By Susan Swagler
For four decades, Kathy G. Mezrano has set the standard for entertaining in Birmingham and beyond. But some of her favorite parties have been gatherings for family and friends in her own Vestavia Hills home.
It’s here, in a house that is subtly separated into public and private spaces, that she loves living her passion for sharing good food and making people feel special.
She certainly knows how to do it.
Kathy G, as she’s known to everyone, founded her catering firm, Kathy G & Co., in the early 1980s. It’s one of the premier catering and event companies in the Southeast, and it’s a family business; her son, Jason, trained as a chef and now runs day-to-day operations.
She wrote about her entertaining lifestyle in her book, “Food, Fun & Fabulous,” in which she shares tips and recipes based on her Southern roots and Lebanese heritage and the tasty experience of growing up with a dad in the wholesale produce business.
“I love being a hostess,” she writes in her book, “and I have been one all my life, even with my kids. From setting the table to having all the ‘colors’ or food groups represented, I’ve always felt that one element was as important as the other for the total experience.”
She has catered a formal, plated seated dinner for a thousand people in the casting shed at Sloss Furnaces; she’s made Spanish paella working from a loading dock at the Saks department store to serve several hundred guests at the elegant Alabama Ballet Pointe Ball; she’s thrown her own taverna party complete with a Greek DJ and lots of ouzo in the Garden’s Café by Kathy G at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens; and she’s created countless lasting memories for close friends and family in her own dining room.
An Entertaining Design
She and her late husband, Louis, purchased their mid-century home about 30 years ago and set about renovating it with entertaining in mind.
They expanded the kitchen, working around a huge Wolf range with a commercial-grade hood, to create a professional workspace that’s big enough to film cooking classes. Her extensive cookbook collection colorfully fills a wall near an antique butcher block that came from her father-in-law’s Lakeview grocery store years ago.
What had been the dining room is now a small home office where Kathy G still conducts catering company business. And a new dining room was created in an airy, light-filled space that once was a game room.
This room, most notably, has not one but two large, round, glass dining tables. Kathy G said she’s had as many as 25 people in this room for dinner, but it’s especially suited for parties of 12 to 16.
Colorful paintings by the internationally known Nall and beloved Birmingham artist Susan Oliver as well as one by Arizona artist John Dawson decorate the walls that are not filled with windows overlooking the ridge-and-valley views. There’s an intimate, conversation-ready seating area with comfortable chairs and a loveseat. An antique tea caddy works as a small portable bar. A sideboard, when not used for serving or food displays, showcases two funky, modern art head sculptures from a trip to Sicily.
It’s in this room that her magic happens. Most people, even longtime friends, have never walked through Kathy G’s front door. She has them enter the house directly into this dining room for an immediate immersion into whatever she has planned.
It’s Always an Immersion
It starts, she said, with “setting the stage from the minute the person enters the space.”
She said: “It’s the full experience. Not just the food. I’m not a chef. It’s never been about that. To me, it’s the entire experience. The minute you walk in the door, wherever it is, … you’ve got to have the music, the setting, the lighting, the design. It’s got to be totally an experience. The food’s part of it. The drinks are part of it. The music’s part of it, but it’s the whole experience to me. That’s what it’s about. It’s just entertaining.”
So, she’s topped the twin tables with extravagant feather displays, lots of beads and masks and thrown a Mardi Gras-themed dinner for a friend. She’s set lavish Tuscan tables filled with crostini; assorted dips; and pasta, couscous and orzo salads bright with tomatoes, feta, parsley, lemon and mint.
One friend who simply wanted “a few raw oysters and some royal reds” to mark a milestone birthday showed up to a festive surprise party starring freshly shucked Murder Point oysters from Bayou La Batre and perfectly plump and briny royal red shrimp. Her favorite friends and family gathered around Kathy G’s two tables with twin lazy Susans filled to almost overflowing with the oysters and shrimp, sauces, slaw, crackers and colorful Texas caviar.
Kathy G’s own family dinners of homemade Lebanese foods like kibbee, stuffed grape leaves and tabouli often end with Monopoly tournaments at these same tables.
The room, separated from the kitchen by an eat-at, serve-from bar, is always ready. Kathy G is always ready. The key to easy entertaining, she said, is to make it easy on yourself.
“Just make it where you can enjoy it, too, and you’re not working the whole time.”
Use serving pieces for everyday decor so they are always close at hand. She loves Tena Payne’s Earthborn Pottery footed bowls, platters and pedestal pieces.
Think outside the box, she said, piling focaccia into a cork catch-all tray she brought back from a trip to Portugal. She loves lining serving platters with fresh grape leaves plucked from the vines growing on her fence. She gathers branches from the white fig tree her family brought from Lebanon decades ago and casually arranges them in a ceramic container next to another – more composed – display of florals by local designer Rita Carson. The contrast is beautiful and feels effortless. Recently, her two dining tables were decorated with large, tinted-glass jugs filled with whimsical tropical bouquets complete with baby bananas from Trader Joe’s.
This is a woman who can put together a guest-ready snack in about five minutes. Her go-to summer nosh? Slices of fresh Chilton County peaches and colorful heirloom tomatoes arranged around creamy burrata cheese, drizzled with balsamic glaze and served with fresh focaccia. During cooler months, she said, switch out the cheese for something heartier like an aged cheddar and add French bread, cured meats, grapes and seasonal fruits such as pears.
Kathy G’s living room with its family photos and Frank Fleming porcelain sculptures and her wormwood-paneled family room with its fireplace and cozy seating are generally not used for entertaining anyone other than immediate family, but she can easily take parties outside and often does. There’s a large outdoor dining table in a backyard with views of Oak Mountain and Double Oak Mountain.
A neat kitchen garden of herbs and vegetables and beds of colorful native plants that attract bees and butterflies surround a small lawn. Beyond that is a glistening blue pool, lounge chairs in the sunny spots of the deck and lots of covered seating next to a hot tub.
No matter where she entertains, though, one thing is constant: This beloved grand dame of events and catering simply wants her guests to relax and have fun in a welcoming space.
“I want people to have a great time,” she says. “It’s more about the experience for me. Whether you’re doing food or wine or whatever. I want people to say, ‘It was fun. It was a good time. It was a good experience.’”
