Dinner #3:

Not Your Average Backyard Barbecue

Gareth Seltzer spends as much time thinking about the finer points of hosting dinner parties as most mortals spend having them. Since he throws one every few weeks, he knows who to call to download the un-fun tasks (like setting the table or washing glasses), leaving him free to orchestrate the ambience and create the perfect playlists. So when he decided to throw a catered patio bash 48 hours before the guests were to arrive, he had it all worked out.

In a cultivated laissez-faire approach, he let chef Gino Spano of Seventh Heaven Fine Catering make anything he wanted (one rule: no mushrooms), as long as everything was cooked in his kitchen rather than prepared off-site—Seltzer wanted his guests to smell the meal as it was cooking. Seltzer also solicited his childhood friend Michael Sereny to make his famous fresh pea soup—he wanted the meal to start with something “made with love” (and with Grand Marnier and crème fraîche, which don’t hurt, either). He picked up 20 pashminas in Chinatown just in case the night turned chilly and had shifting, coloured lights installed at the base of his cedar fence. Other than that, Seltzer left everything to fate. He didn’t make seating arrangements, and he had no idea what each dish would be before it was served. “Why should my experiences differ from my guests’?” he asks.

Seltzer has been living in and renovating houses in the Annex for the past seven years. He bought and restored this Madison Avenue home less than two years ago. “I’m an enormous fan of the Annex,” says Seltzer. “I’m very dedicated to it and its health.” He recently overhauled the former German consulate on Admiral Road; Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul live in one of his homes, too.

Seltzer has been using the catering company Seventh Heaven for the past two years. The menu: light hors d’oeuvre; grilled vegetables in a double-cream brie bath; a plantain crisp filled with grilled squid and Cajun shrimp; a rocket and fresh herb salad; and a double-barrelled entrée—sea bass topped with fava bean purée and pickled vege­tables, beside a bacon-wrapped beef tenderloin sandwiched between a dandelion and potato rösti and a marsala fig reduction. Dessert was a chocolate-banana trio.

The Buddha statue is one of three Seltzer bought at Claus Pummer’s design shop in Port Carling, near his cottage.