Achieve Hosts Dinner -- for 1000

Dinner for 100? Easy!  Have 350 people over for a party? Again, no problem. So, in keeping with its ambitious name, the Achieve fundraiser has grown. The “Night of 100 Dinners” will see about 1000 guests attending parties in Maplewood and South Orange, on or about March 5.

The annual South Orange-Maplewood fundraiser benefits the .

Volunteer hosts open their homes to invited guests who donate a suggested $50 each to Achieve. Simple enough, but many hosts make an occasion of the meal, hosting theme events, say co-chairs Buena Chilstrom, Kara Erhamza, and Eileen Neri.

“We have 37 dinners planned,” says Neri. The events range from intimate sit-down dinners to larger parties of 300.  More than 600 invitations went into the mail in anticipation of the March parties.

“One of the new parties that has come in is a Girls Night Out, which is an interesting twist,” notes Neri. The range of themes is impressive. From Motown to Mardi Gras to murder mystery, the party themes are creative and personal.

Jay and Rachel Tall co-host with in-laws Patty and Steve Coleman, and they do so with a flourish. Each annual dinner is a tasting menu of at least eight courses with a new theme each year. Their third year, for example, saw a presentation of a single food, including duck, zucchini, and chocolate, served three ways on one plate. This year’s “Intoxicating Meal” offers soup through dessert that both includes and complements appropriate wines and liqueurs. A sneak peek at the Tall- Coleman menu suggest that guests come hungry; Loin of Venison with vintage port will follow Duck Confit with Calvados.

Work? Undoubtedly, but Jay Tall explains. “We do it year after year because we enjoy this night with community people and friends and we all have kids who benefited from what Achieve does.”

Guests may be guilty at the dinner Sheryl Eccles has planned. Co-hosting with Tsipi Kaplan, Eccles will turn her home into a casino for the night, as guests participate in a “Murder in Sin City” meal. She explains that, “the ‘crime’ will take place in a casino and each of the 16 guests will be assigned a character for the evening.  One of the guests is the murderer and we will solve the crime over the course of the evening.  We thought this would be a fun variation for a dinner party.”

When dinner is served this year, whether at the 100-plus guest Mardi Gras party hosted by Laura Gilkey and Nick Bergman and Marcy Thompson and Dave Mehlman, or at Celina Herrero and Michael Casaren’s newly-opened Sparkhouse Studio space, there will be more than food on the table for the hundreds – and, with luck -- the thousand-plus roster of guests.

 “It’s a wonderful way to support our schools,” says Neri. “And you join your neighbors out for a night. What more could you want?”