Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Carol Sowolla (left) and Shirley Jay offer catering services to groups of many sizes for a wide variety of occasions.

Napkin Ring caters to parties of all sizes

By Suzanne Cristallo

Fifteen years ago, a group of local women who liked to cook gathered together with their favorite recipes, gave themselves a name and cooked for their friends.

Today, the Napkin Ring in Saratoga has evolved to a catering company serving the executive dining rooms and corporate jets of Silicon Valley, as well as weddings, intimate buffet dinners and cocktail parties from Gilroy to San Francisco.

While handling from 25 to 400 meals daily can get hectic and stressful, Carol Sowolla relishes the independence she has as the sole owner. Unlike a restaurant with set hours, she has the freedom to say no and to close shop for a long weekend.

But closing is unlikely very often: Sowolla is booked well into the season with $100-a-head dinners, including wine with the works--china, crystal, linens, flatware, flowers and servers. She can, however, handle other events with a 24-hour notice, schedule permitting, and offer exotic dinners invented by her patrons or picked from sample menus for $20-$50 a person. (This includes food only--items such as poached salmon, roast tenderloin of beef and a variety of vegetables, salads, fruits and desserts.)

A Michigan native, Sowolla lived in Paris for two years during high school. The exposure to Parisian cuisine, the influence of a brother who is a chef and many jobs in hotels and restaurants and selling wine over the years taught her cooking by "the seat of the pants."

She works alongside the cooks on her staff, beginning some days at 5 a.m. and ending close to midnight with the taking out of the trash. Her own dinners many times consist of take-out Chinese food and pizza on the run.

A Los Gatos resident for 15 years, Sowolla worked first as general manager of the Napkin Ring, purchasing the business in 1992. She hired Shirley Jay as her general manager and together they share the marketing, scheduling, menu organizing and cooking duties with Jay's specialty being floral arranging on tables and in the food.

A special salad the two created is composed solely of edible flowers including pansies, marigolds and stock and organic roses served with champagne vinaigrette.

Much of their produce is trucked in, but occasionally Jay will go to the Saratoga Farmers' Market on Saturdays and harvest some crops for that evening's function.

The Napkin Ring Catering, One Oak Place, Saratoga. Phone 867-5588 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily.