On an evening that has thousands piling onto Fountain Square for political rallies, movie stars and alternative rock concerts, 60+
Cooking With Caitlin connoisseurs are sardined into The McAlpin’s penthouse for Third Thursday, the caterer’s monthly tasting event. Guests fish handfuls of jiffy pop from its signature foil wrappings in between swigs of import bottled beer, eyeing Steininger at the open-air bar to see what course she’s rolling out next.
A particularly curious guest, a young boy, clambers up to the bar, nosing around for extra helpings. Shooting the boy a wide smile, Steininger, an energetic brunette with a smattering of freckles, plops down a shot of sugary chocolate fondue complete with a block of homemade marshmallow before returning to mixing, plating and garnishing the last of the evening’s nine courses.
Steininger isn’t the only one with her hands full, her partner, Molly Sandquist, a friendly blonde, flits between dish duty and snaking her way through the crowd with second, even third helpings of dishes like ravioli stuffed with tuna and topped with red pepper flakes, while Steininger’s sister Kelly Trush, a warm, funny brunette, collects trash, “What do you have to do to offend the chef and get on garbage duty?,” she jokes as she squeezes past a group of young professionals chowing down on dessert.
It’s this sort of teamwork, a balance of family-like camaraderie with a diversification of talent—Steininger creates the cuisine, Trush liaisons with clients and Sandquist takes care of the business end--that is at the heart of Cooking With Caitlin. Within the last three years the team has expanded from a traditional catering service to include private and public cooking demonstrations and tastings and a recent launch into cyber-cusinerie, all geared toward fostering relationships in the community and around the dinner table.
Much of Cooking With Caitlin’s success is owed to the relationship between the partners. “Cincinnati makes business good, but the three of us working together makes it great,” Steininger says. In fact, the concept for Cooking With Caitlin was hatched when Trush and Sandquist attended Steininger’s cooking class. “We [Sandquist and Trush] watched these older women come in and by the end of the class they would be hanging on Caitlin’s every word. Molly and I had this lightning bolt between us, and we said, ‘Oh my gosh, Caitlin you should do this for a living,’” Trush says.
Steininger, then 19 and newly graduated from the Cooking and Hospitality of Chicago, had recently moved back to Cincinnati with her family and decided to give it a shot.
Soon after, the team gathered for a round table discussion to establish the foodie fundamentals Cooking With Caitlin catering would be founded on. “The idea of having three columns of food to choose from didn’t fit,” Steininger says. Instead, Steininger emphasized fresh, seasonal ingredients and working with customers to create custom menus for each catering occasion to foster strong, client-customer relationships. “We can do this in Cincinnati because it’s big city, small town,” Trush says, “People appreciate that we nurture relationships, that we build our business around our family.”
Three months after the catering business was up and running, the team knew they wanted to take their talents online. The partners worked closely with Tim Carter to model his website askthebuilder.com, a site featuring how-to construction videos. “We wanted a model that didn’t mean making money only by Caitlin standing on her feet,” Trush says, which meant creating a website including step-by-step instructional videos for clients to learn from.
An easy bake oven version of the Cooking With Caitlin website was refined and launched in July 2008, featuring everything from recipe indices to videos to a foodie blog. To drive traffic, recipes from Steininger’s tasting events and two new videos are uploaded weekly, all focusing on quick and simple to save chefs time so they can spend more time around the table and less time in the kitchen. “We hope through our business to bring everyone back to the table to focus on conversation and relationships. Food is our vehicle for that,” Trush says.
The site is young and fresh, designed to reach out to a new generation of chefs. “It was initially designed for college students and first time chefs, so they could go to the web instead of a cookbook,” Trush says. The staff determines site-appropriate content based on a short demographic questionnaire on Club Caitlin, a listserv frequent site visitors can subscribe to to keep updated on all things Cooking With Caitlin.
And there are plenty of updates. The Cooking With Caitlin team does an average of 25 events per month ranging from private, in-home cooking demonstrations to corporate lunches to public events, which serve as a marketing tool to show Cincinnatians what Steininger is capable of pulling off. The only qualifier is that Steininger serves less than 100 people. “We keep events small so Caitlin can put on her mark on everything that leaves the kitchen,” Sandquist explains.
The team isn’t just leaving their mark in the kitchen; there are plans for more Cooking With Caitlin expansion. Big ideas that include linking with Time Warner and Fountain Square’s partnership for a live cooking show scheduled to be filmed on the square in May 2009 and adding new video snippets showcasing specific tips and tricks of the trade. “We’re all really creative in what we do,” Steininger says, “and we all have big ideas.” It’s safe to say Cooking With Caitlin will stay on the Cincinnati culinary radar.
Photography by Scott Beseler
All photos taken at the last Cooking with Caitlin event.