How Top Chefs Do Business Dinners

Everyone knows that a business dinner is just an overly long meeting somewhere else. Right? Rubber chicken on plates in the dark, a PowerPoint illuminated on a drop-down screen, polite applause, try to shake hands with the boss and get out the door as fast as possible. But is there another way? Yes. We called up top local chefs for details on the most memorable private dining events they’ve created in the last few years. Here’s how Jamie Malone, Gavin Kaysen, and others turn business dinners into events the entire team and clients will be clamoring to attend.

The chef: Jamie Malone, James Beard Award nominee and founder of Paris Dining Club, the North Loop maker of fine French foods to take home or enjoy on-site at luxe private events.

The client: Werner Perfume, an American fine fragrance house.

The menu: Eight courses, each inspired by an ingredient used in perfume. For instance, for labdanum, a citrusy resin derived from the flowering evergreen rockrose, the chefs served cheesy gougères—rich, small, warm French cheese buns, made with French Mimolette cheese, drizzled with a sherry caramel, and finished with licorice salt. Petitgrain is an essential citrus oil derived from steam distilling the leaves and green twigs of the bitter orange tree; Paris Dining Club paired that element with a course of confit foie gras on brioche, served with fresh satsumas and glittering with gold leaf.

The business wow: At the end of the night, clients and guests walked away with a custom perfume made with the elements showcased throughout the multicourse dinner. “Working with the raw botanicals was a night I’ll never forget,” Malone says. “Corporate dining can be transformational with a little creativity.”

“Corporate dining can be transformational with a little creativity.” 

—Jamie Malone, chef and founder, Paris Dining Club

The chef: Gavin Kaysen, executive chef of Spoon and Stable, Demi, Bellecour Bakery, and Mara at the Four Seasons; and Jessi Pollak, head bartender at Spoon and Stable and a Spirited Awards Top 10 Bartender of the Year.

The menu: Spoon and Stable offers hands-on interactive demos for corporate groups, as well as more typical parties and dinners. For the interactive events, Kaysen will come in for a hands-on cooking demonstration, leading guests through dishes from Spoon and Stable’s menu or from his cookbook, At Home. Think dishes such as a classic croque madame, crispy chicken thighs with roasted fall vegetables and endive salad, kanpachi crudo, or a filleted and cooked whole fish. Pollak has been known to lead guests on a journey of building and tasting cocktails such as a classic old fashioned, as everyone tries the cocktail through different iterations.

The business wow: “What I have seen is that the guest and the planners alike are interested in creating an experience—not just dinner, not just a cocktail reception, but an experience that can be relatable and memorable for the majority in the room,” Kaysen says. “We’re happy to be able to give this to our community, with the continued rise of food and chefs on TV, to bring them right into that scene.”

The chef: Gerard Klass, chef behind Soul Bowl, C.R.E.A.M. Café, and North Minneapolis’ premier restaurant, Camden Social, with executive sous-chef Flo DeCoteau, formerly of Smack Shack and Oceanaire.

The clients: The Boulé, the Sigma Pi Phi post-grad fraternity of prominent Black professionals, and Black Women in Politics.

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The menu: A custom-designed menu of small comfort-food plates such as shrimp and grits made into canapes and black-eyed pea croquettes, as well as customizable cocktail experiences such as bourbon flights.

The business wow: “Clients find us when they want a place that can feel both comfortable and exclusive,” says co-owner Kathryn Mayfield. “When you want to be able to have an intimate experience and have those one-on-one conversations that only come when you do feel comfortable in your community, that’s our sweet spot. We’ve had clients hire our weekend live jazz band and take over the cigar tent. It allows for them to forge some deep connections within our community.”

The chef: Eddy Dhenin, Four Seasons Minneapolis’ executive pastry chef with the Michelin-star background, winner of the Grand Marnier Young Restaurateur competition in Paris.

The menu: A custom-designed “artful dessert display,” which could include anything from a custom-created chocolate sculpture to a macaron tower to signature Mara desserts such as Dhenin’s famed flourless chocolate cake with Manjari chocolate mousse and a chocolate feuilletine, as well as individual client takeaways such as bonbon boxes filled with handmade chocolates.

The business wow: Dhenin says that watching business clients marvel at the art his team and the Four Seasons craft in sugar and flour is uniquely gratifying. “This is one of the most accomplished pastry shops I’ve ever experienced, and I love art,” says Dhenin. “I see a piece of art and I think, why don’t we put it on the plate? I love nature, too, and bringing nature to the table as well. To be able to bring this delight and surprise to our clients, it’s very satisfying.”

The chef: Mike Brown, co-owner and founder of Travail Kitchen, Dream Creamery, and Nouvelle Kitchen and Brewery.

The client: Event planners BeEvents for the event technology company fielddrive. 

The menu: Fourteen-course vegan tasting menu including a “beet pop,” with beets and whipped coconut, an orange reduction with clementine segments and shaved fennel, finished with fennel pollen and honey. There was also an interactive vegan chocolate mousse dessert with blueberries, pistachio, and mint, built right onto the back of the guest’s hand behind a screen as a sweet surprise.

The business wow: “It wasn’t like any other dinner I’d ever done,” says Brown. “Usually as chefs we’re doing something gastronomic—make food to pair with a wine or come up with a whole hog dinner, something like that. This was vegan, but not because the guests were majority vegan or even vegetarian. It was about designing the food to reflect things about leadership. It was thinking about how to grow your team and meet your people where they’re at as leaders. I actually found it incredibly moving, and I was thinking about it for so long; actually, I’m still thinking about it. Corporate events will usually mean this or that to a chef, but at least one time it changed how we thought about running our own restaurant.”