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Katchkie Farm caters ‘Today’s’ wedding
By Francesca Olsen
Katchkie Farm on Fischer Road will be the primary food source for the 10th annual Today Throws a Wedding series, where a lucky bride and groom have their wedding televised from the legendary Grand Ballroom at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.
The wedding feast will be a “100-Mile Menu”, featuring only products that are grown and harvested within 100 miles of the Grand Ballroom.
Liz Neumark, CEO of Grand Performances, one of New York’s most prestigious event management and catering companies, is the proprietor of Katchkie. Together with Delaware North Companies, a leading hospitality and food service provider, Neumark has leased the Grand Ballroom, Foyer, Centennial Room and seven meeting rooms at The Plaza for the next 25 years. “They wanted a certain quality of food, and we are all about food quality,” Neumark said.
The wedding will be broadcast on the Today Show live on July 15 at 10 a.m. Menu items from the farm will go from harvest to table in 36 hours or less, and will include tomato terrine, local roasted monkfish over sweet pea risotto, saut/ed Swiss chard, tomato jam, gnocchi, baby mushrooms, and ricotta torte with toasted almonds and blueberries.
The Grand Ballroom has hosted weddings for members of the Kennedy family, Donald Trump, and other “celebrities and discerning people alike”, and was the backdrop for Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball and scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, as well as the recent blockbuster Bride Wars.
Chef Chris Harkness is the executive chef for Grand Performances, and he innovated the menu for Today Throws a Wedding. Harkness leads an 85-person culinary team for Grand Performances.
“Each ingredient is written with emotion. Each menu item is a child being released into the world to be judged. Millions of viewers will watch the winning couple realize their fantasy wedding in the landmarked ballroom. Creating the 100 Mile Menu has been a tremendous thrill; I’m honored to serve it at the Today Show wedding,” said Harkness.
“The Plaza Hotel -- it’s so iconic,” said Neumark. Grand Performances was contacted to cater Today Throws a Wedding two years ago, but the farm wasn’t ready. “Now we’re ready, and we said absolutely,” she said. “It’s the perfect time of year to integrate it. It’s just at the beginning of true bounty.”
The guest list is about 150, but Neumark says she’s not worried. Grand Performances runs several cafes in New York City, including one at Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center in Riverdale, and is used to planning menus for parties of 500 or more using food from the 60-acre farm.
“This is our third growing season. It’s unbelievable,” said Neumark. She closed on the property in summer 2006 and started the first growing season in summer 2007. Neumark is a third-generation Manhattanite who has spent summers in the country since she was a child.
“I felt it was important for all of us to just take a giant step back and reconnect to the heart of our passion,” Neumark said about buying the farm for Grand Performances. Running a large, prestigious company takes business savvy, but Neumark says she wanted the staff to remember that good, healthy, organic food was the core premise.
After looking at 50 properties in three states, Grand Performances came across the land Katchkie now sits on. It had biodiversity -- open fields, acres of woods, a pond and rolling fields “where you could just envision kids sitting around and talking.” Additionally, the price was right.
“Something about Columbia County is very welcoming and inviting to this kind of project,” Neumark said. The farm is also connected to Grand Performances’ non-profit, the Sylvia Center, which teaches children both rural and urban about the origin of their dinners. Children who visit the farm plant and harvest in the field, and then cook what they harvest. The nonprofit also does programs with city public schools. “Nutritional education has gone from something being very neglected to being very fashionable,” Neumark said.
The farm is a member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association and employs organic practices in its 15-20 acres of growing product. Katchkie doesn’t use any synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or growing methods. “Chicken poop!” Neumark said. “We buy it by the ton.”
Grand Performances is 30 years old. Neumark started the company as a waitress service for women and the arts. Now, they are a full service catering company. The Grand Ballroom contract came in 2006. “It’s very atypical for a hotel to contract out its ballroom,” she said. “They were very interested in us from the get go. We understand how an outside operator functions within a hotel.”
The “100-Mile Menu” concept joins other recent trends towards eating and buying local. Neumark says it’s a natural progression.
“Fifty to 100 years ago, people only ate locally,” she said. “It’s really only in the last 50 years with the growth of transportation systems and refrigeration that users really starting sourcing the food from 1,500 miles away.”
“The public becomes engaged because people interested in food and flavor have discovered that fruit from an opposite hemisphere doesn’t really have much taste. What has started as a trend has become a movement.”
Neumark mentioned the “horrors of the industrial food system” -- E.coli, salmonella, mad cow disease, harsh pesticides and chemicals from conglomerate companies, and so on. “I think we are in the danger zone,” she said.
The joining of culinary aficionados and environmentalists, Neumark said, has been a golden ticket for social encouragement to eat local. “Five years ago, they were really separate movements. You were either an environmentalist, or you were a foodie. Now, we say, ‘healthy body, healthy earth.’”
Katchkie Farms hires two people full time and several part time field hands. Neumark attributes successful yields to Katchkie’s farm manager, Bob Walker, who she calls “a magician.”
“How things work is just second nature to him,” Neumark said. Walker mapped where the barn and greenhouses would go, and built growing tables for inside the greenhouses that have, below the seedling trays, an insulative layer, and then wires that warm the tables for winter growing. “Bob’s really contemplated each component almost endlessly,” said Neumark.
Walker, Neumark, and the Grand Performances culinary team meet once a year to discuss what they’ll grow in the next season. Chefs report what their fondest wishes are for future menus, and they discuss what is needed for new product lines. Katchkie has its own organic ketchup and pickles and will develop a line of organic baby foods this year.
Neumark is a member of the New York State Council on Food Policy in addition to operating Grand Performances. She is a self-proclaimed “CSA (community supported agriculture) junkie”; Grand Performances launched its first CSA this year.
“I’m a city kid, but I spent all my summers outside the city. You spend this much time around food...and it sort of grows on you,” she said.
The wedding feast will be a “100-Mile Menu”, featuring only products that are grown and harvested within 100 miles of the Grand Ballroom.
Liz Neumark, CEO of Grand Performances, one of New York’s most prestigious event management and catering companies, is the proprietor of Katchkie. Together with Delaware North Companies, a leading hospitality and food service provider, Neumark has leased the Grand Ballroom, Foyer, Centennial Room and seven meeting rooms at The Plaza for the next 25 years. “They wanted a certain quality of food, and we are all about food quality,” Neumark said.
The wedding will be broadcast on the Today Show live on July 15 at 10 a.m. Menu items from the farm will go from harvest to table in 36 hours or less, and will include tomato terrine, local roasted monkfish over sweet pea risotto, saut/ed Swiss chard, tomato jam, gnocchi, baby mushrooms, and ricotta torte with toasted almonds and blueberries.
The Grand Ballroom has hosted weddings for members of the Kennedy family, Donald Trump, and other “celebrities and discerning people alike”, and was the backdrop for Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball and scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, as well as the recent blockbuster Bride Wars.
Chef Chris Harkness is the executive chef for Grand Performances, and he innovated the menu for Today Throws a Wedding. Harkness leads an 85-person culinary team for Grand Performances.
“Each ingredient is written with emotion. Each menu item is a child being released into the world to be judged. Millions of viewers will watch the winning couple realize their fantasy wedding in the landmarked ballroom. Creating the 100 Mile Menu has been a tremendous thrill; I’m honored to serve it at the Today Show wedding,” said Harkness.
“The Plaza Hotel -- it’s so iconic,” said Neumark. Grand Performances was contacted to cater Today Throws a Wedding two years ago, but the farm wasn’t ready. “Now we’re ready, and we said absolutely,” she said. “It’s the perfect time of year to integrate it. It’s just at the beginning of true bounty.”
The guest list is about 150, but Neumark says she’s not worried. Grand Performances runs several cafes in New York City, including one at Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center in Riverdale, and is used to planning menus for parties of 500 or more using food from the 60-acre farm.
“This is our third growing season. It’s unbelievable,” said Neumark. She closed on the property in summer 2006 and started the first growing season in summer 2007. Neumark is a third-generation Manhattanite who has spent summers in the country since she was a child.
“I felt it was important for all of us to just take a giant step back and reconnect to the heart of our passion,” Neumark said about buying the farm for Grand Performances. Running a large, prestigious company takes business savvy, but Neumark says she wanted the staff to remember that good, healthy, organic food was the core premise.
After looking at 50 properties in three states, Grand Performances came across the land Katchkie now sits on. It had biodiversity -- open fields, acres of woods, a pond and rolling fields “where you could just envision kids sitting around and talking.” Additionally, the price was right.
“Something about Columbia County is very welcoming and inviting to this kind of project,” Neumark said. The farm is also connected to Grand Performances’ non-profit, the Sylvia Center, which teaches children both rural and urban about the origin of their dinners. Children who visit the farm plant and harvest in the field, and then cook what they harvest. The nonprofit also does programs with city public schools. “Nutritional education has gone from something being very neglected to being very fashionable,” Neumark said.
The farm is a member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association and employs organic practices in its 15-20 acres of growing product. Katchkie doesn’t use any synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or growing methods. “Chicken poop!” Neumark said. “We buy it by the ton.”
Grand Performances is 30 years old. Neumark started the company as a waitress service for women and the arts. Now, they are a full service catering company. The Grand Ballroom contract came in 2006. “It’s very atypical for a hotel to contract out its ballroom,” she said. “They were very interested in us from the get go. We understand how an outside operator functions within a hotel.”
The “100-Mile Menu” concept joins other recent trends towards eating and buying local. Neumark says it’s a natural progression.
“Fifty to 100 years ago, people only ate locally,” she said. “It’s really only in the last 50 years with the growth of transportation systems and refrigeration that users really starting sourcing the food from 1,500 miles away.”
“The public becomes engaged because people interested in food and flavor have discovered that fruit from an opposite hemisphere doesn’t really have much taste. What has started as a trend has become a movement.”
Neumark mentioned the “horrors of the industrial food system” -- E.coli, salmonella, mad cow disease, harsh pesticides and chemicals from conglomerate companies, and so on. “I think we are in the danger zone,” she said.
The joining of culinary aficionados and environmentalists, Neumark said, has been a golden ticket for social encouragement to eat local. “Five years ago, they were really separate movements. You were either an environmentalist, or you were a foodie. Now, we say, ‘healthy body, healthy earth.’”
Katchkie Farms hires two people full time and several part time field hands. Neumark attributes successful yields to Katchkie’s farm manager, Bob Walker, who she calls “a magician.”
“How things work is just second nature to him,” Neumark said. Walker mapped where the barn and greenhouses would go, and built growing tables for inside the greenhouses that have, below the seedling trays, an insulative layer, and then wires that warm the tables for winter growing. “Bob’s really contemplated each component almost endlessly,” said Neumark.
Walker, Neumark, and the Grand Performances culinary team meet once a year to discuss what they’ll grow in the next season. Chefs report what their fondest wishes are for future menus, and they discuss what is needed for new product lines. Katchkie has its own organic ketchup and pickles and will develop a line of organic baby foods this year.
Neumark is a member of the New York State Council on Food Policy in addition to operating Grand Performances. She is a self-proclaimed “CSA (community supported agriculture) junkie”; Grand Performances launched its first CSA this year.
“I’m a city kid, but I spent all my summers outside the city. You spend this much time around food...and it sort of grows on you,” she said.
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