Chef Christopher Matthews views cooking as an art, preferring to cater smaller gatherings—hors d’oeuvre and cocktails for 50 or dinner for 15— though he also welcomes larger events. For stand-up parties—his specialty—the menu might include roasted pepper, pistachio pesto and buffalo mozzarella pizzettes; hot and sour soup in cucumber cups; gruyère panini with pear butter and beet sprouts; balsamic and lime beef carpaccio with chèvre on crostini; and barbecue duck tartlettes with spicy pineapple chutney and chives. For seated dinners, dishes could feature peppered tuna cubes seared rare over a red salad with lime, or boneless Cornish hen lined with pear and prosciutto dusted in cornmeal and accompanied by wild rice with shiitake caps, slivered apple and leek.