Butler’s Pantry joined forces with Fleurish for the third time to design an outstanding tabletop at the 2009 St. Louis Children’s Hospital Tabletop Event.  This year’s event was held on April 21st at the Ritz-Carlton and raises more than $100,000 annually.  This one-of-a-kind luncheon featured imaginative tabletop designs by more than 50 of St. Louis’ finest florists, decorators and vendors.

 This year Butler’s Pantry was inspired by our newest venue, Palladium Saint Louis.  This new venue is located downtown, near Lafayette Square, and draws its style from its mix of modern finishes and traditional architecture.  The focal point of our table was a handmade lightbox topped with frosted plexiglass.  Fleurish helped Butler’s Pantry to design floral arrangements of mini calla lilies, coffee break roses, and cymbidium and aranthera orchids.  Placed in varied sizes of glass cylinders, these arrangements were laid out in concentric circle to mimic the logo of Palladium Saint Louis.  The whole table glowed from within atop the lightbox.

Silver Bengaline tablecloths from BBJ Linen and stainless steel chairs created the framework for the outer rim of tables and reflected the silvery-white nature of the Palladium.  Glass tiles in a cool green and metallic color scheme sat atop of the tablecloths and acted as modern placemats.  Contemporary place settings were created with sleek, recti-linear chargers, along with flatware and glassware from Premier Party Rentals and The Aries Company.  Each guest was given a glass gift box, adorned with a hand wired orchid and filled with silver jordan almonds as a keepsake.

Butler’s Pantry was proud to be a part of this great event to benefit St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

You may know that Butler’s Pantry has moved its offices from The Hill to Lafayette Square.  What you don’t know is that with this change in location comes a change in the culture here at Butler’s Pantry.  Since the move we have tried to lessen our footprint on the environment.  We have incorporated green thinking into our new facility.

Location – with our new space we are much closer to downtown St. Louis.  We can easily access clients in the city without having to create as much emissions.  In conjunction with this, we have also purchased a Chevy HHR as our Butler’s Boardroom delivery vehicle.  This fuel efficient vehicle replaced a much larger &much less efficient delivery van.  The HHR gets twice the MPG than our previous vehicle.  A second benefit to being down town is that is allows many of our employees to take public transportation, or even bike to work.

Waste – since moving to our new commissary we have taken an increased initiative with recycling.  We use a single-stream system that has reduced our quantity of trash by 25%.  This ethos translates to our catered events as well.  Our service staff has started recycling at our off-premise events whenever possible.  We bring back the recyclable items to our site and add them into our system.  Butler’s Pantry has also reduced our usage of paper products by 25% since the move.  We use china, glassware & silverware for all employee meals and snacks eaten in house.  We have also done away with Styrofoam products at our River City Café in the University Club Towers, and are well on our way to eliminating them from all Butler’s Pantry related services.  Soon our Butler’s Boardroom products will be 100% recyclable as well.

Energy – building a new facility from the ground up allowed us to streamline our processes.  We have installed a new line of dish washing machines that save up to 75% of detergent, 30% of water and 30% of energy.  These new machines use a heat pump and Energy Saving Devise (ESD) to pre-heat the water before it enters the boiler & and Autostart function to ensure that no energy is consumed while the unit is in stand-by.

Just Plain Green – The staff at Butler’s Pantry has done away with bottled water & office water coolers.  We use in-house purifiers to treat the office drinking water.  This water is also used in making coffee and other catering products.  For catered events we have also gone to a new eco-friendly chafing fuel product.  This green fuel is made from corn-based ethanol and housed in recyclable steel cans.  The fuel itself is biodegradable and does not contain any toxic, poisonous, methanol based components.

Here at Butler’s Pantry we are dedicated to helping our environment thrive.

By Joe Bonwich
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
04/08/2009

Whether your Easter brunch will be an intimate affair or a crowd scene, the recipes that make up this menu can be just the right size.

We asked Greg Ziegenfuss, chef and vice president at Butler’s Pantry catering, for recipes that can stretch or shrink. After all, caterers are frequently called upon at the last minute to manipulate the number of servings they prepare, and they often work with clients to select a menu that’s adaptable to various numbers of guests.

Ziegenfuss suggested a menu that can be easily adjusted to serve two, eight or 24 people. (He cheated a little on the bread pudding: It would be difficult to make only two servings, but Ziegenfuss says it’s so good that you won’t mind having leftovers.)

The focal point of his menu is an individual baked frittata, a cupcake-shaped egg dish loaded with vegetables. “Because different people eat Easter brunch at different times, I wanted something they’d be comfortable eating in the morning or afternoon,” Ziegenfuss said.

He offered three side dishes: a spring chopped vegetable salad, a jicama-and-grapefruit salad and wedge-shaped rosti potatoes. The beverage is a festive lemon-raspberry sparkler that can be alcoholic or not.

Ziegenfuss had several suggestions for the host or hostess.

— Make a shopping list; check it while you shop and again before you check out. Remember that most supermarkets are closed on Easter Sunday. “You don’t want to get caught short of an ingredient on Sunday morning,” he said.

— Do as much work as possible in advance. “You want to be able to enjoy the event along with your guests,” he said.

The bread pudding can be made well in advance and reheated. You can make the jicama-and-grapefruit salad up to a day in advance, and you can precut all the vegetables for the chopped salad except the mushrooms and cucumber. Ziegenfuss recommends waiting until Easter morning to blanch the asparagus and snow peas for the chopped salad.

The frittatas and potatoes can be made in advance and reheated, although they’re better freshly cooked.

— Finally, think about the presentation. “You don’t have to cut your vegetables as precisely as we do in our kitchen, but taking a few minutes extra and being careful to cut evenly can make it look really wonderful,” Ziegenfuss said. “If you have a mandoline or a similar tool, it makes it a lot easier, especially if you’re cooking for a crowd.”