Photo courtesy of Sheetal Patel.
A dinner party at Sheetal and Dipesh Patel’s house isn’t just any dinner party.
They don’t even call them dinner parties. They call them cocktail experiences.
Five or six couples are invited to their neighborhood home for a special occasion, one that justifies getting a babysitter.
Weeks of planning goes into one of these events, where guests are treated to a multi-course menu featuring handmade cocktails and foods to pair with them. And the menu doesn’t just exist in Sheetal’s head; it’s printed out for guests.
“She’s the mastermind behind it,” Dipesh says of his wife. “I just execute a lot of the vision.”
Sheetal grew up in a family that enjoyed hosting, and it’s something she has embraced as an adult.
But the inspiration for the cocktail experiences came from an activity the Patels participated in while they were living in Washington, D.C. One of their favorite lounges, the Columbia Room, would offer cocktail-driven flights paired with small bites.
They’ve made the food and drink pairings their own by infusing the experience with spirits and foods they’ve enjoyed during their travels.
Dipesh and Sheetal have visited about 50 countries. About a decade ago, they took a 93-day trip around the world, hitting 14 countries on six continents. Now, with two young children, they aim for two international trips each year.
Photo courtesy of Sheetal Patel.
“We try to go to kind of cool places where the kids can get a new, unique experience, and we can too,” Dipesh says. “And a lot of those places, we’ll try to get sitters to watch the kids while we explore the city as well. But all of that does lead to things that come back home, which normally will end up being a bottle of liquor or something we’ll learn about the cuisine there.”
For example, on a recent trip to Spain, they learned about Spanish vermouth, and they plan to incorporate it into a cocktail at their next event, which they hold about once a month. They’ve also introduced their guests to byrrh — kind of a French take on amaro, they say, popular in the 19th century.
“When people come over, they’ve never heard of a byrrh,” Sheetal says. “So we’ll show them the bottle, and we’ll talk about that. So it’s more of an experience where our friends learn more about spirits that they may not have tried.”
All of the liquor, glassware and supplies needed to prepare cocktails is stored in the Patels’ spirits library, a wall of built-in shelving featuring a sliding ladder.
Neither of them have taken courses on mixology. Rather, they have consulted a few books to teach themselves, and they have a lot of practice.
“It’s amazing to see how different cultures deal with food and spirits and how it all comes together,” Sheetal says. “There’s ceremony to it, which I love, and that’s how we try to do it for our experiences.”
Photo by Victoria Gomez.
There seems to be an understanding among neighborhood families that the Guerras’ house is the place to be.
“We always seem to have people at our house,” Kelly Guerra says.
Kelly and her husband, Herman, both graduates of Bryan Adams High School, have sons who attended Hexter Elementary School, and their friends live in the area, around Eastwood and Lake Park Estates near Peavy and Garland Road.
Even before the Guerras installed a pool in their backyard, their home on Peavy Road was the hangout spot, complete with a trampoline, soccer goals, ping pong and plenty of room to romp.
Now, there are usually three or four kids in the house who don’t belong to Herman and Kelly.
It’s almost always informal. Friends of the Guerra kids just kind of show up. They have “the best” house and “the best” snacks — at least, that’s what Herman and Kelly have heard from the kids.
But the adults love the house, too.
One time, the night of the Hexter Elementary fundraiser and subsequent afterparty at Goodfriend, 30 adults collectively decided to keep the celebrations going at the Guerras’ house. They ended up ordering about 100 tacos from Taqueria Taxco.
“We killed like 80 of them,” Herman says. “Then we woke up the next morning to taco grease all over that deck. It was a brand new deck.”
Some parties are far less spontaneous, though.
The Guerras have had five or six tamale-making parties, held annually around the holidays. It started small, but as years progressed, Kelly began receiving calls from people wanting to come.
They had as many as 50 people — parents and kids — in their house for the holiday party. The Guerras would move all of their furniture and set up tables. Guests would bring their own pressure cookers, using every available outlet.
A white elephant gift exchange was also part of the festivities.
“That became more of the draw and not so much the tamales,” Kelly says. “And then it was just more to have a party, and we’d just get done with the tamales real quick so that we could hang out and not work on making tamales.”
Last year, they and a small group of friends decided to skip the tamales and instead have a holiday gathering at Hudson House. The event had just gotten too big for the Guerras’ house.
They’ve also hosted an employee appreciation party for Greenville Avenue Pizza Co. at the request of the owner, Sammy Mandell, who’s a friend of the Guerras. Many birthday parties, some featuring mechanical bulls, smoked pigs and carnival games, have been held in the backyard.
The Guerras, who own HG & Co. Home Improvement, say the hardest part about hosting is cleaning. But when guests stay in the backyard, the cleanup is a little easier.
“I actually do like hosting,” Kelly says. “I mean, that’s not why we put a pool in, but that’s definitely something you have to think about, when you make your backyard nicer, because people are going to want to come over.”
