TRAVERSE CITY — Samantha Bennett loves vintage dishes so much that she’s made a business out of it.
Gabe Lava is a caterer who is so enamored with creating his own spin on what makes a recipe a classic that he named his business Gabe’s Old Fashioned Foods.
The two promote each other’s businesses and pair up when clients desire it to present Lava’s dishes on Bennett’s, well, dishes.
“Gabe and I met at the 2021 Elite Wedding Expo at the Grand Traverse Resort,” says Bennett, whose company — Eclectic Elegance — provides rentals of dishes, glassware and silverware for events like weddings, galas and other group dinners. “I was walking around looking at booths and came across his. They were serving food and it was beautiful and delicious.”
The two compared notes and decided that since they were both new businesses with similar sensibilities about food and how to present it, they could help each other. Bennett suggests Lava for catering when clients inquire about her dishes; Lava tells potential customers about Eclectic Elegance.
“This collaboration combines time-honored recipes with curated dinnerware to bring history and character to the table,” Bennett says.
Dishes as decor
Bennett describes herself as being similar to a caterer, only instead of food, she delivers the plates. Her aunt used to run a company in Muskegon that rented vintage dishes for events and gave Bennett 100 place settings to start her own similar business in the Traverse City area.
“I have a daughter with Down syndrome and I was struggling with the whole 9 to 5 thing and keeping up with everything she needs,” Bennett says. “My aunt told me she would help me set up what she was doing down there, up here. So that’s what we did.”
That was in 2018-2019. Today, Bennett has thousands of plates in multiple collections and patterns along with silverplated silverware, crystal glassware, champagne coupes, teacups and the like.
“I have an art collection, which is like Norman Rockwell, birds, sunsets, hand-painted plates,” she says. “Then I have a floral collection and a cream [colored] collection. They’re really pretty.
“A bride could pick the creams collection with the art salad plates and it’s really cool because it makes it like a frame for the art work. Another could pick floral.”
All are interchangeable, which means the dishes actually become part of the event’s décor.
“It’s gorgeous, especially when the lighting is right,” Bennett says. “The way the light dances off the crystal — it just adds romance.”
The place settings also evoke emotion.
“People will walk around and say, ‘Oh my grandma had that plate,’” she says. “It’s the same with the silverware, they’ll say, ‘I had to shine that silverware when I was growing up.’
“I always hear stories around the dishes and the memories tied to them. It’s nostalgic for some people.”
Bennett keeps her collections in a storage unit, but hopes to eventually open a showroom where she can display some, store the rest and have a washing station to clean the dishes after they’re rented. Right now she uses a church kitchen to wash them.
Prices range from $10 to $13 per person, depending on the number of pieces her clients need. “We come and set all of the tables, and we clear during dinner,” Bennett says. “I just need access to water so I can rinse everything.”
Bennett rarely throws a dish away. She loves them too much.
“If something has a chip in it, I just bring it home,” says Bennett, who is also an avid home cook. “I don’t throw it away. I have mismatched china in my cupboards and that’s what we eat off of.”
Old-fashioned style
Lava started out manufacturing frozen custard and sorbet that he sold wholesale to restaurants and stores starting in 2018. That morphed into Gabe’s Old Fashioned Foods, which has him renting a commercial kitchen that he shares with a few other food operations and uses for catering jobs.
“I started cooking at a pretty young age — the cliché of being in the kitchen with my mom really rings true here,” he says. “I was the youngest and I found protection from my brothers’ torment hanging out with my mom in the kitchen.”
Lava’s mother died when he was young. After that his dad, and later his stepmother, encouraged him in the kitchen — though he says they weren’t sure about it as a career choice. In fact, he started out pursuing music. But when that didn’t pan out, he enrolled in culinary school in Chicago. He still has one credit left to finish, but that didn’t stop him from moving on with his career.
“I tried to do some traveling and working in Europe. Not having a degree kind of puts up a little bit of an obstacle. I managed to find my way into a few kitchens anyway,” he says, noting stints in Copenhagen, Paris and Barcelona among his experiences. “I had my knives with me while I was traveling across the world … I tried to pick up the opportunity wherever I could.”
Lava launched his current catering business five years ago. Now he does about 25 events a year that can range from being a personal chef for a family visiting the area for a week to dinner for several hundred.
He says he doesn’t do old-fashioned food per se, but that “I have what I consider an old-fashioned approach in a modern world,” he says, noting that he focuses on seasonal, locally sourced, whole ingredients. “You could call it a new style of old-fashioned where I’m not just doing things for tradition’s sake, but rather recognizing a place for everything and putting everything in its place with my experiences.”
Lava doesn’t offer set menus. “I don’t want to put my 2 cents in before somebody tells me what they’re looking for,” he says. “I really try to customize.”
He specializes in artfully presented dishes built around mainstays like salmon, halibut, trout, duck, chicken and beef. Other samplings from his repertoire include lobster rolls, oysters, burrata and vegan options.
“What I like about it is just the ability to be creative or the endless possibilities,” he says. “There’s always an opportunity to make things interesting.”
Between them, Lava and Bennett aim to make things even more interesting by combining forces when it works out. In their collaborations, he says, his food and her dishes create an “old world charm.” Bennett’s hands-on involvement in the settings provides an extra level of service, he notes.
“It’s ultimately about the guest experience,” he says. “So if things go well, that’s better for all of us.”