Breakfast at Tiffany's, but Make it Charcuterie
How I pulled off an ambitious party scene, Blake Edwards style
Act I: How Can I Make This Easier?
Too often when I throw a party, I find myself spending the duration of the event in the kitchen, cooking cooking cooking so my loved ones leave happy and satisfied. No one forces me into this. I mean, I’m sure I have an unconscious, conditioned urge to nourish that’s been passed down through the generations of Balkan women who came before me, painstakingly making musaka and palačinke for husbands and children. But I don’t feel I have to whip up a feast to host a few friends (or 20). It just makes me enormously happy to be in the kitchen, experimenting with something new or perfectly executing a favorite standby, especially when it results in the delight of others.
But this formula leaves little to no room to actually connect with the friends I’ve invited into my home. So when my partner looked around our heavily holiday-decorated living room several weeks ago and said, “We should throw a party,” I immediately said “yes”, but I knew I needed a way to feed a lot of people without spending all night in front of the stove.
What if I turned my whole kitchen table into a charcuterie board? The moment the thought crossed my mind, it was the only option. I could prep everything a day ahead of time, freeing me from the kitchen. A feast of snack food would allow guests to return to the table again and again, ensuring they had something in their stomachs all night besides alcohol. The idea seemed to fit with my intention to focus on good food, small joys, and genuine connection this holiday season. You know, Tiny Tim vibes.
Alas, even the most earnest intentions can go awry.
Enjoying Makans of a Chef? Subscriptions are free and are one of the best ways to support my work.
Act II: Forget Tiny Tim
Not long into planning I turned from keep it simple to if I’m only serving snacks this better be the best snack board ever. Forget the ending of A Christmas Carol, I was going to recreate the party scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but with charcuterie. I would not be Tiny Tim. I would be Blake Edwards. No, not Audrey Hepburn. Blake Edwards, the 1961 film’s director.
To be clear: the other 364 days a year, I want to be Audrey Hepburn. It’s because of a decade-long fascination with her life and career that I’ve seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s at least half a dozen times.
One of my favorite parts of the movie is the wild party Hepburn’s Holly Golightly throws in her scarcely furnished NYC apartment. The scene introduces several important characters and gives us a glimpse into Holly’s past, but mostly it’s 13 minutes of glorious comedic chaos. Glamorous partygoers make fools of themselves, flirting, ladder-climbing, dancing, and imbibing in perfect time, as if choreographed.
That’s because it was choreographed.
The way Edwards brought this scene to life is chronicled in Sam Wasson’s fantastic book Fifth Avenue, 5 a.m.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman. Edwards asked choreographer Miriam Nelson to help him execute the scene. She had worked with Edwards on three other films and Wasson describes her as the perfect collaborator for this scene—someone who could make Edwards’ frenzy “legible”.
“Blake wanted to dream up some crazy things to do at the party”, she said. “I think he wanted somebody to come and play, someone to try things with. That’s when he was discovering all sorts of things to do, like putting the telephone in a suitcase, and having Marty Balsam kissing a girl in the shower, and all that other wild stuff. I was a choreographer, I helped him with some of the staging. There were no dance numbers, but we discussed stuff like who should go where and when. It looks crazy when you watch it, but these actors had to hit their marks, and be in the right position for the dialogue to play.”
I wanted this massive charcuterie board to have the same energy—beautifully orchestrated pandemonium. I wasn’t worried about the party itself. The company would be wonderful. If the other key factor—the food—was excellent, everything would work out.
My Miriam Nelsons were my partner, and a friend who works at a first-rate local butcher. My friend provided the cured meats and high-quality cheese, secured the evening prior. My partner acted as sous chef and sounding board as I figured out how to make this ridiculous idea a reality.
Act III: I Wanted Real Actors
The key to both a great party and a great charcuterie board, in my opinion, is dips. Lots of dips. They’re a perfect food. They turn other foods into a vehicle for a delightful, and often experimental eating experience. Bread or tortilla chips are good on their own, but they become a mini progressive meal when you have three or four dips to dress them up.
For my dips, I made classic hummus, olive oil dip, pesto, a plant-based yogurt dip, and spinach artichoke dip. There would be a variety of crackers, plus bread, tortilla chips, and raw vegetables to use as dipping instruments. Everything would be made from scratch. Nothing would be easy to overlook.
Edwards was so engrossed in creating the perfect party scene, he convinced the suits at Paramount to hire all actors, not extras, for the weeklong party shoot in November 1960. As quoted in Fifth Avenue: “I wanted real actors because I didn’t know who I was going to give things to and I wanted to be sure they could handle it.”
I wanted the food to be so good it could handle anything it encountered the night of the party. Maybe someone would eventually look at that pesto and say, “I’m gonna put that on soppressata”, and I wanted that to be a satisfying experience for them.
The other players in this scene were of course, meat and cheese, but also an array of baby carrots, cucumbers, bell peppers, oranges, grapes, and apples. Toasted pumpkin seeds, pretzels, and two kinds of jam. (I did not make jam. I balled out on the fancy jam shelf at Whole Foods.)
To top it all off, I’d fill the “cracks” in the table with fresh rosemary. This would be the thread connecting all of the other elements on the table (and also festive). It would be Holly’s Cat, slinking above the heads of partiers with curiosity in Edwards’ scene.
Having fun so far? Share this post with a friend!
Act IV: Maestro of Chaos
I didn’t know it would work until right before the party started. How could I? After two days of prep in the kitchen, I was still fretting about having enough food. Would it fill the table? Would it taste good? Would the whole wacky experiment hit the right notes?
I spent 90 minutes carefully arranging the table. When it was done, I had a good feeling. What I love about the party scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is that there’s so much to see. The madness is so magnificently arranged that you’ll miss something if you blink. Individual pieces capture your attention and make you smile, but your attention doesn’t linger.
Even the trickiest part of my snack board—balsamic poached pears with burrata—had turned out great. I hadn’t intended to poach pears when I embarked on this journey. I had never done it before. I wanted figs but couldn’t find them, so I had to pivot.
It all somehow worked. Friends quickly picked apart the feast, coming back for another bite here and there. The table had its own gravitational pull. At one point, I realized guests were only lingering in one half of the room: the half with the food.
I smiled and sighed with relief.
Several friends asked for the pesto recipe. One said they wanted to make love to the hummus.
By the end of the night, nearly all the food was gone, but no one went home hungry. Like Edwards, I’d accomplished what I set out to do, absurd as it was. “All the surprises, gags, stunts, and reversals that had beckoned to Edwards from the silent films he adored were splayed out in kooky munificence, advancing one after the next like toys on a conveyor belt,” Wasson writes.
Nothing is perfect, though. I left an entire dessert out of the lineup because I didn’t have time to make it. The Breakfast at Tiffany’s party scene, and the whole movie, are far from perfect, largely due to the racist Mr. Yunioshi character.
Despite turning away from my original Tiny Tim intentions, I did end up spending the bulk of my evening talking and laughing with friends instead of cooking. The stove was off. People stored their alcohol on it when we ran out of counter space. Blake Edwards’ choreographed chaos took seven days to accomplish and cost $20,000. I didn’t quite reach that standard, but I think he’d be proud.
I was there. It was delicious!
and the use of Spode Christmas tree paper plates and napkins is also noted and appreciated