Catering

Leslie E. Hutchinson knows a good thing when she sees it. Her position as a state delegate from Essex can be leveraged in any number of ways to funnel business to her new venture, Events Extraordinaire, a super-catering firm that will do everything from rent space to provide meals to line up speakers and entertainers. Just turn the screws on state officials and other interested bystanders in Annapolis and the money should roll in.Sounds simple. It is. That's why Ms. Hutchinson wrote to 50 state agencies, cabinet secretaries and gubernatorial aides announcing her new venture, making it clear she's got a product to sell.

Banksy's has closed in Lake Falls Village. Owners Robb Banks and Will Brown will be focusing on their catering operations, which they had been running out of the same location. The cafe, which opened in 2009, served made-to-order sandwiches and salads, roasted coffee from Baltimore Coffee & Tea, and local sweets like Naron chocolates and Mouth Party caramels. The cafe also had a presence at the Baltimore Farmers' Market and Bazaar, where it would sell prepared soups and macaroni and cheese.

IT'S FALL, and if you read the gossip columns you know that the party season is in full swing. Hosts and hostesses know they'll get highest marks for their parties if they use the right caterer. Catering is a big and highly competitive business in Baltimore, but through the 1930s there were only five caterers in the city. All were black.As a boy, Gaines Lansey, now chairman of Ideal Federal Savings Bank, worked for all of them. It was a close-knit industry: Thomas Waters (800 block Linden Avenue)

A Virginia-based company that provides information technology, management and other services to the federal government warned regulators that it might layoff 478 workers in Maryland, the state said Friday. Serco Inc., of Reston, Va., also told Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation that it can't say whether the layoffs would be permanent or when they would occur. Serco's website said it serves the military, federal civilian agencies and the intelligence community.

As any good caterer knows, a good party involves not just excellent food, but a wonderful setting. So, when the Baltimore chapter of the National Association of Catering Executives throws its annual "Uncorked!" party, you can bet both the eats and the environment will be spectacular. The banquet room at the American Visionary Art Museum was a vision itself, with 27 tables decorated to fit the evening's "A Night at the Movies" theme. A table with The Birds theme featured the famous silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock hanging above a life-size tree centerpiece filled with black birds.

The owners of Dominique's, a stylish restaurant in The Brokerage, said yesterday that they have shut down the restaurant portion of the business and will keep only its catering and party operation.The move comes two months after Dominique's reopened after closing because of financial pressures that drove it to file for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.When the restaurant reopened in October, it did so with a menu and prices scaled down from those of its flagship Washington restaurant, which sells alligator steaks and rattlesnake meat.

J. Frank Tarleton, who spent more than four decades in the catering business, died Monday at St. Joseph's Hospital of complications from a recent heart attack. The Kingsville resident was 64. Born in Baltimore and raised in White Marsh, he was a 1958 graduate of Kenwood High School. After graduating, he worked in the display department at the Sears and Roebuck store on North Avenue. In 1960, he joined Overlea Caterers as catering manager. He joined the Army in 1963, serving in Vietnam as an administrative and operational clerk.

For caterer Marlene Meyer, food is fashion.Not, of course, the stains and spills that land on her clothes during the average workday, but the vibrant pepper designs on her socks and the embroidered vegetable pattern on her silk vest. "Chef's wear is not as boring as it used to be," says Ms. Meyer, who's in her early 50s and lives in Mount Washington.But during the height of the party season, she has little time to worry whether her clothes are boring. As the owner of Life of the Party -- a catering and party planning firm that has done 20 events in the last month -- she says black, comfortably stylish clothes have seen her through many frantic days.

William Koras, former president and chief executive officer of the catering business that fed crowds at the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes as well as Major League Baseball fans at stadiums from coast to coast, died of cancer Monday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Lutherville resident was 72. Named president of Harry M. Stevens Inc. in 1982, he oversaw the concessions and clubhouse dining rooms at Maryland racetracks as well as the food service at New York's Saratoga Springs, the Meadowlands in New Jersey and the Houston Astrodome.

Baltimoreans have been going to the First Thursdays promotion since 1985 so they could expand their knowledge of the visual arts.This year caterer Sascha Wolhandler has begun offering the First Thursday patrons a way to develop the culinary arts as well. The first Thursday of each month she and her staff at Sascha's Catering, 527 Lovegrove St., are offering free seminars on wine and food. The seminars, "A Taste of Easy Entertaining," will include demonstrations on how to make holiday food displays for office and home entertaining.

From the outside, Camp St. Vincent looks like many other summer camps. There are crafts and reading along with plenty of time to play outside, and campers beat the heat with a dip in the pool. But the reality of these kids' everyday lives is anything but carefree. Camp St. Vincent, a free summer day camp at Patterson Park, has been serving homeless children ages 5 through 12 from Baltimore City and Baltimore County for more than 100 years. The eight-week camp, which is a program of St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore in partnership with Baltimore City's Department of Recreation and Parks, is specifically designed for children living in shelters and transitional housing.

Don't feel like cooking for a crowd on Sunday? Get your New Orleans flair from local restaurants and caterers instead. Restaurants: B&O American Brasserie (443-692-6172; http://www.bandorestaurant.com) will serve a five course New Orleans-themed game day dinner, including grilled oysters, a seafood boil and king cake for $50 per person, and 50 cent Natty Bohs and $5 "Hail Marys. " At Tooloulou (443-627-8090; http://www.tooloulou.com) and Ethel & Ramone's (410-664-2971; http://www.ethelandramones.com)

You can cook Thanksgiving dinner yourself, or you can all go out to eat in a restaurant. Here's a third option. Have it catered. Some of your favorite restaurants are preparing Thanksgiving meals this year. We'll list them as we find them. First up, Havana Road Cafe in Towson is offering both Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner and a Cuban Thanksgiving Dinner for 4 for $40. The traditional dinner includes sliced turkey breast with stuffing and gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans with honey-glazed carrots.

Caesars Entertainment, which plans to bring a casino to Baltimore, announced Thursday that it would spend $25 million more and hire 500 more people than originally planned to take advantage of opportunities presented by the passage of Question 7. Caesars now will build a higher-end Horseshoe-brand casino rather than a Harrah's on the Baltimore site near M&T Bank Stadium that will focus on table games such as poker and black jack. The Las Vegas-based company had long hinted it would invest more if Maryland expanded gambling because it believes it will draw dedicated cardplayers from around the country to the casino, which now will feature a World Series of Poker room and host series events.

The best moment of the annual Baltimore Running Festival comes not when the marathon starts on the street outside Oriole Park at Camden Yards , or when the champion crosses the finish line. For festival founder Lee Corrigan, the high point of Baltimore's annual celebration of the fleet-footed arrives when the kids come streaming down Eutaw Street at the end of their Fun Run. "It's the cutest thing you've ever seen," Corrigan said as he prepared for this weekend's 12th annual festival.

Anna G. "Ann" Reppert, a former Peck & Peck sales associate who later established a catering business, died Sept. 13 from complications of Alzheimer's disease at Oak Park Nursing Home in Auburn, Ala. The former Timonium resident was 88. Anna Lee Garton was born in Jane Lew, W.Va., and was raised in Buckhannon, W.Va., where she graduated from high school. In 1944, she married her high school sweetheart, Joseph S. Reppert, who had moved to Baltimore in 1941 when he took a job at the Calvert Distillery in Relay.

Baltimore County police charged a Northeast Baltimore man yesterday with two counts of attempted first-degree murder in the shooting of two former co-workers at an Overlea catering hall Saturday.William Thomas Dowdy, 58, of the 2200 block of Pinewood Ave. was in police custody yesterday at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was taken with a leg wound minutes after the Overlea incident, police said.Dennis Rembert Jr., 38, of the 300 block of Wellingborough Way in Cockeysville and Duane Thomas, 27, of the 4200 block of Stanwood Ave. in Baltimore, were taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where they were in critical condition yesterday.

The grand ballrooms and banquet halls of the old Belvedere Hotel, scenes of countless proms, wedding receptions and other events for generations of Baltimoreans, will soon be reopened by the owner of the well-known La Fontaine Bleu catering business.Tom Stuehler, who operates catering facilities in Glen Burnie, East Baltimore and Lanham, recently negotiated a long-term lease for the Belvedere's two 12th-floor ballrooms and has an option to buy them at a later date.His catering company has similarly taken control of the Charles and Terrace meeting rooms on the lobby level of the old hotel, which has been undergoing conversion to residential condominiums for the past year.

Patrick J. Coughlin III, a retired catering and event planning consultant, died of cancer Monday at the Capital Caring Hospice in Arlington, Va. The onetime Ednor Gardens and Homeland resident was 66. Born in Baltimore and raised in North Baltimore, he was the son of Patrick J. Coughlin Jr., the chairman of Liberty Federal Savings and Loan who died in 1999, and Winifred Lynch Coughlin, a former Baltimore resident who now lives in Watchung, N.J....

Giant Food of Landover is using new labels to help shoppers identify gluten-free foods. The blue and green signs will be used to mark nearly 3,000 products sold by the region's largest grocery chain. About three million Americans have to eat a gluten-free diet because of Celiac disease, an immune disorder in which gluten damages the lining of the small intestine. Others have adopted thegluten-free dietfor other personal or dietary reasons. Gluten is a protein found in carbohydrates including wheat, barley and rye. Gluten can also be used as an additive in items such as soy sauce and licori   “