California meetings

Event producer Brynne Frost, founder and CEO of Destination Concepts inc., has built a roster of Fortune 500 clients by never saying ‘no.’

The Sacramento/Sierra Nevada Chapter of Meeting Professionals International went “Under the Sea” for its first annual crab feed. The fundraising event was held January 21 at the Dante Club in Sacramento and attended by about 130 MPI members and guests.

Tasked with producing a parade, even an experienced planner may not have a clue where to begin. The best course: Think about the crowd of smiling faces on the parade route and tackle the challenge from an executive perspective. The ultimate goal is to entertain, and as the producer, you need to identify the individual elements of your parade and piece them together into a procession that dazzles.

Even if you never put on a film festival, there are lessons to be learned from this who do.

Long before it became known for wine, this little town at the north end of the Napa Valley was famous for the hot springs and geysers that bub- ble up from volcanic soils at the base of 4,342-foot Mount Saint Helena.

Sam Brannan, California’s first Gold Rush millionaire, recognized a new kind of gold when he saw it. Envisioning a resort town to rival fashionable Saratoga Springs, New York, he was said to have bragged at a dinner party that he would transform the region into the “Calistoga of Sarifornia”—meaning, of course, the Saratoga of California.

The Red Fox Steakhouse and Piano Bar, San Diego

Redbird, located in a downtown LA space that used to be the rectory of a former cathedral (which also houses the stunning event venue Vibiana), offers a cocktail program inspired by vintage cocktail books. The Bird of Paradise is a close play on a recipe from the 1939 compendium A Gentleman’s Companion by Charles H. Baker Jr.

INGREDIENTS
—1.5 oz. gin
—.75 oz. fresh-squeezed lime juice
—.75 oz. raspberry syrup
—one egg white
—.5 oz. cream
—dash of orange blossom water

Meeting planners across the nation have reported a significant increase in specific dietary requests in recent years, and not just for vegetarian or vegan guests. No matter what the reasons—religious beliefs, medical restrictions, concern for animal welfare or simply a desire to eat healthier—we as hospitality professionals need to understand the basic guidelines for the most prevalent requests and plan for them accordingly.

There’s a new vibe on Lake Tahoe’s south shore—and lots of new meeting space to go with it. The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino opened on January 28 in the shell of the former Horizon Casino Resort, just across Highway 50 from Montbleau and next door to Harveys Lake Tahoe. A $60 million top-to-bottom revamp has changed the look of everything in the building, from the 539 guest rooms (including an Elvis suite) to the 14,300 square feet of meeting and convention space.