings, using the
spare, open space at the Palm Door as a
blank canvas for art installations, lighting
setups, and small-scale musical performances.
Event details and menus are
announced on the Pink Avocado blog (www.
pinkavocadoblog.com), and tickets are sold
exclusively at breadandcircus.ticketbud.com.
Prices range from $60-100 a person, depending
on the theme of the meal and the number
of courses.
The Bread & Circus dinner we attended
last week was a clever culinary take
on the seven deadly sins. According to
Schumacher, he posted a list of the sins
on the kitchen bulletin board weeks
before the event and encouraged his
staff to suggest menu items that would
represent lust, wrath, sloth, envy, pride,
gluttony, and greed. After much discussion
and many revisions, a menu was
assembled, entertainment appropriate
for an evening centered on sin was
arranged, and the party details were
posted on the blog. About 60 guests were
greeted with a Man’s Ruin cocktail representing
lust, and the brisk parade of
delectable, seasonal dishes that followed
were very well-thought-out and attractively
executed. That Damn Band provided
several sets of original acoustic
music in a humorous and slightly risqué
burlesque vein, complete with strolling
musicians and an elegant fan dancer
who harkened back to the days of Sally
Rand and Gypsy Rose Lee. (Though I
don’t consider myself a prude, I will
admit to being slightly disconcerted by
the presence of visible butt cheeks during
dinner, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a
regular occurrence.) Large tables of