BALLSTON SPA -- They say you can tell a lot about someone by the people they count as friends.
Kim Klopstock could properly be described as at once young and middle-aged, outgoing and reticent, entrepreneurial and old-fashioned, idealistic and pragmatic, even earth motherly and truck driverly.
All those attributes became apparent when Klopstock, 48, finally agreed after much cajoling by colleagues, family and friends to be the subject of a behind-the-scenes story, something she insisted she was loathe to undergo.
“I don’t mind talking about my business,” said the owner of
The Lily and The Rose catering business and the
Fifty South restaurant near this Saratoga County village. “But, I really do prefer to keep a separation between that and my private life.”
So it was that the standard luncheon interview idea was out and she agreed to hosting a “small dinner with a few friends so I’ll be comfortable.”
That intimate event morphed into a rollicking four-course dinner for 20 blithe spirits ranging in age from the mid-20s to at least five decades beyond, all happily crammed into the long rectangular dining room of the circa 1830 house Klopstock moved into earlier this year in Milton, a cobblestone house that came with its own roadside historic marker.
The Poughkeepsie native, a 1981 graduate of Skidmore College, has led a varied life, to put it mildly.
“I’ve never really been one to go by the usual rules,” Klopstock said as she showed a few early arrivals around her house, a cozy place crammed with statuary and family photographs, original paintings and keepsakes, and collections of anything from erotica to Pez dispensers. She even proudly yet reverently pointed out urns containing the remains of a grandmother and a best friend that are always with her.
“I grew up in a family of privilege, but I sort of rebelled against that lifestyle,” she went on. “I’ve lived in a nudist colony and on a beach and hitched-hiked around the country and lived on a farm in Washington County. I gave birth to one daughter in a hospital and the other one in a van. And, I have friends from just about every walk of life.”
Klopstock, a self-taught chef who prefers to create individualized menus for her clients rather than working from set menus, started catering in 1990. She moved into the major leagues a decade ago when someone who enjoyed her work recommended her to handle TV host David Letterman’s annual staff party, a little soiree for 450 people. That led to more celebrity gigs. She has fed the faces of such as Willie Nelson, Drew Barrymore, Nathan Lane and Tom Petty, served at parties for such diverse organizations as the New York City Ballet, the National Museum of Dance, Sotheby’s auction house, and the New York Racing Association, for people and groups she’s been asked not to name publicly, and in venues ranging from a Manhattan skating rink to a yacht anchored off Nantucket Island.
Things have gone so nicely that when more kitchen space was needed last year, she purchased the facility that had been home to Leo’s Diner as well as Sharp’s Pub on Doubleday Avenue (Route 50) just north of Ballston Spa and turned it into Fifty South. She operates the catering business out of the premises.
The business has been a further family bonding process as well, with her daughters Talara Klopstock Wait, 24, and Sierra Klopstock Wait, 22, working there from time to time and husband Patrick Lavin keeping the books.
Of course, Klopstock has always been a doting mom. When her daughters were attending the private Waldorf School of Saratoga, where she was a board member, she was so impressed by the science curriculum that she helped found the Saratoga Experiential Natural Science Research Institute (SENSRI) in Saratoga Springs, which had the same educational philosophy.
As Klopstock labored in her tight home kitchen, tossing off a salty observation here and a quick direction there while trading do-si-do’s with several people who also back her up in her business kitchen, her “press barrier” began arriving in ones and twos. They were friends and family from all walks of life, people she later admitted she thought might be pleasantly distracting to an interviewer who might otherwise spend too much time concentrating on her.
A clever ploy, to be sure. The guests ranged from renowned concert violin soloist Arturo Delmoni, who also is the concert master for the New York City Ballet and a rabid Dallas Cowboys football fan who was threatening to write team owner Jerry Jones a letter to complain about his top selection in the college draft, to Paul Hansen, a soft-spoken Saratoga Springs financial planner and rugged back-country skier who made worldwide headlines in 2003 when he was buried alive in Cardiac Bowl, a popular skiing area near Salt Lake City, Utah. Not to mention Patricia Hansen, the award-winning watercolorist who is Paul’s wife, and Talara, the elder Klopstock daughter, who is a former Division I college scholarship rower and “ironman” athlete.
People greeted old friends or introduced themselves to new ones on the enclosed porch over cocktails and passed canapés of parmesan puffs and bacon-wrapped baked dates stuffed with soft cheese.
“We all wanted to talk her into doing this so we’d get to eat her wonderful food,” said Delmoni, who had driven up from New York just for the evening and helped set the mood by playing standards on the living room piano while Klopstock and cast finished preparing the meal.
The crowd gradually migrated to the dining room, where a Klopstock ritual was reenacted. As the guests joined hands with those on either side of them, Klopstock gazed in turn into each face around the table to welcome them to her home and to her table. And she invoked her Rules for Conversation:
“In most place you are asked to avoid discussion of sex, politics and religion. At my table you are encouraged to discuss them.”
Then it was on to a meal of warm gemelli pasta salad dotted with sliced shitake mushrooms, wilted greens, sun-dried tomatoes and shaved parmesan, huge whole lobsters (“Great party food,” Klopstock said. “How can you fuck up a lobster?”), salads and fresh-baked fudge brownies.
Through it all, Klopstock darted back and forth between kitchen and dining room, making sure substitutions were quickly whipped up for anyone with vegetarian tendencies or allergies. Through it all, she cast furtive glances toward the interviewer she had seated between daughter Talara and her high school friend Liz, just back from living in Chile and about to head to law school. They were reminiscing about school-days meals in the Klopstock house.
“There never seemed to be any strong division between our generations,” Talara was saying. “Everyone was always welcome in our house.
“Liz, you probably liked my mother better then you did me, right?” she said with a grin.
“Of course,” Liz responded. “Plus, what great meals!”
Klopstock, a glass of wine in hand and finally relaxing after several hours of controlled frenetic activity, finally was cornered.
You realize, the interviewer said with mock severity, you’ve obviously tried to insulate yourself from me with a collection of fascinating people, right?
“Yes,” she said with a coquettish smile. “Did it work?”
The interviewer looked around and was reminded of a quotation his late father had shared with him:
“A friend is not one taken in by sham, but one who knows all your faults and doesn’t give a damn.”
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In the course of polishing off these treats, the Malbec kept opening and softening, releasing deep notes of black cherry, plum and warm spices, making it a perfect accompaniment to each item.
