Lucie Monk Carter
Jamie Brown (left) and Sydney Harkins form the "unapologetically female" catering duo, The BouillaBabes.
Somehow, the “unapologetically female” BouillaBabes catering duo did not know each other before this spring. To see Jamie Brown and Sydney Harkins so synced at the back of Baton Rouge’s Corporate Brew and Draft—swapping laughs, slicing onions, and pressing creative, impossibly good sandwiches on an electric griddle—you’d never guess they met for the first time in April, at the Louisiana International Film Festival, both called in by Chef Sean Rivera to help work the VIP room. Harkins confessed feeling threatened by another female chef in the room: “I was all puffed up. I was ready!” The two made conversation as they plated crostinis, but the true icebreaker came from Brown’s mistaking an expensive piece of art for a pole, which she’d been bumping and leaning against all night. “We were walking outside to take a break. And I see this price tag dangling …” said Brown. “She just thought it was a pole! But it was a sculpture with a $3,000 price tag,” said Harkins. “Well, Sean was trying to take serious pictures of us later on and we just could not stop laughing. I’d look at her and she would laugh, then I would laugh. It hasn’t stopped since that night.”
Amid laughter, the BouillaBabes talked with me recently about their inventive catering model, a home for misfit chefs, and losing faith in the restaurant industry. Find excerpts below.
On their pricing model
SH: When we were working with other caterers, we noticed that everyone else does a cost per head and a set menu. That encourages the chefs to go cheap on their initial products to make the maximum profit. So we decided to go way more transparent with our pricing. We say, “What’s your budget? What kind of food do you want?” Then we take their budget and we work backwards from there. We have two different fees: we have a chef fee, which is what we’re going to charge you to cook it and drop it off to you. Then we have a set up and service fee. That’s what we’ll charge you to show up at your event with our equipment, our chafing dishes, and our cute little decorations. We’ll be there throughout the event: serving, refreshing dishes, cleaning up afterward. And you’d have an actual chef there saying, “Yes, I made this.” People can very easily shave off money by just having us drop off the food. So we take your budget and subtract your fees based on what you want. What’s left over is your grocery budget.
Based on the event, Jamie and I will sit down and brainstorm 10 to 15 dishes for your particular event. We’ve been shopping so long that we know costs in our heads. “It’ll cost us approximately this much to make this dish.” But we also take into consideration the season: at the end of the year, prices of crabs skyrocket and whatnot. We write out an estimated grocery list, then send it to clients in email form. So let’s say your leftover grocery budget is $400. You can pick and choose the pieces of the menu, of our estimated grocery prices, to really custom fit the pricing point you want to be at. Grits and grillades are maybe $80 and this is $10. Do I want to do six cheaper things or two big things? It really puts their finances in their own hands to where they can choose. If I want to pay for lobster mac and cheese, I can have that. But if I still want to save some money, I can have something just as beautifully prepared, just as elegant, and just as delicious at a lower cost. I think that transparency helps people feel more comfortable with us, knowing that we’re not just giving them some crappy food that is pre-made, but the only downfall to it is that it’s way more interactive on the customer’s end. Sometimes people are just like, “Okay, I’m just going to give you this much. Make food.”
Lucie Monk Carter
The Mariska—the BouillaBabes' version of a Reuben.
JB: If they do say, “I do want this lobster mac and cheese and I want desserts,” then they can spend that extra money. If they want to go a little over budget, they can. It’s all their choice. We get paid a flat fee, no matter what.
On Filipino Cajun fusion
SH: One guy who we just did a wedding for, his budget was tiny. The wife is Filipino and the husband is Cajun, Cajun, Cajun. They wanted a traditional gumbo, but we also did a lot of Filipino/Cajun fusion. Filipino lumpia is basically a spring roll. It’s filled with a variety of meats and vegetables. It can be served with a sauce. It can be baked or fried. So we did a boudin lumpia.
JB: We got Rouse’s boudin because I was like, “I don’t like this brand. I’m not sure about that brand. Let’s just get Rouse’s—
SH: —and we can jazz it up if we need to.” But it turned out amazing. We just added some ground pork and made a pepper jelly dipping sauce, which was a lot like a Vietnamese nuoc cham sauce. It’s always fish sauce, water, a little acid, and sugar. So we took pepper jelly, diluted that with water, and then added a little vinegar and sugar. That was the dipping sauce for it. It was this Asian and Cajun fusion. And they were so happy that we could do that. Then we did a hummus trio, a Green Goddess dip, a Cajun pasta salad.
JB: The biscuits!
SH: Yes, we surprised them. I’ve known this guy since high school and I’m so glad we found his one. We made this jalapeno cheddar biscuits.
JB: No, it was poblano.
SH: Poblano!
JB: White cheddar bacon biscuits. And I’m always going to make these biscuits.
SH: They were so freaking good.
Lucie Monk Carter
The Heidi grilled cheese features havarti and a Vidalia onion jam.
On being a distraction
SH: A few years ago, I worked at Reginelli’s, before they changed management. It was always slow, so I’d go in the kitchen and try to make a pizza. I thought cross training myself would be an asset. The manager pulled me off to the side and said, “You can’t be going in the kitchen any more. You’re a distraction to the boys.” But when we sold $2 pitchers, he’d say, “I want y’all to look cute. Wear skirts!” At the time I was very naïve, so I thought, “Yeah, I’ll be cute.” But then it hit me: I wasn’t allowed to make a pizza; I was just supposed to be cute.
JB: I sent my résumé into this new restaurant. I got an email reply: “I usually don’t like to hire females in the kitchen. They tend to be a distraction.” Basically telling me—
SH: “Whether you’re qualified or not…”
JB: “You look really good on paper. But I don’t like to hire females.” I know the part-owner, so I mentioned it to him. The chef ended up emailing me back and saying, “You have a spot.” But I didn’t want to work in that environment.
On Gastreauxnomica
SH: [Chef Sean Rivera] describes it as people who have been not necessarily rejected but haven’t found a place in the industry. We help each other out. So it’s kind of a professional association where we say, “I’m trying to do this dish. Can you help me brainstorm?” Or we help each other out when we do events. Or we give each other rides when our cars break down. At the end of the day, we are a team even though we’re all doing our individual projects and our side things, we collectively embody one thing. That’s Gastreauxnomica. We are creative misfit chefs that belong in some places but have been rejected from others.
On collaborating
JB: The industry had stopped being fun.
SH: I didn’t see much opportunity for me. It was always making someone else’s menu, which is fine, but I was the kind of person who was like, “I have an idea for this! Let me go to Rouse’s today, I’ll get these ingredients and do this at home.” I’m up at 3 in the morning making a pasta dish. I remember being like, “I’ll have an official name: BouillaBabe Catering. Well, I don’t know if I can do this all on my own.” Then it hit me: call Jamie. See what she’s up to. She was instantly like, “Hell yeah.”
On what they hope comes next
SH: More business.
JB: A proper kitchen.
SH: The smaller goal is to be a concept people know. As soon as people hear about our pricing model, they’re like, “I can afford catering!” Right now, a lot of people think they can’t. As much as we want “BouillaBabes: Jamie Brown and Sydney Harkins” to be out there, we also want people to know that this style of catering is available. We want the company name to be out there so it triggers this renaissance in the catering industry.
Find the BouillaBabes serving up sandwiches on Thursday—Saturday at Corporate Brew and Draft.
