Miami Herald

December 27, 2005

 

 INDUSTRY

Churning Out Nibbles For Holiday Season

Canapés and hors d'oeuvres have grown into a $9 million-a-year Hollywood enterprise.

 

BY NIKKI WALLER

nwaller@MiamiHerald.com

When Emily Zecchino looks at a circle of crust less white bread, she sees infinite possibilities: curls of smoked salmon and pimentos, lobster medallions and tenderloin tips, drizzles of balsamic vinegar and daubs of Dijon.

Zecchino, 77, owns Holiday Foods, a wholesale appetizer company that occupies a 75,000-square-foot warehouse in Hollywood. Since October, she and her staff of 150 have been preparing for this time of year, the peak season for hors d'oeuvres and holiday parties.

The Italian-born Zecchino -- who came to the United States as a war bride in 1947 -- grew her business from scratch, turning a one-woman catering firm into a $9 million-a-year enterprise.

Her proudest creation is the mini beef Wellington, a sort of landmark achievement in the field of hors d'oeuvres and miniature foods, right up there with the mini Philly cheese steak and mini lobster rolls.

Zecchino estimates she sells more than 200,000 a year.

The mini beef Wellington also illustrates a core principle of appetizing: You can never go wrong with mini foods.

''Anything you can make big,'' she said, ``you can make small.''

Another law of appetizer thermodynamics: Anything wrapped in wonton skins or bacon tastes pretty good.

When she first came to the United States, Zecchino and her husband, Dominick, ran a grocery store in Queens, N.Y. He died suddenly in 1972, leaving a single mother with three children. The family moved to Hollywood, where Zecchino opened two restaurants. She sold the businesses in 1981, and on the advice of friends, opened her own catering company.

She had modest success working some weddings and graduation parties, making main dishes and desserts, but her heart was in hors d'oeuvres.

THE WONTONS

Then came the crabmeat wontons. A friend in the catering department at the Diplomat Hotel called with an urgent request. The hotel was planning an event and needed some appetizers. Could she deliver 3,000 crabmeat wontons in two days?

''When I heard 3,000, I fell on the floor,'' she said. Then she enlisted her sister, her daughter, all her friends and everyone she could find. The women worked for two days straight, pressing the pastries and packing the trays. She delivered on time, and a business was born.

''That opened my eyes,'' Zecchino said. ``If this hotel can buy them, maybe there are other hotels that want to buy them.''

She began to sell to area hotels and country clubs, and the business blossomed. At age 55, she obtained a Small Business Administration loan for $275,000 to relocate her business to the Dixie Highway warehouse, where she quickly outgrew her rented space and had to expand into adjacent spaces.

Today, that business is a 75,000-square-foot factory with four food-preparation rooms, five packing rooms and four kitchens.

''I keep saying, only in America these things can happen,'' she said.

Sales went from $35,000 in her first year of business to nearly $9 million this year.

Zecchino's daughter Linda, who was 10 when the family moved to Hollywood, is the company's vice president, in charge of marketing and sales.

''She's the front of the house, I'm the back of the house,'' Zecchino says, chuckling.

In the back of the house, 150 nimble-fingered employees press dough, spoon savory fillings onto squares of puff pastry and pinch them into little purses.

Zecchino works with an executive chef, Dan Kucera, to dream up new savories that can be deep-fried, skewered or wrapped in phyllo dough.

This year's new models include the beef firecracker -- beef and jalapeño cheddar tucked in an egg roll wrapper and twisted at the end to look like a popper, as well as the risotto and Gorgonzola croquette, a distant cousin of Southern Italian arancini, deep-fried balls of rice, beef, peas and tomato sauce.

Like arancini, foods once associated with poverty in Italy, such as focaccia and polenta, have gone gourmet, a development that has allowed Zecchino and Kucera to explore new realms of finger foods.

Despite the success of new appetizers, the beef firecracker will probably never rival the popularity of pigs in a blanket. ''We wish they would stop calling for franks in a blanket and egg rolls, but they never go out of style,'' said Zecchino ruefully.

THE MEATBALLS

And while she's at it: Enough with the Swedish meatballs, too. Try something different for once, a nice shrimp skewer or mini brie en croute with raspberry, or a canapé assortment.

As Zecchino walks through the factory she built, she stops to chat with employees, pointing out the many who have been with her for 10 years or more, bringing family members and friends on board along the way.

Patricia Giraldo manages the raw meat production room, where white-coated workers thread lobster medallions onto skewers and dredge shrimp through diced coconut flakes. Giraldo has worked at Holiday Foods for 14 years, and now her husband, two sisters and two brothers work there, too.

Zecchino beams as she opens the door to the canapé room, the last, best room at Holiday Foods. Trays of lobster medallions drizzled with balsamic vinegar and laid atop crostini, destined for the Eden Roc hotel in Miami Beach, fill rolling racks. White-coated workers carefully thread strips of pimento through olive rings. It's part art studio, part science lab.

Lisa Ming Chen, a former opera singer in her native China, directs the presentation.

Chefs give the recipe, and she creates the look of the canapé, balancing the color, variety, height and shape of each.

''I like beautiful things,'' she said. ``That's my imagination.''

Beautiful canapés, said Zecchino, come from the heart.

''There is no end to what you can do, you never run out of ideas,'' Zecchino said. ``It is infinity with canapés.''