Appetizers & Bites

Less knife, more talking. Small plates come together in stages, so there is no long stretch where everyone is silently watching a pot. Your team builds, plates and tastes inside the same hour, live on Zoom with a chef leading and a Rockoly host running the room. Four of the five menus here finish in 60 minutes, which makes this the easiest format to drop into a lunch slot or bolt onto the front of a happy hour. It is also the safest pick when you genuinely do not know who on your team can cook.

Five workshops, each built around shareable plates:

• Charcuterie Board, 60 minutes: a seasonal board of meats, cheeses, fruit, nuts, crackers and jam. Add an anchovy-olive tapenade to stretch it to 90 minutes, or a red and white wine pairing to turn it into a tasting.
• Bao Buns, 90 minutes: handmade steamed buns with a beef and scallion filling, or mushroom instead.
• Spanish Tapas Party, 60 minutes: pan con tomate, patatas bravas and fruity sangria, non-alcoholic as standard. Extend it with garlic shrimp, or mushrooms with jamon.
• Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup, 60 minutes: the comfort menu, and the one that gets people telling stories.
• Falafel, 60 minutes: crisp outside, soft inside, with vegetables and tahini. Add Malfouf Salatet, a bright cabbage salad, for another 30 minutes.

Nobody finishes hungry. Every kit carries enough ingredients for a family of four, so a menu called small bites still arrives as a serious amount of food. The charcuterie board is a full seasonal spread of meats, cheeses, fruit, nuts, crackers and jam, grilled cheese with tomato soup is lunch by any definition, and the tapas menu puts pan con tomate and patatas bravas on the table together.

If you want more on the plate, the add-ons are the lever: garlic shrimp or mushrooms with jamon alongside the tapas, an anchovy-olive tapenade on the board, a cabbage salad with the falafel. Each of those adds 30 minutes to the session, so decide with your planner whether you are buying food or time.

There is a technique inside every one of these, and your chef tends to unpack it while your hands are busy.

• A steamed bun can never brown. Steam tops out at boiling point, and the browning reactions that turn a baked roll golden need a good deal more heat than that. That is the whole reason a bao comes out snow-white and pillowy instead of crusted, and why the filling has to carry all the savory depth on its own.
• Patatas bravas are named for the sauce, not the potato. Bravas means fierce, or wild, and it refers to the heat in the sauce spooned over the top — which is why a plate of bravas served with nothing but aioli is, strictly speaking, mislabelled.
• A charcuterie board is a contrast exercise before it is a shopping exercise. The reason a good board works is that nothing next to anything else is the same: something hard against something soft, something aged against something fresh, something sweet cutting something salty. Learn that and you can build one out of whatever the shop had.
• Falafel has one rule that separates good from terrible: the chickpeas are soaked overnight but never cooked before grinding. Boiled or canned chickpeas turn to paste and the falafel falls apart in the oil. Dry chickpeas, soaked only in water, hold their structure and fry up crisp.

Small techniques, enormous differences, and exactly the kind of thing worth learning from a chef in real time rather than from a recipe card.

Very little, which is part of the appeal. The charcuterie board needs a board, a knife and a couple of bowls, and no heat at all. Tapas want a knife, a bowl and a pan on the stove. Bao buns are steamed, so you will want a steamer basket or a lidded pot. Falafel needs a pan and oil for frying, and grilled cheese needs a skillet. Ingredients arrive delivered and ready for a live class, and your planner will confirm the short equipment list for your chosen menu beforehand so nobody is hunting for a pan mid-session.

One rate covers the personal chef, your dedicated event planner, a Zoom host, all ingredients delivered and gratuities. US shipping is free and insured. Kits feed a family of four and partners can join free on the same screen, so nobody has to send their household out of the kitchen.

Yes, and it costs nothing extra when you share the details in advance. All five menus on this page carry gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan options, and falafel is naturally gluten-free and vegetarian to begin with. The bao filling swaps beef for mushroom. The charcuterie board can be built entirely plant-based. Kosher and no-alcohol events are fine too, and the tapas sangria ships without alcohol unless you specifically add the alcohol kit. Allergies are handled menu by menu, so tell your planner early and they will design around them.

Send the inquiry form on this page and a Rockoly planner replies with menu recommendations and open dates. Four of the five menus here finish inside 60 minutes, which is why this page gets booked into lunch slots more than any other — worth knowing when you are hunting for an hour that suits everybody rather than a whole afternoon.

About three weeks of lead time is ideal so kits arrive without drama, though rush dates are sometimes possible depending on chef availability. A $250 deposit holds your date, payable by credit card, ACH transfer or check. Cancel 21 or more days out and you are refunded what you paid less any nonrecoverable costs already committed; 8 to 20 days out you choose between a 50% refund and a 100% Rockoly credit; inside 8 days payments are nonrefundable, though one complimentary reschedule is yours if you ask 14+ days ahead.

Every event is backed by the Love Your Event Guarantee. Prefer to talk it through? Call (617) 939-9732 or email events@rockoly.com.