About Susan A. Lane Events

Susan Lane started her catering & event planning business in 1994. At that time, it went by the name “The Open Kitchen Catering Company.” It grew to include a café/retail shop in Weston, MA and a large kitchen commissary in Newton, MA, which focused on social & corporate catering.

By the end of 2006, Susan decided to sell both spaces and instead focus on servicing just her social catering clients who call her to do everything from a daughter’s wedding to a casual cocktail party celebrating a son’s new A Cappella group. She reached out to several of Boston’s top restaurants interested in the catering business and struck an unusual business deal with them. She would have them cook the food for her clients’ events while she focused on the important off-site responsibilities of catering execution & organization, menu planning and client communication, logistics, staffing, rentals, and all other important event planning details.

Hence, the birth of Susan A. Lane Events, a full service catering and event planning company. Susan chose the restaurants with great care, basing her decision to work with them on their ability to create with authority amazing multi-ethnic and classic cuisine. All of the restaurants that Susan works with are top restaurants in the Boston and Greater Boston area. Their chefs have all been trained how to cook in an off-premise environment, whether it be your home or a tent with no nearby running water. They only use the freshest ingredients available, often times organic or sustainable. Everything is made from scratch. They cure their own salmon, make their own ice creams and sorbets, bake their own breads. Surprisingly, prices are in line with other caterers who don’t make everything from scratch. “We think it’s because our restaurants all have day jobs!!”, says Lane.

Can you imagine what this magical combination of Boston’s Top Chefs and Susan’s 15 years of Catering Expertise could do for your next event?

You can find out by contacting us at:
Susan A. Lane Events
617.244.4324
susan@susanalaneevents.com

“We are committed to bringing you great food, served professionally and graciously”.

Susan Lane, Founder

Meet Susan Lane, founder of Susan A. Lane Events and The Open Kitchen Catering Company.

Imagine coming home after school and opening the door to the inviting aromas of simmering pots of tomato sauce and sheets of tantalizing biscotti baking in the oven? Those fond memories serve as the inspiration for Susan Lane, founder of Susan A. Lane Events, one of Greater Boston's most highly respected caterers and event planners and a rising star in the culinary world.

“Food played a central role in my family life,” Susan recalls. "My mother had me in the kitchen shelling peas, preparing meatballs and mixing pots of sauce when I was five years old." While the Ridgewood, N.J. native has thousands of warm and wonderful food-related remembrances, its the memories of spending Sunday afternoons at her Italian maternal grandparents love- and food- filled home that she treasures most.

“Sundays were always a big affair,” she remembers. “The entire extended family would gather at my grandmother's home after church. Then the food fest would begin.” Susan notes that the weekly celebrations always began with large platters of antipasto, featuring eggplant caponata, roasted red peppers, whole hot peppers, several varieties of olives, and mixed pickles. Another platter would contain heaping selections of imported Parma prosciutto, Genoa salami, hot and sweet capicolla and imported provolone, all to be relished along with crusty Scalia Italian bread. What a way to begin a feast!

As the meal progressed, Susan's grandmother would serve stuffed artichokes, followed by an impressive pasta course, complete with "delicate" meatballs, savory Italian sausage, and braciole, a delicious entrée created by stuffing thinly-sliced and pounded round steak with a filling made from parsley, garlic, raisins and pinenuts, rolling and setting the meat in tomato sauce to be simmered for hours to "relax the tough cut of meat."

The feast would continue with several other courses, including roasted capon and a small salad, served European style at the end of the meal. There was always plenty of rich burgundy wine, animated laughter, and abundant love to fill the room. The lavish dinner would end with fresh fruit, mixed nuts, roasted chestnuts and platters of delightful Italian cookies. "A good pipeful of tobacco for the men and more wine signaled the end to each Sunday, a day when family and tradition held onto each other after a long week," Susan recalls.

Meals such as this, combined with a love of good food and a creative flair, charted the future course for the popular founder of the highly-respected catering business. After earning a degree in finance and marketing from Marquette University in 1982, Susan obtained a sales position, later married a physician, and started a family. She gave birth to daughter, Nicole in 1989. “I was happy at this time of my life, but I wanted to do something amazing,” Susan recalls. “Having grown up hearing stories about my richly-creative, Italian great grandparents and living with incredibly talented people like my parents and three brothers, I needed to spend my life repeating all these memories. I didn’t want to focus on just one aspect. I love so many things. “As a young doctor's wife, Susan traveled and entertained extensively, and “went out of her way” to find unusual ethnic restaurants in the Boston area. “I also challenged myself to learn how to cook foods from many different cultures,” she relates. “I was especially fond of cultures whose foods were highly seasoned or used unusual ingredients. My palate was advanced and I needed to challenge it.”

Susan's culinary repertoire soon included dishes from Italian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai and other Asian cuisines, as well as appetizers, entrees and desserts from every American region. She started collecting cookbooks and taking cooking classes to broaden her culinary horizons. After moving to Weston in 1994, Susan decided that the time had arrived to start her own business.

"At this point, I decided it was the perfect time to start a food business," she recalls. “I decided on catering. I began putting menus together, and I read many books on how to start a catering business out of my own home.” The rest is history.

Filled with a great love for many cuisines and cultures and having traveled to many of the world's most beautiful spots, Susan decided to name her catering company “The Open Kitchen.” She operated the business for two years out of her home, before purchasing a café in Weston Center, which she turned into a successful and much-appreciated gourmet take-out shop and catering kitchen

In November of 2004, Susan purchased a large 4300 sq. ft. kitchen facility in Newton Highlands, where she concentrated on social and corporate catering, while continuing to operate the café & retail shop in Weston.

In November of 2006, overwhelmed by how large her company had become, Susan bravely decided to downsize. She sold both physical spaces and brought her focus back to her first love- social catering. This was always her favorite focus since it offered her the ability to do what she does best- entertain! Susan continues to nurture this niche she has developed and looks forward to working closely with her clients in the future. Her other projects include writing food pieces for local and alternative newspapers, teaching cooking classes in clients’ homes and at area cooking schools and venues, as well as blogging on her website!

Susan is actively involved with these organizations:

• Women Chefs and Restaurateurs
• AIWF
• Chefs Collaborative
• “Forum” member of “The Commonwealth Institute,” who’s mission is to support women CEO’s and entrepreneurs by helping them grow their businesses.