Imagine planning Sunday dinner for 5,400. Now imagine conforming the meal to strict kosher dietary rules, such as complete separation of meat and dairy from preparation to serving. Remember to prepare kosher vegetarian and vegan options … and order 25,000 bagels — sesame, onion, but mostly plain.
Five days before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference, the staff of Centerplate/NBSE is running a koshering marathon to attain 100 percent kosher certification. Centerplate, the Washington Convention Center’s respected catering team, will serve four other events during the same period.
Like an orchestra maestro, Centerplate banquet operations director Telma Maria Villarreal is in constant motion.
“We started the koshering process Friday [March 2].” This includes steam-cleaning 50 “Queen Marys” — giant wheeled racks that transport food. Dipping coffee urns in boiling water in front of rabbis. Sealing and marking koshered equipment and vessels as “ready.”
Villarreal understands the need for separate sets of vessels, plates and utensils to prevent mingling of meat and dairy, and hot and cold. She’s allocating 20,000 plates for just this one function.
Choreographing details with precision and grace,Villarreal has pulled off plated dinners for 8,500 to Mayor Fenty’s inaugural reception for 15,000.
“Totally different dynamics go into this function,” she says about the AIPAC affair. For example, each server will be assigned only one instead of two tables. To handle the conference’s banquets, meeting room meals and receptions, Centerplate is supplementing its 700-person convention center staff with 600 servers brought in from other facilities.
Centerplate executive chef Gregg Malsbary is working closely with 16 rabbis and Foremost, a Manhattan-area kosher caterer hired to prepare the food. On the menu: balsamic short ribs crowned with onion confit, bundled broccolini, sweet baby roasted peppers and “Opera Gâteau,” a layered chocolate delicacy.
“We work off of refrigeration trucks to store the food [at the right temperatures], and we’re bringing in equipment from all over the East Coast to enable the tight turns,” says Malsbary, who calmly oversees a maelstrom of culinary logistics. Just imagine a shopping list jammed with such items as 125 gallons of sauce for the entrée and 8,000 pounds of ice.
By the numbers
What it takes to feed more than 5,000 kosher conference atendees for three days, three meals:
» 20,000 plates
» 1,300 servers — 600 people will be brought in to supplement the convention center’s 700-person staff
» 25,000 bagels — some sesame and onion, mostly plain
» 125 gallons of sauce for one entrée
» 8,000 pounds of ice
» And countless refrigeration stucks to store all the food
