“Our full humanity is contingent on our hospitality: we can be complete only when we are giving something away; when we sit at the table and pass the peas to the person next to us we see that person in a whole new way.” ~Alice Waters
We could all use a little dose of humanity and hospitality these days and someone who has been doling it out for a lifetime is this week’s Portrait, Anthony Lehman. Lehman has been making people happy with his enthusiasm, food and good nature since childhood. He is now the owner of Feast Your Eyes Catering and is putting a whole new spin on a company we’ve come to know. Some responses from this conversation have been edited for length or clarity.
So where are you originally from?
I grew up a little bit west of Gettysburg, in a small farming town called Chambersburg. It’s much more populated now, with every chain restaurant imaginable. I grew up surrounded by farms.
Tell me a little bit about the family.
I’m an only child and I’m the first grandchild, so I was definitely spoiled. I grew up with my parents and all of my aunts and uncles. We were very close, and food was always a very important part of growing up. We spent every weekend at my grandparents’ house just eating together as a family. My mom’s side of the family is 40 plus strong, and we still get together and celebrate around the dinner table.
Tell me something about your grandparents.
Gosh, so I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Pittsburgh Cookie Table but it’s a tradition, especially in the western part of the state, that friends and family of the bride and groom bake a table full of cookies for a wedding or different affairs.
So I have a lot of memories of sitting around my grandparents’ table with my great-grandparents making hundreds and hundreds of cookies. I was fortunate enough to have all of my great grandparents and great-grandparents for most of my life.
What did your parents do?
So my dad owned his own business. My mom is a CPA [Certified Public Accountant], and for many, many years worked together with my dad in their business. Now that my dad has retired and sold the company, my mom is back being a CPA for a couple more years.
What kind of business did they have?
He started a carpet cleaning business from his garage in the early ’80s and grew that into multiple locations. He did fire restoration, janitorial, car cleaning — things like that. My mom joined to manage the books, but also to oversee the janitorial side of the business. So I got a lot of entrepreneurial experience there. I grew up answering the phones and taking orders at five or six years old. I did it every summer for my entire life, until I left for college.
You definitely got those entrepreneurial genes. What were you like as a kid? Were you sporty or nerdy or into the arts?
All of the above! I mean, where I grew up, it was so small there were only 11 kids in my elementary class. So you kind of did everything. And as I got older, I think I played every sport imaginable — baseball, basketball, soccer, wrestling and football. I played the cello, the trumpet, the drums and was in theater both at the school level and the community theater level. I was even part of an a capella group throughout high school! I cooked too.
Wow, you managed to cram a lot in. What were your best and worst sports moments?
I never loved sports. It was more, “You should play basketball because you’re tall. You should play football because you’re a big guy.” I did enjoy soccer and I did enjoy baseball. So the best part was just being part of a team. And having my dad be a champion for me, he was very passionate on my behalf.
I read that you had your first dinner party at the age of 7. Do you remember what you cooked?
Yes, I cooked a lemon chicken from memory. I was very proud to do it on my own. I wouldn’t let anyone in the kitchen. I think I did it for both sides of the family on two different occasions, and did everything from cooking the meal, pouring the wine and cleaning it all up. [Laughing] Maybe I shouldn’t say I was pouring wine at 7!
I think you’re safe. When I was a kid, I used to bartend for my parents. They were both New Yorkers, and would have swanky cocktail parties. I would make the drinks, gin and tonic, rum and cokes, etc. It was my way of staying up late! You have two young kids now. Would you let them in the kitchen to make a meal on their own?
My son likes to make pasta, so oftentimes on Sundays, we’ll make handmade pasta. And my daughter likes sweets, so she’s into anything cake related, but no, not on their own.
How things have changed. When I look back on some of the things that my parents let me do at a young age and I think “Oh my God, were they crazy?” Like the idea of you wielding a kitchen knife at age 7!
I know! It was a different time. I used to leave my parents’ house at eight o’clock in the morning and come back at six o’clock at night.
What did you do after high school?
I had to leave my hometown as quickly as I possibly could. It was too small for me, so I went down to James Madison University in Virginia, where I studied business for one year. I ended up staying down there through the summer months to work at a restaurant and be an orientation assistant for the new freshman coming in. About a week before my sophomore year, I decided that higher learning wasn’t for me. I was passionate about working. I always was, so I left JMU, moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, and got a job at a restaurant. Later, I got a job in the Department of Medicine at the University of Virginia, and also waited tables at a local restaurant, which is where I met my husband. He was a guest at the restaurant.
How did you end up in the Department of Medicine?
I saw an ad for an assistant to the chief, and she was the CFO. That was where I learned a lot of the financial knowledge that I still have today. I often credit her for that. Taking the time to explain Excel to me back in the early 2000s and teaching me the basics of how to be a good businessperson.
What was your very first job?
So my very, very first job? I worked at a theater in concessions. That was a summer job, and then I got a job at a local mom-and-pop-type ice cream shop/diner. I loved it, and wanted to work more than go to school. I was able to spend my sophomore year being homeschooled so that I could work full time at the restaurant, and ended up moving from the cashier into the kitchen, and soon was running the entire kitchen at the age of 15, basically for 12 hours a day. My parents had to take me to work in the mornings at 9 a.m. and pick me up at 9 at night, because I wasn’t old enough to drive yet. I loved it.
So this is in your blood. What is it that you find so fulfilling?
I think just contributing to something, and always having tasks to do, always helping someone, always creating something — whether that’s a single meal or, nowadays, a wedding or a big gala. It’s about spending the time and energy to produce something that brings so much joy to other people. An experience that they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. I mean, it’s special, yeah?
Tell me about some of the other things that you’ve done. I understand you’ve worked in the hotel business and handled big concerts and venues.
For the most part, I’ve always been a part of hospitality. When we moved from Charlottesville to Washington, DC, I worked at a couple different restaurants, and then got into the hotel business. I walked into a hotel and found the GM in the lobby, and I said, “Hey, I want to work in hotels. Do you have any advice?” And he’s like, “Sure, I’ll sit down with you kid, why not?” We ended up having a great conversation and he hired me as a manager, having never, ever worked in hotels before.
So I jumped right into hotel management, and moved my way up through different hotels and then fell back into food and moved over to a catering company in DC, Ridgewells. They were just about to open an account at Strathmore Music Center, which was a 2000-person concert hall, and they hired me to manage the concessions and then the lunchtime operation for the employees of the center. That grew into doing all the backstage hospitality for all the artists. We did weddings. We did concerts on the lawn with up to 3000 people. I was also fortunate enough at Ridgewells to do the US Open Golf tournament two years in a row, which is a crazy circus of thousands of people. That was quite the experience. And then our kids were born, and things became different. We moved to Philly to be near family.
So how did you get involved with Feast Your Eyes?
By accident! When we moved to Philly, I took two and a half years off to be a stay-at-home dad. I was getting back in the workforce and my husband worked for a real-estate development company that Feast has an event space in. I met with the owner at the time, just to network and we had a lovely talk and two weeks later, the owners called me and said, “Would you like to join Feast as our GM?” I said, “Are you hiring a GM?” I guess they were impressed with our conversation because they said, “We are now.”
Coming from a very large caterer in DC, I brought a lot of the policies and procedures and structure to give us the foundation to grow. 2019 was fantastic and 2020 was slated to be the best year ever in the company’s history. And then March 8, we got a call saying that our event for 750 people was being canceled because of this thing called Corona but we think it’s only going to be two weeks, etc, etc. Everyone knows that story, but we made it through, and we came out the other side. I went to dinner with the owners, and they said, “We’re gonna retire and we’re gonna promote you to CEO for our last year and then FYE will be closed forever.” I said, “You guys have done this for 42 years. Would you trust me to do it for another 42?” They said, “Yes.” It’s been a year and a half since I’ve been the owner, and it’s been absolutely incredible.
You’ve done so many fancy weddings. What was yours like?
We had a three-day wedding at a horse farm in Charlottesville. We rented a property and did a big welcome party on Friday, where we roasted a pig and had a barbecue, and everyone was able to hang out in the fields and at the farm. On Saturday, we sent everyone to the vineyards of Virginia. They came back to the wedding in the farmhouse, and the reception in the barn. We did all the florals, all the tables, chairs, linens — things like that. We did have a caterer and a bartending service come in that were friends of mine from Charlottesville. And then Sunday we did a big brunch to send everyone off.
How long have you been married?
We’ve been married…oh gosh, he’s gonna kill me if I get this wrong. We’ve been married for just over 10 years, but together for about 20.
When did you become papas?
We started the adoption process in 2014 and after two years, finally got the call saying that we were matched with a birth mother. She was pregnant with twins who were due in July. But on March 22, when she was just 16 weeks, we got a phone call that she was going into labor. It was 10 o’clock at night and we were like, “Well, she’s in Chicago. Let’s drive to Chicago. We’ll figure it out along the way.” So we packed up the car, dropped the dog off at my parents’ house, met our kids the next morning for the first time, and spent 105 days in the NICU. The weight at birth was one pound, 12 ounces, just micro, micro preemies. Watching them literally grow for 105 days was an incredible experience. After 106 days, they were both discharged and we got back in the car and made our journey back to Virginia. They’re in third grade now!
Aww, that’s a cute age. What’s been the most challenging thing about taking over Feast Your Eyes?
I think my vision for Feast is very different then anything we’ve envisioned before. Having been around for 42 years, I was amazed by how many people had never heard of us. So we joined every networking group that was imaginable. I started the process with the IBA becoming LGBT certified, and meeting all those wonderful people and just really going out into the community and introducing and reintroducing ourselves to the Philadelphia market.
To show how we’re different, we don’t want to be a caterer that just does the basics. We want to be the caterer that’s known for really, really, good food and really, really good service. Everything is custom. Everything is handmade, and anything is possible. So when I meet with clients that want something that’s very uniquely part of their culture, we’re able to confidently say, we can create this, and we do. We have the best staff in the city. We recognize we have a really hard job to do but it can be really fun and really special at the same time.
Tell me about the Beaux Arts Ball, which is coming up on Nov. 2.
The ball is being held at Lynnewood Hall in Elkins Park. I’ve spent the last eight years driving by it and being in awe of this property that’s been vacant and empty since the 1960s and just dying to get inside of it. A friend of mine who is a planner posted a picture of the hall on LinkedIn and said, “More news to come.” So I immediately started stalking her, and coincidentally, I saw her at a big event at the Philadelphia Art Museum, along with a coordinator from DesignPhiladelphia and it was just synergy right away. It was like, “We have to do this together.” A week or two later, I was fortunate enough to tour the mansion, which is just incredible and I’m super excited to be a part of it. It’ll definitely be a showy event, a masked gala ball in November, in a beautiful mansion. It’s going to be worth seeing, for sure.
That sounds exciting. All right, let me pull up some random questions. A favorite celebrity encounter?
Like many people in hospitality, I have had the unique opportunity to be around celebrities, presidents and other famous people quite a bit. I have never been flustered or lost for words around any of them. With the exception of Kristin Chenoweth, who I rode an elevator to the stage with. I was at a complete loss for words standing beside her at my 6’3 height next to her 4’11” height.
My first crush was…
Zack Morris from “Saved by the Bell.”
Worst clothing disaster?
We recently did an all-day outdoor event in the city. At some point, I split my pants wide open and, for an unknown amount of time, didn’t realize I had done so. I just hope the time between when it happened and when I realized it happened was short.
What’s in store for the future?
We want to be the first caterer that we know of to win a James Beard Foundation Award. That is something that myself and our executive chef have been really passionate about. I don’t think it exists. I don’t think there’s a category for catering anyway, but we are trying to find ways to be the first in the world to do it. Catering doesn’t get the recognition that restaurants get, and it’s about time we do.
For more information on Feast Your Eyes, Inc., visit https://feastyoureyescatering.com.