In September the market changes: pumpkin, beets, mushrooms, apples, chestnuts, duck. From October through Thanksgiving I cook them in your home, for a table of two to twenty.
What is on the fall table
A fall dinner with me runs five courses. The final menu is written for your table; these are the dishes it usually starts from.
- Mushroom caviar: forest mushrooms cooked down with onion until they spread like a pâté, on warm bread
- Beetroot carpaccio with goat cheese and arugula
- Pumpkin and quinoa salad with fresh arugula
- Confit of duck legs, potato purée, chestnut jus
- Tomahawk steak with baked pumpkin, carved at the table
- Mousse of avocado and dark chocolate
- Spiced baked apples
For a table that likes a game, there is the Black Box: five courses, no menu in advance, and the guests guess each dish before I tell them.
Why fall food tastes the way it does
Pumpkin, beets and apples keep most of their energy as starch. In the oven, their own enzymes cut that starch into sugar while the water cooks off, so the sweetness concentrates; the surface dries and browns, the inside softens. Sweet, roasted, starchy food is heavy on its own, so each dish gets a lifting note: goat cheese against the beets, arugula against the pumpkin, a spoon of sharp jus against the duck. Chestnut and mushroom bring the deep, savory base that makes a plate taste like fall.
How an evening goes
I shop in the morning, come to your kitchen in the afternoon and cook while you are with your guests. Courses come out one at a time, at the pace of the table. I leave the kitchen the way I found it.
When to book
Fall weekends from mid-October to Thanksgiving fill first; for a Saturday, two to three weeks ahead is comfortable. For Halloween there is a separate evening, with the first course timed to when the children come back from trick-or-treating.
From $200 per guest plus groceries, $2,000 event minimum. Your all-in quote comes within 24 hours. See what a private chef costs in Miami, or tell me about your date.
