How New York Celebrates

This has been on my mind, a lot. Especially because we’ve been trying to turn every stone to try and find that answer - How is New York celebrating these days?

Not everyone knows but along our Colonia Verde Restaurant, we’ve had Comparti, a full service catering company that has been operating for the past decade. The thing about having a catering company is we get to witness the pulse of ‘celebration’ for our times. It is a litmus test, of where people are and how much they want to celebrate their lives and milestones. And we’ve seen it all. I can tell you that the year post pandemic, 2021 was our highest grossing year, with forty five weddings in the books, numerous anniversary blow outs, milestone birthdays and beyond. It was a post-pandemic post-apocalyptic time to reconnect after we all felt we might have lost it all. People were off their masks and ready to celebrate life, health and love. Comparti was on fire and almost needed to double its team. We couldn’t keep up with the demand.

By year 2023, the waters had calmed a bit and we found ourselves serving to a niche of ‘subtle luxury’ type of celebrations. Mostly second weddings who ‘didn’t want to go all out’ but still wanted to go all out (just don’t make it seem it). Comparti was perfect and cater to weddings like Robert Soro’s second wedding. Our unassuming but incredibly good food seemed to have hit the sweet spot for these second rounds at it. We loved tapping into this niche because it allowed us to be ourselves - Casual while delivering the most quality, ingredient driven, family style, food to share.

Which gets us to today. This year, we had a very tough winter at Colonia Verde, but it was even tougher for Comparti. For the past decade, we’ve answered to a trend - Most weddings get booked in January. It makes sense! There’s Christmas, then comes New Years, when promises are made and the together forever declarations happen. This year we were gearing up for these, we were ready. While we usually book around fifteen weddings just in this month (our silver lining in the bleakest month of the year) this year, we only had three tasting requests. No calls, no emails. What happened to all the couples!? Is it that no one is getting married anymore? We were stunned and had to improvise immediately, frantically trying to book last minute corporate gigs to fill up the calendar for the year.

Slowly the months following, we began to get a trickle of inquires, couples looking for ‘elopement celebrations’ that came at a third of the budget. I am guessing that a lot of couples are choosing to skip the celebration - Too expensive, perhaps too impossible to plan that much ahead. Couples are choosing to go on a big trip instead, or spending the money and time elsewhere, or better, yet, holding on to that money! because let’s be honest and I get it, who knows what’s gonna happen?

After trying to turn every rock to see how to pivot Comparti and understand how people are celebrating today, if at all, these past Knicks games have shown me how big New York celebrates. After having looked everywhere, its been so incredibly obvious. We all saw it, on the streets, at the bars with TV’s, projected on the walls of buildings.

And then we got to game four of the Knicks and we were reminded that New Yorkers are the experts of getting out of the mud. The Knicks picked themselves up after being down twenty nine points in the biggest comeback of NBA history. Knicks won the game in a collective shot to the basket (Brunson shoots, misses, OG finishes it up with a layup), with one second left on the clock. Against all odds, they were able to do it. This is the resilience that turned me on to this city, the spirit that NEVER gives up. ‘If you make it in New York, you can make it anywhere’, they say. Two nights ago, I was reminded of all NYC iconic things such as this phrase, but it also gave me a new perspective on it. Once you are in it, you make it here because its the city and its people that will push you to the win. Its the collective effort, the unwavering spirit of ‘we got this’. To live here is to be slightly insane and we know this about ourselves so when a soldier is down, we pick that solider back up. New York needed this victory as a way to remind itself and the people who stick with it no matter what, that it is indeed worth it.

As we get ourselves out of our own winter mud, with Colonia Verde picking itself back up, chipping away…one energetic night in the garden at a time, I am reminded that we rise back up. We turn back on for the World Cup, we celebrate Georginas and their wines. We throw steaks on the grill at our asados…the ambers are still flickering.

Comparti will find its way again and will continue to have celebration at its core of what it does and why it exists. We’ll find our way and the city and its people will come along and like Brunson beautifully said, winning just comes down to one word…believing…..that you can.

This morning, I got a text from Ray Smith. It was videos of what he had painted while watching the last Knicks game and in preparation for our Saturday World Cup viewing party at his studio. He had made a trip to Lowes to get some putting green to use as his canvas. He painted the bodies of players, folding the top of the material so that his other artist friends, Eamon Monaghan and Frankie Phillips could then paint the head. A collective effort of celebration, at a time when we all might be losing our heads. I imagined the conversation between Ray and this artist being something like ‘I got the body, you got the head. Sound good’? And I thought, how hyper New York is this?

I texted back - ‘Let’s add the Knicks into the mix of what you are painting’. ‘Ya es parte de la ecuacion’ (already part of the equation) he answered. Saturday, we will show the Brazil vs. Morocco game and then flip over to Knicks game five. The event is at capacity (get in touch to see what I can do) and I am sure it will be both chaotic and triumphant. We’ll each have our soccer favorites (although let’s go braziiiiil!!!) but most importantly, amongst the heightened tensions of the games, we will all be betting on New York City.