A Fare Extraordinaire likes to provide breakfast buffets with enough scope to appease everyone at the table. We typically can obtain this goal by ensuring we put out 1) something hot 2) something light and 3) something sweet.

Something hot: Chicken Apple Sausage, Wild Mushroom Frittatas, Snapper Cake Eggs Benedict, Gingerbread-Blueberry Pancakes, we really like to go all out in this category. The easier route? Whip up a few fluffy biscuits (and drizzle with honey butter for a bit of pizzazz)!

Something light: our favorite “something light” is build-your-own parfaits! Our crunchy homenade granola, pitchers of skim milk, yogurt and an array of ripe seasonal fruit. Every diet-sticken woman’s dream!

Something sweet: we love our pastry chef’s raspberry pecan curls (below), cinnamon pear muffins, iced cranberry orange scones…mmmm.

Just add fresh-squeezed OJ and you’ve got yourself a delectable breakfast (or lunch or dinner, for that matter). Bon Appetit!

Imagine it’s Friday afternoon at 5:30 pm.

Here in Houston, A Fare Extraordinaire is a buzz confirming and re-confirming the details of Saturday night’s 550+ person wedding at the Museum of Fine Arts. With passed hors d’ oeuvres and FOUR buffet presentations, ranging from a “Bridal Buffet” filled with delicious light and refreshing vegetarian items and a dessert-only buffet with SIX rich options, the wedding was on its way to becoming a true affair extraordiniare. And the guest count was still growing!

Miles away on the northeast coast of Newport, Rhode Island, I begin to slowly walk down the aisle as Maid of Honor in my big sister’s wedding.

Although I was originally peeved that AFE would not be producing the magical evening, this notion quickly subsided when I got my first taste of Newport scenery…

No complaints, but at the end of the day (and the wedding weekend) I was proud when I noticed not one Newport chef had whipped me up a batch of lobster mashed potatoes. There are still some items that remain an AFE specialty!

Congratulations to my sister Holly and my new brother Clayton!

I’m talking SALAD!

Loading up your healthy greens with fresh exotic fruit, spiced or sugared nuts, rare cheeses and an excessive amount of veggies is becoming the cool thing to do. So much so that the base “salad” ingredient is no longer even necessary!!

Hey, we veto lettuce from half the delicious salads we dream up…

Thanks to a client’s brilliant idea they called in with, Thursday we are providing a 35 plus ingredient salad bar that will absolutely FILL her dining room table (and her guests’ bellies)! Herbed and peppered ahi tuna, grilled arugula, warm roasted red skin potatoes, garbanzo beans, five-spice pumpkin seeds, marinated mozarella, passion fruit vinaigrette, who could ask for more?

So tonight when you get home and decide it’s way past time to clean out the fridge of your random assortment of cheeses, fruits, nuts and dressings (basically everything but the kitchen sink)…do the healthy, responsible thing and eat your veggies!

Open Bar. This is where things get a bit stickier… WE like to provide full open bars (mostly due to the fact that we abhor saying “No, we don’t have that” to any party participant),  BUT we also realize not everyone has the budget for gin, vodka, rum, whiskey, endless mixers, the list goes on and on…

Simple Solution? A Specialty Drink! A case of white, a case of red, a couple bottles of regular and a lite beer, now just add a wee bit of liquor and BAM! Instant party pop.

The best thing about a specialty drink is you can dress it up:

Dress it down:

Match it to your theme:

Just have fun with it! We love coming up with exciting new concoctions-we even had an afternoon office tasting just today! Specialty drinks can add a personal touch, incorporate a color scheme, or even just add a little bit of clever flare to get your guests talking.

Pour your pool party participants a blue lagoon or shake up a green holiday beverage and name it “The Grinch.” If you’re feeling crazy, rim your wild fire margarita with orange salt and tell everyone it’s chili powder!

If we’ve learned anything in the past 25 years, it’s that the little touches go a long way. They are what your guests will be talking about for the next 25 years, so don’t skimp (and don’t hesistate to call  if you need some help “mixing” up some ingenious ideas!)

Or in an over the top, floral light fixture that brighten an entire room!

Here’s a flower, though, that everyone can appreciate…the “Corpse” Flower.

The Corpse Flower is the largest, rarest (and smelliest) single blooming flower in the entire world! The plant only blooms once every 15 years, and the bloom lasts two days AT MOST before it wilts and the process starts again.

We’ve heard the flower is absolutely breathtaking, both in color and in stench. Although the bloom only last a day or so, the smell (comparable to a rotting corpse…hence the name) can linger for over a week! Regardless, this flower is a sight to behold.

Lucky for us Houstonians, an active Corpse Flower, “Lois,” is in the process of blooming as we speak at the Houston Museum of Natural Science! Tickets are on sale now to visit this rare specimen over the next few days, or you can visit the live webcam to monitor its progress yourself!

Although you won’t see A Fare Extraordiniare using these guys to adorn our buffet presentations or dining room tables any time soon, it’s nice to learn more about this crazy creature causing a stir just down the street!

Red…Tuna Sashimi!

Orange…Carmelized Figs!

Yellow…Chocolate Drizzled Plantains!

Green…Smoked Duck Crepes!

Blue…Custom Cookies!

Purple…Raspberry Gelato!

Hmm, a creative space for us to transform into a beautiful wedding ceremony? You know we love a good challenge, so this is one trend that we are ALL for!

At this particular Gremillion & Co. Fine Art Gallery wedding, the happy couple got to choose from hundreds of art works to serve as the backdrop to their vows. They settled on this serene, neutral landscape, and it made for a truly breathtaking ceremony. Trust me…I was standing at the entrance cueing the flower girl and fighting back tears.

We’ve watched galleries switch from bold and sophisticated to trendy and funky basically overnight. It’s such a convenient venue choice when you are looking to create a specific look, especially since there’s never a shortage of pieces to suit your artistic tastes.

And the best part is, there is no limit on the amount of dazzling decor, enjoyable entertainment, fantastic food or superior service we can bring in to further amplify the event!

We circulated the room with scrumptious hors d’ oeuvres. Tempura battered squash blossoms filled with herbed goat cheese (below), tamarind glazed shrimp and poblano duck, just to name a few.

Then we opened a sushi buffet for everyone who needed a bit more. A mix of traditional and eclectic rolls and sashimi! 

And for those who weren’t painfully stuffed just yet, we opened a paella station and a sophisticated dinner buffet.

The dinner buffet housed several items. Sizzling grit cakes with texas-style barbeque crab and braised beef short ribs dusted with gremolata (both shown below), being my two favorites!

Our sous-chef recently dreamed up this new dish!

How do vegetarians do it?

We should have had caution signs about warning guests to leave room as they snacked, because then came dessert.

We passed crunchy pears with chocolate dipping sauce and gold tipped macaroons.

We even recreated one of the guest in attendance’s wedding cakes as a surprise for their anniversary (but with 2 tiers instead of 6)!

Let’s just say (as if you weren’t already convinced!) no party is complete without our exquisite culinary creations.

The view from the front door. The outdoor tent was more of a natural extension of the house than anything!

If this sparkling white dance floor doesn’t lure you in, I don’t know what will.

Perhaps the professional dancers offering up lessons?

And, of course, a lounge for relaxation when you’re exhausted from boogying!

We’ve found that when setting a particular mood, it’s all about the lighting…

…and flowers and decor and music and originality and food. Okay, on second thought, maybe it’s more about the magic of it all coming together. Thank you to our vendors, Bright Star and Bergner and Johnson, for bringing their magic touch!

Stay tuned for Friday’s post spotlighting the extraordinary food we created for this event. Come hungry!

Did you know Texas is one the oldest wine growing states in the United States? Neither did I until I took a nice little trip to Fredericksburg this weekend… call it a business trip, if you will, with all the diligent “research” tasting I simply HAD to conduct!

The view from Becker Vineyards in Fredericksburg

Apparently, Texas vines “root”  back to a hundred years before California’s do. The first vines were planted in the 1650s but were left to dry when Prohibition hit. Luckily the vines were regrown in the 1970s, and my, how times have changed since then!

Now there are more than 160 wineries in Texas, producing about two million gallons a year! That’s a lot of grapes. Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay have the highest number of plantings in the state, which are actually A Fare Extraordinaire’s two favorite wines to send to a party, due to their vast popularity and mass appeal.

Here we are trayed up and ready for the first guest of the party!