A Plated Wedding at Sunstone Villa
Sunstone Villa is a Provençal-inspired villa and organic vineyard estate in Santa Ynez, all limestone arches, olive trees and courtyards. It is also a property with no kitchen a wedding can be served from, so for this late summer plated dinner for 80 the kitchen arrived on a truck and was built under the arcade.
There is no permanent kitchen here to serve a wedding from, so the whole thing was built: long tables down the length of the stone arcade, a range and stockpots at one end, chafing dishes and stacked plates along the rest, and a grill line set up outside among the olive trees. The culinary crew was on property at 1:00, an hour ahead of the floor team at 2:00, which is the order that matters when the kitchen has to exist before anyone can prep in it.
A lavender lemonade met guests as they arrived. Three appetizers went out through cocktail hour: beef empanadas with chimichurri, herb cheese stuffed mushrooms, and phyllo cups with goat cheese, prosciutto and rose preserve.
Guests then sat to a green salad with tomato, shaved watermelon radish and squash ribbons, dressed by hand in a mixing bowl on the line and finished with edible flower petals. Three entrées followed, plated:
- New York steak au poivre with potato purée and roasted broccolini
- Wild salmon with fresh dill and roasted lemon, Greek lemon potatoes, and roasted carrots with pistachio mint pistou
- Wild mushroom pappardelle with thyme and Parmesan, the vegetarian main
Eighty covers plated is not one dish eighty times. The salads went out in rows across the service table, finished by hand one after another, and the entrées were plated straight off the chafing dishes with the grill line working outside at the same time. Getting three different plates to leave the pass together is a staffing question before it is anything else: two chefs in the kitchen, an event captain on the floor.
Ten vendor meals went out alongside the guest count. Everyone working the evening eats, and on a plated service that is ten more plates the kitchen has to fire, planned for rather than found room for.
Dessert was an ice cream service from McConnell’s, the Santa Barbara creamery, with warm chocolate chip cookies alongside.
Sunstone Villa, by us
Kitchen and plating photography by Amber Dolyak Photography
If Sunstone Villa is your venue, our venue page covers the caterer agreement we hold with the estate and what building a field kitchen on the property actually involves.
Weddings like this one typically run $140–$195 per guest all in, depending on your service style, bar, and guest count.