An Entertaining Haven

In a renovated 19th-century house, a Manhattan entrepreneur is creating an all-in-one resource for the food-obsessed. Inside Alison Cayne Schneider’s entertaining haven.

Ever since a little place called Haven’s Kitchen opened quietly last winter on a Manhattan side street, curious passersby have spotted the three-story brick carriage house with its black-and-white awning and stopped in to take a look. Once inside, it takes a moment to figure out just what kind of place this is. Up front, on the ground floor, a sunny café with marble-topped wooden tables serves fragrant La Colombe coffee, freshly baked pastries and snacks like braised lamb on focaccia. Along the wall, wooden shelves stock Whimsy & Spice marshmallows, Bellocq teas in bright yellow tins and assorted small-batch items. There’s also a stainless steel teaching kitchen and a list of upcoming cooking classes (Simple Seasonal Suppers, Knife Skills, Kimchi). Upstairs is a living room with antique furniture and another professional-quality kitchen. Even with the mild weekday hustle-bustle, the house seems like a setting for the most incredible dinner parties—and, as it happens, New Yorkers in search of a place just like this have been booking the upstairs for private events.

There’s nothing else quite like Haven’s Kitchen in Manhattan, or anywhere really, and in the months since it opened, word has been spreading about this café-meets-epicurean boutique-meets-party space-meets-cooking school. Forty-year-old owner Alison Cayne Schneider, a skilled home cook and party hostess, had been dreaming up the idea for Haven’s Kitchen since long before she started graduate work in Food Studies at New York University last year. “I’ve always had a connection in my brain between food, family and nurturing people,” says Schneider. “I’d been teaching one-off cooking classes in my house, and knew I wanted to do something food-related as a career instead of just as a hobby.” Becoming a chef was out—she has five young kids—but when she came across the carriage house for rent, just steps from the Union Square Greenmarket, her ideas about a business that would combine her food and entertaining interests started to gel, and she signed a lease.

Schneider furnished the house with farmhouse tables that she had specially designed, and with chairs she found at flea markets. “I like that kind of contrast: high and low, polished and rustic, cracking white paint on the wall and a gorgeous midcentury light fixture,” she says. “I wanted people to feel like they’re in a beautiful house, and to feel very comfortable.” She bought sets of black-and-white plates from a small family-owned artisan shop in France, after talking its owners into making a wholesale order. For the shop area on the ground floor, she sourced items like a tiny-batch maple syrup she discovered in upstate New York, made at artist Peter Nadin’s Old Field Farm. Then she created a revolving roster of cooking classes and set up a supper club, where a different chef would come in and cook a family-style meal for 45 guests. So far she’s had no trouble luring the likes of Gramercy Tavern’s Michael Anthony and Prune’s Gabrielle Hamilton. On other nights, the talented in-house chef, David Mawhinney, cooks for private events held in that upstairs dining room. Meanwhile, Schneider, increasingly busy running Haven’s Kitchen and finishing her graduate degree—with rarely any time these days to entertain at home—gets to live out her latest fantasy: organizing fabulous parties and leaving just before the guests arrive. 109 W. 17th St.; havenskitchen.com.

After an event, Schneider often pulls apart the formal flower arrangements and puts longer-lasting blooms (like ranunculus) in jars or black glasses around the coffee bar.

The staff of Dutch Flower Line shop in New York City knows to keep two types of fresh chamomile on hand for Schneider. “I love it because it’s simple and happy,” she says, “but it’s also cost-effective because it lasts.” dutchflowerline.com.

Schneider envisioned communal farmhouse tables that pull apart for smaller groups, so she designed them and had them built by Los Angeles furniture-maker Ken Petersen. petersenantiques.com.

Schneider loves pairing formal with rustic or contemporary with traditional (like a reupholstered, midcentury yellow chair set in front of an ornate fireplace). But she’s also obsessed with black-and-white for tabletops, to get the high-contrast effect she likes. “I don’t even know what other color plates I’d use,” she says. Most of the walls at Haven’s Kitchen are decorated with black- and-white art, like the Haven’s Kitchen logo and the World War I-era “Food Don’t Waste It” poster, both of which she asked illustrator Happy Menocal to draw in her style. happymenocal.com.

Schneider uses a stamp kit from Yellow Owl Workshop to create name cards ($20 kit includes rubber stamp, ink and a pencil; yellowowlworkshop.com). To spark dinner conversation, she writes questions like “Where do you want to travel more than anywhere else?” on cards by Mr. Boddington’s Studio ($35 for 24; mrboddington.com).

In-house chef David Mawhinney hates the word leftovers, but he hates waste even more. For example, he’ll serve braised leg of lamb for a dinner party, then lamb sandwiches on focaccia at the café counter the next day. After a cooking class, he uses extra potatoes from his papas bravas tapas in a frittata.

Lamb Sandwich: Layer hot, reheated slices of the roast lamb between thickly sliced focaccia and brush with a little more of the cooking juices. Top the lamb with your favorite pickles, close the sandwich and serve.

Schneider gives away this house-made salty-sweet granola after events. “Chef Michael Anthony loved it so much,” she says, “that he jokes he didn’t share it with his staff.” $11 for 1 lb; havenskitchen.com.

Designer Jen Pearson hand-etches apothecary jars to create a striking surface for the matchsticks inside. $23; jenpearsondesigns.com.

Izola candles are poured into recycled glass and come in not-too-strong botanical scents, like clary sage. $36; izola.com.

The design studio Plant Brooklyn creates pretty, eco-minded gifts like a kit with seeds for 10 herbs. $20; plantbrooklyn.com.

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10 Supersmart Holiday Entertaining Tips from Star Chefs

These 10 chefs are super-rigorous in professional kitchens, but at home during the holidays they’re all about ease and fun. Here, clever strategies that make it simple to host a memorable holiday gathering.

“The right music can make your party memorable and fun. My husband and I typically stay away from holiday music, though we have this annual argument about Mariah Carey’s song All I Want for Christmas Is You: I love it and want to play it every other song. But my husband hates it, so I try to slip it in and my husband gets really upset. But generally speaking, we stick to nonseasonal stuff. We know from running our restaurant that you want something that will add to the party and not detract. We tend to pick songs that are fun, poppy and bright.”

“When you go to the liquor store, take a close look at the labels to find the ABV percentage, and buy wines that are below 12 percent if you can. You may have family over who aren’t accustomed to wine, and there’s a lot of bad wine out there that’s 15 to 16 percent ABV. Grandma’s going to have one glass and she’ll be lights out. When I drink three glasses of 14 percent wine, I’m exhausted. There’s also nothing wrong with adding water in your wine, or sparkling water to make a spritzer—and a spritzer can be 1 ounce of wine and 4 ounces of soda. I have Italian friends who make them with Coca-Cola or 7-Up—half wine, half 7-Up, ice cubes, they love it. You can even serve it in a Champagne glass. It lets people to go the distance and always have a beverage in their hands.”

“Think room temperature. When I’ve invited lots and lots of people for dinner—as I often do—I make what I call an indoor picnic. I forget about first courses and main courses and just fill up the table with great food, all at room temperature, and let everyone pass the dishes around and take whatever they want in the order that they want it. It’s always fun and it’s great if you’ve got people who might not know everyone around the table. It doesn’t take more than a few dish-passings for everyone to put their elbows on the table and start talking to one another like old friends. ”

“I like to play with aromas in my cooking, and the holidays are associated with so many nostalgic smells: pumpkin pies out of the oven, a turkey roasting, a pine tree if you do a tree. Giving a nod to all that, you could set a beautiful glass bowl or vase in the middle of the table, and fill it with cut oranges, vanilla beans, foot-long cinnamon sticks (which you should be able to get from any good spice purveyor, like The Spice House or Williams-Sonoma) whole chestnuts or walnuts (it’s best if you can toast them in their shells and crack them with the back of a knife) pine branches (if you can’t pick them outside, you can always find them at a florist, or disassemble a grocery store wreath). I prefer a vase because I like height, plus it takes up a smaller footprint to leave room for the food. At first it’s bordering on Martha Stewart; it just looks like a nice arrangement. But when you bring out your beautiful roasted main course, whether it’s goose or beef or turkey, bring out a teapot of hot water. As the plates go down, pour the hot water into the vase to release the aromas. The room will be perfumed with cinnamon, orange, roasted nuts and pine, and all those smells will spark memories and get people talking. What seemed like a pretty centerpiece becomes a real conversation starter. The only tip I have is to make sure the bowl or vase is made of tempered glass so it doesn’t crack when you pour the hot water—that would be a disaster.”

“I have a great technique: Ziploc freezer bags are my salvation. I figured out my system once I realized that, after running around at the last minute cooking everything the morning before the meal, the last thing I wanted to do was to eat any of it. By the time everything was ready, all I wanted was a bologna sandwich and a beer. So now I make everything the day before. The butternut squash puree, the mashed potatoes, the brussels sprouts: I make them, slip them in a Ziploc bag and refrigerate them overnight. Right before the meal, I immerse the bags in a gentle water bath. Once they’re hot, I cut a corner off the bag, squeeze the contents into a bowl and I’m done. Just make sure the bags are well sealed; those mashed potatoes will quickly turn into vichyssoise if they’re not sealed properly.”

“The ultimate wintertime entertaining dish is a braised dish. You can prepare it the day ahead, or during the day before the guests arrive, and you might even have time to go see a movie. The house smells so good, and there are so many braising recipes you can use from all over the world. You can make something simple or more complex, depending on your mood. But above all, braising is all about taking it slow, which is important to do during the holidays.”

Photo courtesy of Paul Brissman.

“I like to teach Ethiopian tribal dance moves during my holiday parties. Most of my friends aren’t Ethiopian, so it’s pretty memorable for them. If you Google ‘Ethiopian tribal dance,” you’ll see what I’m talking about. The moves are the same for men and women, and everyone looks silly, so it’s a fun icebreaker. Just put on some Ethiopian music, pour some glögg and some cranberry caipirinhas and get down.”

“I love to remind people of your party the next day by giving people something to take away with them: a little of your favorite coffee or tea in a tin, or a sliver of pound cake or cranberry bread, a breakfast bread or muffin. Especially if you have out-of-town guests cooped up in a hotel or at grandma’s house, it’s a nice thing to have for the day after.”

“Since there always seems to be some leftover wine—not in people’s glasses, but in the decanter or the bottle—I’ll take that wine, add some vinegar to it, and then use that for salads and other vinaigrettes after a couple of weeks’ time. Let’s say you have 2 cups of wine leftover: I’d add about a 1/4 cup of vinegar to that at most. That’s your starter—or what they call the mother. Put a cork in it and let it sit on your counter for a few weeks, the mother will turn the rest of the wine to vinegar. Sometimes when I tell some people that tip, they like to tell me there’s never any leftover wine in their house. So here’s another tip: Don’t drink so much. Leave some left over for your vinegar.”

Photo courtesy of Akasha Restaurant.

“I’m terrible at cleaning up afterward. If I entertain at my house, I have my husband clean up or I hire somebody. If I go all day and am creative, and cook and cook and cook, there’s just no way I can clean up—it’s not in me. You know how some people are the doing-the-dishes-as-they-go kinds of people? I’m not one of them. I’m pretty bad at that. But I suggest hiring someone. Call a local staffing agency; it’s the best money you’ll spend. Because you want to have fun at your party. You don’t want your friends to leave and see the mess and say, ’Oh, my God.’”

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