Photograph by Paul Myers
Carol Sowolla (left) owns the Napkin Ring in Saratoga, and Shirley Jay is the general manager.
Napkin Ring caters to clients of many tastes and budgets
Business downswing changes the emphasis
By Suzanne Cristallo
Managers know how to keep employees around--feed them. Long lunches in town and reluctant attendance at meetings are not problems when an enticing continental breakfast or sautéed chicken breasts in rosemary sauce are in the offing.
"The last two years were wild," says Carol Sowalla, owner of the Napkin Ring caterers in Saratoga. "There was lots of money around. People wanted the best of everything and employers fed their workers on a daily basis." Sowalla estimates that 70 percent of her clientele was corporate. "One company fed 250 employees twice a week!"
But habits are changing. The downswing in Silicon Valley finds the remaining employers less inclined to nourish their staffs as often. "Now my business is about 50-50, social to corporate" she says.
The Napkin Ring has been catering the area's social and business functions for at least 25 years, first under Saratogan Sheila Rossan, and, for the last 10 years, under Sowalla, a Los Gatan. She says weddings fill up her weekends, more so than ever before. "People are really getting married!" she says.
They marry at wineries, country clubs or in homes. Sowalla and her staff prepare most of the food in her commercial kitchen at the corner of Oak Place and Highway 9, then transport it in warmers to the reception. While public facilities are better equipped to handle feeding large crowds, home weddings provide more challenges.
"We did one wedding at a gorgeous home in Saratoga last year," she recalls. "Everyone gathered by the pool for the ceremony, then we had to usher them to the front yard for cocktails while we set up the back for dinner." Home settings also provide more intimate touches, "like the gorgeous Golden Retriever who escaped from the garage and led the wedding party up the aisle," she adds.
But Sowalla's favorite thing to do is to try something she's never done before. For instance, at a recent dinner the hostess asked for French black truffles, the rarest of 70 varieties and one of the most expensive foods in the world ($800 per pound). Dogs and pigs are trained to find these prizes near the roots of trees.
"They're really smelly mushrooms," Sowalla states simply, but their pungent flavor permeates the dish. "We prepared them in a veal demi-glace and shaved them over a sautéed veal loin," she says. Also on the menu was her signature dish--coconut prawns--and a lobster cocktail served in a martini glass. For dessert, she served a molten chocolate cake, which oozes a flow of chocolate when cut open.
"We also make turkey sandwiches," she says. Hot lunches run around $16 per person and a full sit-down dinner with wait staff, linens, silverware and glassware runs up to $125 per person. It all works because of general manager Shirley Jay, head staff person and event coordinator Barbie Mayock, and a staff of prep cooks and bakers. "They make my life lots easier," Sowalla says. For big events, like a sit-down opera dinner for 400, she has an on-call staff of 30 or more waiters. "We just know a bunch of people because we worked in their area for so long."
As a student, Sowalla waited tables in Ann Arbor, Mich., where she studied business at the University of Michigan. One of her customers, a graduate student, later became her husband, Kris, who today works in telecommunications. Their favorite meal is "steakfrits," or steak with French fries deep fried in lard or duck fat. They intend to enjoy it again at their favorite smoke-filled cafe--Le Troumilou--near Notre Dame in Paris this fall.
Napkin Ring, One Oak Place, Saratoga. For information, call 408.867.5588.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
