The sharing economy comes to fine dining
Chef Zachary Mazi serving a Lionfish dinner.
Photography by Allen David, Photoplay and Julia Miho
You’ve probably heard of Uber, the Web-based service that allows people to turn their private cars into taxis, or Airbnb, that helps travelers stay in empty bedrooms in private homes, instead of hotels. Now the sharing economy is making inroads into the dining sector.
Get ready to invite yourself out to dinner at someone else’s home. High-tech dining apps like EatWith, Cookapp and Feastly, already prevalent in big cities like San Francisco, are beginning to creep south to the Monterey Bay area.
Santa Cruz artist Michelle Stitz had been renting out a rustic garden cottage in her Westside backyard over Airbnb for four years, when one of her international guests told her about Eatwith. It’s an Israelibased dining app, already well-established in Europe, and gaining users in New York—where it’s especially popular with singles looking to meet other singles. Would-be guests use the app to find an event and sign up online.
Last year Stitz began hosting candlelit dinners at a long farmhouse table in her garden and finding interested diners with the Eatwith app.
“I love the sharing economy that’s happening now, and I love bartering,” she says. “For me it’s not really about making money, I’m more interested in creating community and having a really beautiful feast with interesting people and high-quality ingredients.”
Michelle has worked as a caterer, but describes herself as a home cook who loves baking gluten-free pastries. A meal under the fruit trees at her house might include dishes like wild mushroom risotto, chicken with fennel, a local cheese plate and, for dessert, a rich flourless chocolate torte. She provides a nice wine and always ends the leisurely meal with homegrown lemon verbena tea—all just for $35 per person.
“I like taking care of people and cooking for people who appreciate the nuances of real quality ingredients,” she adds. “When they’re happy, I’m happy.”
Artist Michelle Stitz, standing at center right, presiding at two events in her back yard.
Eatwith—like similar services—connects diners and dinners, provides insurance for the event and processes online credit card payments.
A few days later, it issues a payment to the host, deducting a commission of about $1 per person.
Chef Zachary Mazi, also based in Santa Cruz, has been a private chef and caterer for 10 years, but says he got bored and was tired of waiting for the phone to ring. Last summer, after meeting Noah Kopito— of the wildly popular Mortal Dumpling dim sum pop-ups— Mazi was inspired to start producing his own events.
He and business partner Tighe Melville teamed up to organize a series of dinners as the Lionfish Supper Club using the Cookapp website.
“We pick a theme before announcing the dinner,” Mazi explains.
“I’m kind of like a laser. The more constraints you put on me, the more powerful I become.”
Their themed dinners are held in the backyard of a private home.
A recent dinner in January was a six-course tour de force of foraged foods, showing off Mazi’s classic chef training at Le Cordon Bleu. The meal included porcini crab cakes, fettuccine with wild mushrooms, grilled sirloin and root vegetables with nettles and, for dessert, candy cap mushroom crème brûlée—each course paired with a local wine.
A Valentine’s feast followed in February with sexy “aphrodisiac” dishes like paprika-encrusted salmon with raspberry, shallot and vodka glaze.
“I do farm-to-table, fusion-style cooking,” says Mazi, “and we’re doing our best to buy everything locally at the farmers’ market.”
About 25–30 strangers sign up for each Lionfish dinner, but as the wine flows so does the conversation, and friendships are formed.
“One of the most surprising things we’ve found is that it turns out to be a great networking event,” he adds. “The caliber of people who come are amazing, and most are doing really interesting things with their lives. People leave with lots of cards and phone numbers.”
Lionfish has big plans to hit the road with its supper club concept— organizing dinners later this year in Sedona, Ariz., and Maui— but Mazi admits that even charging $100 per person, he’s just barely covering the costs of the ingredients and their time, and they need to tweak their business model. Even so, he’s enthusiastic: “I’ve been a personal chef, a caterer and a line cook, and this is the most fun and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.”
Of course, not everyone needs such a high-tech way to find dinner guests. Chef Austin Kaye—who serves up street food like tacos, sandwiches and soup in mason jars at farmers’ markets in Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley—has a ready-made clientele for his monthly dinner parties.
He just puts out a sign-up sheet at his farmers’ market stall and sends out the menu for his “Back Porch Dinners” to interested folks by e-mail. Starting in May, Kaye prepares dinner for 25–30 people and serves them at a long table in his backyard in the Live Oak neighborhood in Santa Cruz.
“I wait until the summer produce starts coming in and try to buy everything, even the meat, at the farmers’ market,” he says. The menu changes with the seasons, from light summertime fare to heartier braised meats and soups in the fall, with prices ranging from $45–$50.
“I worked in Portland for five years and really cherish the cuisine of the Pacific Northwest,” he adds. “It’s not fancy, but each dish is prepared with a lot of care.”
While the Back Porch dinners are BYOB, Kaye includes wine pairing suggestions on the menu he sends out beforehand. He often brings the food to the table himself and sits down with his guests at the end of the meal.
“It’s a small, personal, intimate dinner party and I get a chance to meet everybody,” he adds. “I don’t make much on it, but it’s enjoyable. I do it for fun.”
So if your friends are always saying you should open a restaurant or if you dream of becoming a chef someday, this may be a good way to try it out at home, without making a big investment in a brick-andmortar location or enrolling in cooking school. At the very least, it’s a great way to meet like-minded food lovers.
- Michelle Stitz: “Romantic Organic Garden Dinner in an Artist’s Garden,” eatwith.com
- Zachary Mazi: “Lionfish Supper Club,” lionfishsc.com
- Austin Kaye: “Backporch Dinners,” backporchsc.com
About the author
Deborah Luhrman is publisher and editor of Edible Monterey Bay. A lifelong journalist, she has reported from around the globe, but now prefers covering our flourishing local food scene and growing her own vegetables in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
