The holidays are a busy season for most, but for those who work in food and wine, it’s crunchtime. “We aren’t going to parties so much as we’re catering them,” says Lauren Schofield, 32, a Brooklyn-based pastry chef who makes desserts for events including weddings. And so in early November, she and her friends Anthony Ha, 32, and Sadie Mae Burns, 29, decided to co-host an autumnal afternoon feast for their industry comrades before everyone’s schedules filled up. The weather was still warm enough to take advantage of Schofield’s backyard in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, and Ha and Burns, the husband-and-wife duo behind Ha’s Đặc Biệt, a Vietnamese American pop-up restaurant, were preparing to launch their first permanent space, scheduled to open on the Lower East Side next month.
Schofield and Burns first met in 2019 when Burns apprenticed for a day at Flora Bar, the since-closed restaurant on the Upper East Side where Schofield then worked. “We gabbed the whole time and exchanged numbers,” says Burns, who met Ha when they were both line cooks at the now-shuttered Lower East Side location of the restaurant Mission Chinese. The three of them have been gradually combining their friend groups ever since. Naturally, there’s overlap in the food world, but they’re also close with people who work in fashion, film, music and art.
The last time everyone gathered in such a big way was this past summer, at Burns and Ha’s wedding in Nyack, N.Y., a large outdoor party for which Schofield baked four different lattice-top fruit pies. “We know we like the same things,” says Burns, which made co-hosting a no-brainer. “We’re all good hosts, and we love it, but we wanted to do it together.” They lingered in Schofield’s garden, catching up over Calvados and cake, until well after dark.
The attendees: “They’re amazing because you’re like, ‘Bring wine,’ and then they’ll literally bring 30 bottles,” said Burns of her friend group, which includes Jules Dressner of the wine importing company, Louis/Dressner Selections, 38, and his partner, the chef Ryoko Yoshida, 36, whom Schofield used to work with at the Williamsburg restaurant Diner, plus Mike Fadem, 43, a co-owner of the pizzerias Leo, in Williamsburg, and Ops, in Bushwick, and his partner, Michele Meltzer, 31, who just took over the wine store Irving Bottle, also in Bushwick, with another friend. “They understand the assignment,” said Schofield, who shares her ground-floor apartment with her partner, the filmmaker Thomas Meyer, 33. The fashion designer Sophie Andes-Gascon, 31, of the brand SC103, was also in attendance with her partner — the musician and producer Jon Nellen, 34 — as was the artist Justin Chance, 30, who made a quilted tapestry that hangs in Schofield’s living room.
The drinks: Schofield, Burns and Ha have all, separately, stayed at Briol, a hotel in the Italian Dolomites mountain range, and Schofield was inspired by its welcoming tradition, which involves a tray of schnapps. “I don’t really like schnapps, so we decided to put out Calvados instead,” said Schofield, adding that the apple and pear brandies felt autumnal and that she’d imagined they’d “go down easy.” They certainly loosened guests up. “I’m going to do that at every party from here on out,” said Burns. Later, Dressner poured glasses from a magnum of Domaine Mosse’s Magic of Juju from 2023 and a magnum of Kewin Descombes’s Kéké from 2021.
The music: Tasked with making a playlist, Nellen turned to his tried-and-true cooking soundtrack, which starts with “All I Want” by the jazz pianist Keith Jarrett and ends with a cover of Janet Kay’s “Silly Games” by the British artists Tricky and Tirzah — a mix he describes as “tender and easeful.”
The table: Burns arrived at Schofield’s apartment with piles of the antique linens that she and her mother have collected over the years, including napkins embroidered with small floral details and lace tablecloths that Burns’s mother had sourced for her wedding. In addition to vintage tablecloths from the Brooklyn clothing and home store Stella Dallas, Schofield likes to buy yards of fabric from textile suppliers like Mood in Manhattan and cut them to the right size. The friends arranged fall flowers in ceramic vases made by Andes-Gascon, and Burns and Ha had plenty of secondhand plates and silverware, since they’d just returned from a sourcing trip to Massachusetts for their restaurant. “It was nice to do a dry run,” said Burns.
The food: To start, the group served West Coast oysters from the Chinatown seafood market Aqua Best, radishes from Halal Pastures Farm, picked up at the Union Square Greenmarket, and Ha’s “famous” onion dip with ruffled potato chips, which he maintains have a “better structure for dipping.” Ha first made the spread, which is topped with trout roe, for Burns’s parents, and it was such a hit that “we make it for every party,” said Burns. The couple had recently been to Paris and were inspired by a Halloween meal they’d eaten at the bistro Le Repaire de Cartouche to make a pork and pistachio terrine-stuffed pumpkin. The mains were sherry-braised quail and merguez sausage; a vol-au-vent puff pastry filled with stewed vegetables from the specialty farm Campo Rosso; a cabbage and fennel gratin; and a chicory salad. For dessert, Schofield drew inspiration from “Les Desserts” — an illustrated French cookbook from the 1930s that she came across last month at a rare cookbook store in Maine — and made a festive Mont Blanc cake with chocolate dacquoise sponge and chestnut cream, as well as a pear and frangipane tart using leftover puff pastry.
The conversation: “I feel like I’m in the Berkshires,” said Kennedy Fairfax, 29, who works in fashion, when she walked outside into the fall foliage. Others joked that they’d been transported to the British countryside. Before dinner, talk centered mostly on guests’ recent travels — trips to Bordeaux, Tokyo and beyond — as well as news of openings and closings and other restaurant shoptalk. “I feel like we need an occasion,” Burns joked when Schofield brought out her abundant dessert spread. “Is anyone pregnant?”
An entertaining tip: “Co-host a party with your friends!” said Burns. “It’s so nice to be able to bounce ideas off someone else.” Schofield nodded in agreement: “It takes the pressure off.”
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