by Haley Salles

So how many people can say they’ve coordinated dinner for the Pope?  Well I can.  And it wasn’t easy.  Let us start at the beginning.  When Lidia told us that she’d been asked to cook for the Pope we were all amazed.  We all knew that her reputation for being an amazing chef was widespread but we had no idea it had reached The Vatican!  As you might expect the entire team was honored and excited to be a part of serving Pope Benedict XVI.  So where do you begin with such an enormous undertaking? We made lists, lots of lists.  Lists of how many plates and wine glasses we would need.  Lists of things to buy, lists of things we had in the different restaurants, lists of how many of each of these things would be needed for the two dinners and finally a list of people we wanted to take with us to serve.  Ok so now we had a list of materials, we had a menu that Lidia and Chef Nicotra had designed and we had our wait staff in place.  Now comes security…Apparently not just anyone can serve the Pope.  I became the liaison between the members of our team and the secret service, which was pretty amazing.  You never get tired of hearing that the secret service is on hold for you!  When April 18^th finally arrived and the Pope landed in New York City we were busy at the restaurant loading cars packed to the brim with fish, cheeses, stocks and everything else it would take to put together a menu fit for a king, literally.

We traveled together as a team to the location of the dinners where we were greeted by police barricades and snipers on buildings above.  Who knew that planning events could be so dangerous?  After more than an hour of security checkpoints and pat downs we were finally able to unload the car and get into the kitchen.  Once inside everyone relaxed and did what they did best, cook.  We had the most talented chefs in New York all together in one kitchen putting together the most fantastic menu you could imagine.

Needless to say the dinner went beautifully and all of our hard work had paid off.  It would have been time to celebrate with a glass of Prosecco if we didn’t have to do it all over again the next day!  Being a part of something as memorable as the Pope’s visit to New York is an honor I could have only dreamed of.  It was truly the most special professional experience of my life.  And for those of you who know me, of course I got a date with the secret service agent…but I never heard from him again.