Global Catering Adventures

An Amazing Week

We started our week amid the sand dunes of Merzouga, worked our way to the beautiful Todra Gorges nestled.high in the middle Atlas Mountains onto the valley of the roses at Megouna. 

 

 We then drove three hours to Ouarzazate where we based at the Royal Golf. On our second day there, we were.blanketed by a sand storm with 40 mile sustained.winds. We then made our way to beautiful Marrakesh to reload on.supplies and a light day of work. The crew desperately needed the rest. This morning we made our way up to Oukaimden one of Moroccos highest peaks where our basecamp.was.covered in snow.
 
Tomorrow we.will be in Imlil at the.foot of Morocco highest mountain Tobkal with more snow.

Only in Morocco can you go from sandy dunes through a beatiful oasis onto a ski resort all within 300 kilometer. What an amazing week, what an amazing country. And not to forget the 6000 meals the catering crew served during the same week.... More to come.

The insanity begins

 Day -1 and it is even more challenging than expected, I had a grasp of the obstacles that I was going to face in the big cities, but I certainly never imagined the ridiculous stuff I have to go through in the desert. We lost power for a whole day. We wiped out the town of pretty much all the supplies available are now forced to truck needed items from fes 590 kilometers away. To get food here almost takes an act of God. I have been lucky to find a handful of people who are willing to work a little bit harder and supply us with baked goods and a grocer who is willing to go and get our supplies from wherever he can. My barbecue that I ordered was finally done yesterday. We will be heading to Merzouga today to serve dinner after pushing out 350 boxed lunches for lunch. I cannot think of how the job could have been done by a Moroccan caterer, since the numbers have grown tremendously from the projected 120-150, to the mamoth 350 cast and crew that we are serving. It is 3:30 am and I am heading to the school which is our current home base to start work, I won't be back to the hotel till 11:00 pm tonight. Wish me luck.....More to come.  

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The insanity begins

 
Day -1 and it is even more challenging than expected, I had a grasp of the obstacles that I was going to face in the big cities, but I certainly never imagined the ridiculous stuff I have to go through in the desert. We lost power for a whole day. We wiped out the town of pretty much all the supplies available are now forced to truck needed items from fes 590 kilometers away. To get food here almost takes an act of God. I have been lucky to find a handful of people who are willing to work a little bit harder and supply us with baked goods and a grocer who is willing to go and get our supplies from wherever he can. My barbecue that I ordered was finally done yesterday. 
We will be heading to Merzouga today to serve dinner after pushing out 350 boxed lunches for lunch. I cannot think of how the job could have been done by a Moroccan caterer, since the numbers have grown tremendously from the projected 120-150, to the mamoth 350 cast and crew that we are serving. It is 3:30 am and I am heading to the school which is our current home base to start work, I won't be back to the hotel till 11:00 pm tonight. Wish me luck.....More to come.  

Another day, another challenge

 
 
 
A gorgeous day in Erfoud today, I woke up this morning at the Hotel Belere, nice crisp air and beauty all around. The desert air is amazingly clean. Darren, my chef , and I had breakfast at the hotel and met our driver Khaleed, to go to the dunes. A half hour drive on a single lane road, through the little town of Rissani, then  45 minutes on a rutted dirt road to the Auberge Yasmina at the foot of the dunes. Absolutely amazing, a moving mountain of sand that is constantly shifting with wind. We checked out our base camp area for Tuesday, our opening day. On my way back to the cooking school where our home base is, I stopped by the production office to get some info and started talking to the production manager about the plans for Monday's lunch. Our original plan was to do a burger bar on set for rehearsals, but it turned out that Monday is going to be a running around for the cast and crew, driving the course for the first challenge, so I was asked to do the burger bar tommorow for the production meeting lunch. That set a whirlwind in motion since there is no such a thing as hamburger buns in Erfoud, I had to go and show a bakery how to make them which they are doing now, at 1030 at night. Chocolate chip cookies are next on his plate then oatmeal raisin. All the tastes of home that these poor guys who have been here for a month miss terribly. Rumors started that we are doing mexican food on Tuesday, never have I seen so much love shown to me for something I haven't done yet. The baker showed up with tortilla samples for me to taste, which were devoured before I could even smell them. Half of our crew is from California and mexican food is something they love. Tomorrow we will start at 0600 making the burgers and our sauces, Yuzu Aioli, Cilantro Lime Mayo, Teriyaki sauce and Guacamole and all of our condiments. It should be a fun day. We are now known throughout this project as Cookie Monster for Christopher and miracle man for me....More to come. 

Getting started

I am in awe at the unbelievable hospitality and generosity of the people of Morocco. Last night as we were checking into the Hotel Belere, I struck up a conversation with the night manager, and voiced my concern at the likelihood of having a hard time sourcing out products in town. Erfoud is a small town of 1500 residents and finding enough products in town, in my mind was going to be difficult. By the time I woke up this morning, Moussaoui, the manager had made phone calls to the produce market, the butcher and the spice merchant and made appointments for me to see all of them. Not only did he smooth things with everyone, but he insisted on taking me there himself. nevermond that he had worked all night and hadn't slept for 19 hours. So what could potentially have been a tremendous challenge, proved to be an hour of work. Moussaoui, then took me to a welder where we ordered a custom made 8 foot grill to use on the set for barbequing all of our meats. The day in fact kept on getting better, Lunch was at the home of Moulay Mustafa, one of the towns nobility, with couscous with vegetables and spring lamb and my all time favorite, Kefta with eggs. We were stuffed. A three hour meeting with production management ensued where we were told about all the challenges we will be facing in the next 3 weeks. The most difficult day we will have, will be the 9th of April, where 60% of our lunches will have to be delivered either by helicopter or by white water raft. The crew was soooo happy to see us, as there really is a lack of good food in town. They can't stand the sight of another sandwich au poulet, chicken sandwich. Dinner was as bad as they described with some dry chicken and stale fries at the hotel's restaurant.

We met our drivers, since in Morocco we cannot drive our own production vehicles, and we plan on going  to the dunes tomorrow morning to check out our 1st shooting location....More to come.

A day of food and travel

Today started at 0630 connecting with family and work Via Skype, then a great simple breakfast at the Texuda hotel in Rabat, this a boutique hotel in near the Walled city in Rabat where we were treated like royalty on my last trip here in December. We then proceed to the Marche central where we placed orders with the butcher for all of our meats for the next week. the fish purveyor was next on our list, and we managed to get most of the fish for this coming week being delivered to Erfoud. Darren and I went to lunch at my parents house for my mom's legendary chicken with preserved lemon and olives ( My dad bought a special free range chicken). In the late afternoon we made our way to Casablanca for our flight to Errachidia, which to be more frightening then expected, Halfway through the flight, the pilot announced that the winds were not favorable for landing, so we had to circle for another half hour, then 10 minutes later we were landing. I guess they have a special switch to turn off the wind. another long drive to Erfoud to the  wonderful Hotel Belere. tomorrow we go to the cooking school to start preparing our sauces and bases.... More to come.

A day in the life of a traveling production caterer

First Day in Morocco, landing an hour earlier than scheduled seemed like a good omen for this journey. Alas that wasn't meant to be, or I simply read the signs wrong. We had little luck finding all the smallwares we needed in one shop and had to gather from multiple shops in Derb Omar in Casablanca, Then the"state of the art" catering trailer that we were supposed to use, turned out to be a large container trailer with a couple of stockpot stoves and an oven. It made me miss my tractor trailer, and curse myself for not shipping a professionally built one from the US. Then the biggest hit today was finding out that in Morocco you not only pay customs duties on the products you are shipping, but the on the $7800.00 shipping bill. Stupid me shoulda asked the most ILLOGICAL (never mind the ton of logical ones I DID ask) questions before agreeing to ship $2800.00 of product for $7800.00 and having to pay $5200.00 duties on it. Trials and tribulations, that was my marathon day, which began at 0300 in LA, CA, through NY's, JFK onto Casablanca and a whirlwind day of bureacracy at its finest. I am only getting to bed at 1100 pm the next day. I am signing out with..... More to come.

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The journey begins

After two very easy flight from Honolulu to the big apple, here we are at the Royal Air Maroc terminal awaiting our flight to Casablanca. A bit anxious and nervous before we enter the arena, sort of speak. Our kitchens are set up in Marrakesh, Erfoud and Ouarzazate. Supllies are starting to come in, being a muslim country, bacon is proving hard to find in large quantities, and costs 110 dirhams a kilo, approximately $7 per pound. We will be making breakfast sausage and chorizo tomorrow. Burritos here we come bearing. More to come.