I am sure those of you who follow my blog/social media have seen that I’ve been promoting for the past two weeks a “Raw Dinner”; a party that I was hosting with Chef David from Whealth along with DJ Reese and Chantal Lamour.

After weeks of planning, tasting, anxiety…. the day finally came. I was so excited when I woke up that morning to a text message from Dave saying “Only 4 tickets left”. Two hours later we sold out. I was pumped!

While Dave slaved away in the kitchen (he said he didn’t need my help) I nursed a bad cold and went with the family to the Liberty Science Center to check out the Sesame Street exhibit.

At around 5pm it was time to get ready and head over to Chantal’s studio….I had a minor wardrobe meltdown but then thought to myself “things could be worse…”.

At 6pm, my phone rings. “Hello?”, in a very calm voice David says “Lynn, I have bad news. I need you to bring your vitamix…like right now…there was a fire and we lost all the food except the desserts”.  Uh. Ok. I bagged my high powered blender, kissed Mia goodnight and ran out. While walking to Chantal Lamours studio, I told myself, “everything will be ok, David is a pro, things could be worse…”

I get the the studio and David has a smile on his face, assuring me we are all good, we have enough time to salvage the night. We all pitched in and went to buy more food, and whatever was needed. David called in Michelle from Busy Bee to help with the prep and Alex from Crave JC to bring us a food processor. They are honestly so awesome for helping us and they are such good people, I couldn’t thank them enough.

We were back on track. It was 7pm and we had an hour to go before our guests arrived. I was catching up with Michelle and then from the corner of my eye I noticed commotion in the restroom…I see Chantal and her friend (looking adorable by the way) panicking. The toilet wasn’t flushing. Awesome! “Things could be worse”I said to myself again. Michelle’s bf and master magician Sam was there, and thankfully he was able to fix the problem! Who knew magicians were good plumbers?!

I look at the clock and it’s 7:40pm. I then realize that DJ Reese was not there yet! Which I thought was weird because he had left his home at 6:30pm. Apparently the highway they needed to take was closed so it took them forever to get to us! “Things could be worse…”

7:55pm We are ready to rock and roll, or in our case ready to “turn up”.  Dave is getting the dishes ready for the party, the table is set, the toilet is fixed…. Let’s do this shit.

8:00pm. I go to open the door for the DJ and early guests that started to arrive…. A group of about 6 officers walk up the stairs. I felt like I was in that scene in that scene in Goodfellas where Ray Liota get’s arrested…. anyway. They asked “Is this the Raw Dinner?”.  At that moment, I did not know whether to laugh or cry.

The police officers said they wanted to make sure we followed code and complied with all the rules… They were actually really cool about it. At a point I asked one of the officers how did they know to which he said “Someone ratted you guys out, faxed us your flyer, so we had to follow-up”….. My reaction was “Who has a fax!?” .

The cops hung out, we talked and we ended up working it out. I said to everyone “It ain’t a real hip hop party if the cops don’t show up” Let’s do this! Nothing can obviously stop us from having a kicks ass party.

As if nothing had happened, David comes out of the kitchen and says “Thanks for coming everyone, we are going to get started really soon, we are just fining seats for our new guests… the police”.  Too funny!!

From that moment on, the party was LIVE! Everyone was drinking, getting to know their neighbors and DJ Reese was playing everyone’s favorite old school beats!

First course was a delicious creamy beet soup which went along with the W.U Tang song “C.R.E.A.M”.  Since I was hosting I was walking around and mingling with everyone and it was so fun to see everyone enjoying their food, taking pics, laughing and bopping their heads.

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Second course was a Sunflower Collard Taco with pickled parsnip….The dish was brought out while playing Tribe Called Quest. Now that’s how you eat a taco!

Good times. At certain points in the dinner, the music was so good people would get up to dance right from their seat. People where rapping their favorite songs and reminiscing about their favorite old school albums. I loved it.

Next dish was a Zucchini Parpadelle, Cashew Ricotta, Sun dried tomato, basil pesto. Since I was hosting and making sure everyone was happy with their food, and glasses filled with alcoholic beverage, I didn’t really eat…. at that point I begged Dave to whip me up a plate.

YYAAAS.

For the grand finale. Raw Cacao Truffles with Hemp Seed and Goji berries, Raw salted Peanut butter oreos and Spiced Cashew Milk while playing the Old Dirty Bastard song “Oh baby I like it Raw”.

This dish was a party in itself. Everyone loved it. I heard so many people say how much they enjoyed the food and how amazing they felt. Now they were able to drink more! #winning.

 

After dinner, DJ Reese kicked it up a notch and everyone started dancing and enjoying each others company, People even started hullahooping!!

There was so much love in the room. Everyone was having a blast and making new friends! After wards I saw so many great pictures on Instagram! I needed to share :)

Good times. Thank you to everyone who came out and made this dinner so fun and memorable! A special thanks to DJ Reese for keeping our ears happy, Chantal Lamour for being such a gracious host regardless of everything that happened… but most of all. A very very special kudos to Chef David. Throughout this whole experience he has been so fun to work with; he has the most incredible attitude and he is unstoppable. I am really excited to host more events with him!

Even the cops can’t stop us.

Stay tuned!