For the life of me, I have not been able to figure out where I first read about the Stinger cocktail, but I will never forget the story behind it (at least the story I read, not necessarily its origin story since I can’t find it anywhere else). It went something like this:

You might think I like starting my dinners because it lets me show off Champagne sabering. The only problem with that argument is that I don’t saber Champagne; I teach guests how to do it and a couple of them do it live at the dinner. But that is just one reason, and not even the main reason. Here is why I like kicking off my dinners with Champagne sabrage:

In the follow-on book to Unreasonable Hospitality, the Unreasonable Hospitality Field Guide, readers are asked to write notes all over the place. In the first few chapters, he asks the reader to write down their definition(s) of hospitality. I wrote down three things, each an example of what I consider hospitality:

Reasonable people can feel like the virtual elimination of the “Three Martini Lunch” represents progress. Progress in the campaign against alcoholism. In the homogeneity of a workforce that would romanticize getting absolutely hammered over lunch. But nostalgia is a powerful thing, and even I am not immune.

It’s close to sunset on the evening of December 13, 2006. I’m in a dimly lit parking garage across the street from the Sideways Supper Club. I’ve just bought 6 bottles of cheap, room temperature Champagne from a nearby liquor store. Despite having sold a couple dozen Champagne sabers on my eCommerce site, I have never actually done it myself…

First, the inspiration. It’s 2012, I’m a decade into my dream of redefining the traditional menswear store having piloted a small private, social club addition to it for two years. After months of back-and-forth, I’m about to sign a 10-year, $10M lease on 22,000 square feet of retail and office space in a national historic landmark building in downtown San Francisco.

I grew up in an area of California called “the Central Coast,” almost exactly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, in a town called Pismo Beach. As a child in the mid-1980s there, the most sophisticated thing I was exposed to was at the local steakhouse, McClintock’s. After dinner, a server came around with an assortment of after-dinner liqueurs: Kahlua, Bailey’s, Disarrono amaretto, and some others I can’t recall. 

A guest at my dinner should have an amazing time whether they drink or not, that goes without saying. But the 6sensory Supper I performed 20 times at 6sense had one activity where it would be great if everyone drank. The dinner concept revolved around one’s “six senses”: sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, and then, of course, “the sixth sense” (seeing dead people). 

The Godfather was the last fiction book I read back in my freshman year of college for Poli Sci 2. It’s been all non-fiction, mostly business books, ever since. Not great, I know. And many of the business books I’ve read are very forgettable. These three are not. They’ve had a huge influence on my life and career, and you can read more to find out why…

After the first couple 6sensory Supper dinners for marketing leaders, we realized we wanted to do assigned seating so we could place guests where we wanted them. The first suggestion was tent cards with guests’ names printed on them. Absolutely not, I thought. This is an elegant dinner featuring a ton of personalization already. There had to be a more expensive way…

Throughout this site, you might come across a reference to Wingtip, a business I founded and ran from late-2002 until early-2018. It included a men’s retail component and a private social club and it was based in San Francisco’s Financial District. Wingtip taught me many of the bar & restaurant tricks I incorporate into my dinner, so if you wanted to learn more...