Catering to Nelson

Readers of Kootenay Business magazine have high praise for Alligator Pie Catering in Nelson, B.C.

1 of 3Erin Bruce and Patrick McInnis own and operate Alligator Pie Catering in Nelson, B.C. — Photo courtesy Patrick McInnis

2 of 3Erin Bruce and Patrick McInnis are busy year round with their catering business. — Photo courtesy Patrick McInnis

3 of 3Erin Bruce and Patrick McInnis own and operate Alligator Pie Catering in Nelson, B.C. — Photo courtesy Patrick McInnis

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For Alligator Pie Catering in Nelson, B.C., summer means weddings. From June to October, owners Patrick McInnis and Erin Bruce prepare their delicious food for many wedding parties and family reunions. McInnis said that in December he and Bruce are busy with Christmas parties, and the rest of the year is taken up mostly with catering events for local businesses and organizations.

Alligator Pie garnered a top ranking in the 2014 Kootenay Business Best Places to Eat & Drink Awards, and we contacted McInnis and Bruce for an inside look at the successful partnership. McInnis answered a few questions for us.

When did you start your business?

We’ve been in operation since 2000. We hire some extra staff when we do big events like weddings—servers and dishwashers and such—but we do pretty much all the food.

Do you have a specialty or a signature dish?

Custom menus are our thing. As well as meat dishes, we specialize in vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free items because we get a lot of requests for them. A lot of our focus for the last few years has been innovating new menu items and new recipes to meet those requests.

Where do you get your inspiration and ideas?

I’m inspired by other chefs; we’re constantly buying hardcover cookbooks for our research. We follow lots of cooking blogs online and we try to follow the requests of our clients if they have a favourite item or recipe they want us to use.

Do you have a favourite local ingredient?

I’d say our star local ingredient is fresh produce—basil and other herbs, and fresh greens when the farmers market is going. We can get phenomenal pattypan squash, tomatoes and cucumbers, mostly from Creston and Grand Forks. All of our salads are organic, and we can generally get organic everything if that’s requested by our clients—but of course the price will reflect that.

What type of event do you most like to cater?

We love doing events for our friends, where we can be really creative and involved in making the menus. I like doing the more casual dining and appetizers-and-drinks parties.

Where do you like to go when you go out for dinner?

There’s a new Mexican restaurant here, called Cantina del Centro—it’s really nice. They make really good margaritas and really good small plates for sharing, with some good vegetarian options too. We like Mizuna in Spokane, and there are tons of really good restaurants in Seattle. We love trying new places, and we particularly value good service and ambience.