It was late last week when Craig Curbean got the call from the mayor’s office.
Could Taste This, the restaurant and catering company Curbean co-owns in Baltimore, make the food for an event that coming Sunday?
Curbean pressed for details, but the staffer wouldn’t spill. They “just kept saying it was for a private outside event.” He and his business partner Dante Davis, who started their Southern cuisine-focused business a decade ago, looked over the proposed menu: chicken boxes with salt, pepper and ketchup. Grilled salmon sliders. Kale Caesar salad. Miniature crab cakes.
“Once we saw it, we said, ‘Of course,’ ” said Curbean. “This is what’s in our wheelhouse. We can definitely pull it off.”
Still, cooking up a multi-course meal for around 60 people with just a couple of days’ notice wasn’t going to be a small feat. Taste This had other jobs lined up for the weekend, including one Saturday evening that went until midnight. There would be no time to prepare the day before, so Curbean, Davis and their staff woke up early Sunday morning to start cooking.
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That afternoon, they were setting up the food at Walther Gardens, a longtime nursery in Northeast Baltimore where the event was to take place. About an hour before guests began trickling in, the mayor’s assistant let Curbean know: The event was actually going to be the mayor’s wedding.
“My jaw dropped,” Curbean said. He called up Davis. “I don’t think you know what this event is for,” he told him. “It’s actually the mayor’s wedding.” The phone went quiet. “You hear me?” Curbean said.
After the team got over their shock, “it was go time,” Curbean said. “We locked in.” They doubled down on the job in front of them, telling themselves it was nothing they hadn’t done before.
They got to work, frying up chicken for the boxes and the mini crab cakes to serve with their version of Old Bay aioli.
Scott and Pugh had originally scheduled their wedding for that Thursday, Aug. 8, a date Pugh said she had chosen for its numerical symmetry. But an unwanted guest in the form of Hurricane Debby forced them to change their plans at the last minute. Most vendors were able to pivot to the new date, but the owner of Fishnet, the eatery they’d originally selected to cater, was going to be out of the country. They needed a backup. Pugh said both she and Scott had sampled the fare from Taste This at previous functions and knew it would be good.
Some people think of food as an afterthought at weddings, but Pugh put a lot of thought into the menu. She wanted the cuisine to reflect Baltimore — but not in a cliché, Berger cookie way. There would also need to be plenty of seafood options for her pescatarian husband-to-be.
For dessert, there was cake from Owings Mill’s Fresh Bakery and snowballs made onsite, for which Pugh’s 8-year-old son, Ceron, was the first in line. Walther Gardens claims to be home to the country’s oldest snowball stand, and Scott, who grew up buying his Christmas trees at the nursery there, is a fan.
The snowball stand got a recent makeover under its new owners, and some customers have complained about its pricey, artisanal offerings. “It’s a hot topic in the neighborhood,” Scott said. But he waves off the criticism. As mayor, he said, he knows there are two constants: People don’t want things to stay the same, and they don’t want them to change.
For Scott, finding Pugh and Ceron was the unexpected joy of a lifetime. “It’s the best for me,” he said. “I just don’t want to miss a moment.”
Their family grew the day after Christmas, when they welcomed new baby Charm to their family. The 7-month-old is “busy, just like his dad,” Pugh laughed. And he played an important role in the surprise. Scott, who arrived to the event in casual dress, pretended Charm needed a new diaper to excuse himself and change into a more formal, sage green linen wedding suit. Ceron, in a matching green suit and white sneakers, walked his mom down the aisle. Charm wore matching green shorts and suspenders, but refused to wear a matching bowtie.
Scott and Pugh originally told their guests the event was their engagement party; a lot of them said afterward they’d wish they’d known it would be a wedding because they would have worn something nicer. Some people who couldn’t come said they would have made more of an effort to be there.
“We wanted the expectations to be low,” Pugh said, “and for it to be low-key.”
Pugh and Scott don’t have any regrets, even about a guest list they had to pare down to a minimum among their big families. “I have 20 first cousins,” Scott said, and some of them didn’t get invitations. Fortunately, his career choice has prepared him to take pushback. As mayor, “half the people are going to be mad anyway, no matter what you do.”
Days later, Pugh and Scott were still basking in the afterglow of Sunday’s event, even as they’d both gone back to work. The mayor’s schedule doesn’t allow much time for a honeymoon at the moment, but they said maybe they’ll go somewhere next summer, just the two of them.
They still couldn’t believe they pulled off the surprise. The morning of the wedding the couple went to different parts of the city in their wedding attire to take photos. There they were outside City Hall, near the spot they’d met the first time. People heading to the farmers market honked their cars in cheer. There they were at Camden Yards, then along the water in Baltimore Peninsula. People fishing saw them and went on with their days. But online, no one said a thing.
And Pugh continues to get text messages from guests about the fare. Everyone says it was the best wedding food they’d ever had.
When there was time to come up for air, Curbean was able to soak in the warmth of the day. He has catered other events for the city and seen Scott hard at work, so the restaurant owner thought it was a beautiful thing to watch the mayor relax and enjoy himself, committing to his new wife who “couldn’t stop smiling.”
The weekend, Curbean noted, also happened to be the 10th anniversary of Taste This. It’s funny how things happen that way.
He imagines Taste This will get many more requests to cater for weddings now. “A little bit more notice, that’s all I pray for.”
