Food Cart Project Part XXII: Civilian Studios Open House Catering Gig

Civilian Studios, whose garage bay I'm renting to build out the cart, had their third annual open house this weekend. I ended up catering the event, so a few items from the Burmasphere menu had their public debut. On the menu for the event was a coconut chicken curry, a pickled tea leaf salad called Lahpet Thok, deep fried chickpea fritters with a balachaung dipping sauce, and ghost chile ice cream (this last one isn't Burmese, it just tastes good). I used Civilian's kitchen as my prep space the day before the event:

Working in an unfamiliar space is always awkward, and if I'd been thinking, I'd have sent an e-mail out asking folks to clear anything out of the fridge that they didn't need in there; space was pretty tight in that fridge. But I managed to make it work. I did, however, spill over onto this rolling table in the next room over. Here we see the chicken breasts, vacuum bagged and awaiting their turn in the circulator:

I also used this space to start building the curry while the chicken breasts were cooking. The new induction burners work really nicely, by the way. I'm very pleased with them so far...

Eventually I finished the prep, and it was time to get the show on the road. My sous chef, Jen, and I set up in the garage bay right next to the cart, so folks could get a look at it as they were waiting in line for their Burmese eats. Jen's foodservice experience is limited to ice cream (for that matter, apart from coffee, so is mine), but she was a natural on the deep fryer. She was responsible for all of the chickpea fritter orders, and did an awesome job. I was on saute, cranking out the coconut chicken curries. Here we are getting things set up:

My mom and my aunt came into town to help out as well. They were mostly responsible for assembling the tea leaf salads. My friend Chelle helped out as well, but managed to dodge the photos...

Apart from a minor circuit issue involving the deep fryer and the rice cooker, the whole thing went off pretty much without a hitch. In just a little over two hours, we ran out of food; we went through around 45 coconut chicken curries, probably 50 chickpea fritter orders, 40 or 50 tea leaf salads and maybe 30 orders of ghost chile ice cream. It took 20 or 30 minutes for people to pick up on what we were doing, but once they did we had a line most of the time, and we never did get in the weeds. Great work from this crew, and having never cooked for a large group before, it was nice to discover that I'm at least reasonably good at cooking under pressure. And thanks to all of my friends and fellow Civilian folks who tried the food. I got lots of positive feedback; I have a hunch Portlanders will eat this stuff...

I wasn't able to get any photos of the rest of the open house, because I was pretty busy with this. But there was a lot of great art on display, and a number of folks trekked across the railroad tracks to North Coast Seed Studios, who were having their open house as well. I didn't get over there, but it's apparently a pretty impressive place. I'll have to check it out next time they have an art sale over there.