Those who have experienced a Fancy Feast Supper Club event are rejoicing at the news that self-taught chef and sourdough baker Leah Guadagnoli has established a permanent base of operations. In the commissary kitchen and small cafe at EAT Catskill, she’ll be prepping food for her special dinners and occasionally presenting pop-up food events. To get the full Fancy Feast experience, though, you’ll still need to catch one of the spectacular meals she presents at a long, sometimes surprising list of venues.
Guadagnoli’s first culinary effort, at age seven, was an apple pie inspired by Julia Child. Her grandma claimed to love it, but she suspected exaggeration in that review even at the time. Nevertheless, she was solidly hooked. “I started calling it Fancy Feast when I was in high school,” she says. “My mom never cooked much, but as soon as I could drive and buy my own food, I was inviting all my friends over for a ‘fancy feast.’”
The fun continued through grad school and through holiday celebrations for friends in tight New York City apartments. In 2018, Guadagnoli moved to a former church in Hillsdale. “It started there with just having too much produce, so I’d plan menus around that. Then I held my first Friendsgiving there, and it was an epic night of eating—30 people, finishing dessert at one in the morning in our pajamas and falling onto air mattresses.”
The Fancy Feast Supper Club grew by popular demand as word of her talents got out, developing into collaborations with other restaurants and venues. A “What is Love?” Valentine’s feast at The Filomena in West Stockbridge,Massachusetts; a Moosewood Friendsgiving with cookbook author Mollie Katzen at Taconic Ridge Farm in Hillsdale, an “Into the Woods” foraged feast at Hillsdale’s Little Cat Lodge, dinners at the PS21 performance space in Chatham and at Hotel Lilien in Tannersville.
“It’s been really fun,” says Guadagnoli. “And this year, it’s been just venues reaching out to me, which is lovely. And now that I have my commissary kitchen, a great deal on a beautiful kitchen that used to be a bakery, it’s a whole lot simpler to prep all the food there when I’m doing something in, say, an open field or a theater. It has a little cafe facade that can seat five to 10 people, more if it's nice out, and it's always been my dream to be able to prep, and then just be able to converse with people and have them try what I'm making, have a coffee together. But I have no plans on opening up a sandwich shop there—just the occasional bites and popups.”
All Fancy Feasts are vegetarian meals, though Guadagnoli herself is an omnivore. “That's something a lot of people don't realize, which is kind of on purpose,” she says. “When you go to a restaurant and vegetarian is one of the entree options, if you're not vegetarian, you're not even gonna read what's there. So part of my strategy is not necessarily advertising the dinners as vegetarian, but allowing people to experience them as a curated meal and be amazed.”
Upcoming Fancy Feast events include “Seek and You Shall Find,” a foraged feast happening at the Refuge Event Space in Troy on May 10 that will feature dandelion brioche, embellished nettle Pie, and lavender posset; and Enchanted Edible Forest: A Meal From Beneath the Trees, happening May 15 at Hotel Lilien in Tannersville; that one begins with dandelion fritters and a pine bark swirl bread.
“It's important to me to work with the theme of a place and blend that with what’s in season,” Guadagnoli says. “In July, I'm going to be doing a collaboration with Stablegate Winery. We're doing a Greek-themed dinner, because it suits them and utilizes peak summer ingredients. I’m going to be pickling things and collaborating on the table settings with artists who work with Greek mythology.”EAT Catkill
23 Church Stret, Catskill, NY 12414
