The Vegetarian Gourmet

Specialties

The Vegetarian Gourmet is a full-​service specailty catering company, offering customized event planning for all occasions and budgets. We bring you the finest vegetarian and vegan cuisines from around the globe, prepared with locally sourced, sustainably grown, seasonal, high-​quality ingredients — cooked with love, seasoned to perfection, and exquisitely presented.

Owner Margaret Riesen is a long-​time vegetarian herself, and understands the need for properly balanced, varied and interesting menus. We mix colors, flavors and textures to create our unique and delightful fare. Our menus include the cuisines of the Mediterranean, the Southwest, the Americas, the Caribbean, selected European cuisines, and some of the Asian cuisines.

Menus are custom-​designed with your needs and budget in mind, and we accept most major credit cards. We offer complimentary consultations and tasting of sample foods.

History

Established in 1997.

The Vegetarian Gourmet had its beginnings in Santa Barbara — where we catered a myriad of events, ranging from large, elegant weddings to small, intimate dinner parties — and we relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area in late 2009. Our first local catering contract was a lunch for 400+ guests at UC Berkeley’s recent «Just Metropolis» Symposium.

Some of the memorable events catered by The Vegetarian Gourmet include a reception for Ram Das and Krishna Das, back-​stage catering for the marvelous German jazz group «Max Raabe & Palast Orchester», a reception for Marianne Williamson, a Moroccan-​themed fundraiser at Ty Warner Center on the Santa Barbara Pier, private chef services for soprano Marilyn Horne and Teva founders Doug and Rita Otto, and countless Mitzvahs, weddings, birthday and anniversary parties, art openings and wine tastings and pairings.

Meet the Business Owner

Margaret R.

Business Owner

A native of Switzerland, I grew up in a small farming village, where people grew most of their own food and cooked everything from scratch. At that time, most families did not eat a lot of meat and ate mostly locally grown, seasonal foods. My father had a huge vegetable garden, and we enjoyed fresh, fabulous foods in the summer, and canned various fruits and vegetables for the winter. We dug up the root vegetables before the start of the freeze and kept them in the root cellar surrounded by peat — that way, we had fresh potatoes in winter.

My passion for cooking comes from my love of marvelous foods and wanting to share my expertise with others. My mother and grandmother were great cooks, as were many other people in my life, my father included.

In addition to catering, I taught culinary arts for many years at Santa Barbara Community College — including the culinary program at the SB County Jail — and more recently have begun teaching at Piedmont Adult School in Oakland.