Can somebody please volunteer to take on the dinner reservations?

[John Cumbers]

Can somebody please volunteer to take on the dinner reservations?

I've had a look around Palo Alto, the restaurants are a little expensive ($25-$30 a head likely) but we are in silicon valley so it is to be expected.  Is someone else on the list a local, more familiar with restaurants than I? 

cheers,
John





John Cumbers, Graduate Student, SETI Institute

NASA Ames Research Center
Mail Stop 239-20, Bldg N239 Rm 371 Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA.
cell +1 (401) 523 8190, fax +1 (650) 604-1088

Graduate Program in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry
Brown University, Box G-W Providence, RI, 02912, USA

[shwu]

John,

I am currently at Stanford so I should be able to help. Is this for
both nights, for 75 people? Should we guess closer to 50 people,
assuming some may have other plans for dinner? Perhaps we should send
out an urgent message on this list asking people to send their contact
info (esp email) and dinner attendance to someone by, say, noon on Aug
1, PST - I suspect that would be useful for sending out logistics
emails closer to the date anyway. Then we can just go by whatever
numbers we have from that.

In the meantime, I can start looking around for a decently priced
venue that can handle parties of 50 or more.

Best,
Shirley Wu

[John Cumbers]

Shirley,
Great, yes please that would be fantastic. I did make a start on this, but then realized that we have other people who might be able to take on a role.    I think getting people's email address is a good start.  50 or even 75 might fit in one place as you suggest, else we could split up into 20 or 25's perhaps.  And we have 2 nights of dinner.   I made a start yesterday and made reservations for 25 at  www.bucadibeppo.com  St. Palo Alto, 6503290665 for both Wed and Thu night in my name, but I've not eaten there myself.  If you could take it from here that would be great.  They might take everyone in fact, or you could find somewhere else that you know better that would take everyone.  Eva suggested people signing up their names on the wiki or e-mail might work better at this point.

[Attila Csordas]

Shirley,

thanks so much, yes, 50 people would be fine. I am collecting a more or less complete list of contact info for people actually visiting so either I upload it to the list as a separate page or send it as an attachment to reduce spam danger. I've actually sent so far 20-30 reconfirmation mail but I haven't included the question about dinners yet.

[shwu]

Attila,

If you could please include a question about dinner (whether they will
attend Wed night, Thurs night, or both) with the remaining ones, and
send out additional emails to the ones you've already contacted, that
would be great. I can start with reservations of 50 but it would
probably be best to revise it with an exact number when we know.

With 50 people it might be easier to just do banquet style with a
fixed menu, or I can ask if the place can do individual checks for
everyone. If we go banquet style, what is a reasonable upper limit on
the per head cost, not including tax/tip/drinks? $25? $30? I will also
look into Stanford catering and see if it is affordable.

One issue is that I won't be attending Wed night dinner, so someone
else will have to be "in charge" that night. I will post details here
once I have them.

-Shirley

On Jul 27, 1:34 pm, "Attila Csordas" <attilacsor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Shirley,
>
> thanks so much, yes, 50 people would be fine. I am collecting a more or less
> complete list of contact info for people actually visiting so either I
> upload it to the list as a separate page or send it as an attachment to
> reduce spam danger. I've actually sent so far 20-30 reconfirmation mail but
> I haven't included the question about dinners yet.
>

[John Cumbers]

Attila,
could you also include a rough count of any vegans / vegetarians for sandwiches at lunch in your mail?  Else if you give me the mails I can mail people and just tally up the numbers.  Maybe a Wufu quiz / google spreadsheet might be in order to collect all this?

[shwu]

Here is what I've found:

Aug 6 or 7: TaiPan hong kong restaurant on Waverly St. Cost is $25 per
person (this includes tax and tip but NOT drinks except for hot tea,
with me mustering as much of my asian haggling skills as I could). The
menu I selected consists of vegetarian lettuce cups (appetizer, should
be vegan), Jai basil chicken, walnut prawns, salt and pepper pork
spareribs, braised tofu w/basil and mushroom (should be vegan), baby
bok choy (should be vegan), veggie chow mein (might be egg noodles,
have to check), all served with steamed rice.

Aug 6 or 7: Cheesecake Factory at University and Waverly. People order
individually off the menu (which is ridiculously huge). Catch is that
we need to be there at 6 or 6:15 for seating at the latest. It looks
like the schedule on Aug 7 can better accommodate an earlier dinner
time, but if we go with this for Aug 6 we just cut out the drinks
reception entirely (and people can order drinks at the restaurant).

Aug 7 only: Buca Di Beppo at Emerson and Forest (italian family style
restaurant). Either a 5 course buffet ($23/person not including tax or
tip but does include soft drinks) or order off the menu (dishes are
sized for 2-3 or 4-6 people each), in which case it would most likely
be cheaper and dependent on what people order.

This gives us the following possibilities:
TaiPan at 6:30 Aug 6 + Cheesecake Factory at 6:15 Aug 7
TaiPan at 6:30 Aug 6 + Buca Di Beppo at 6:30 on Aug 7
Cheesecake Factory at 6:15 Aug 6 + TaiPan at 6:30 Aug 7
Cheesecake Factory at 6:15 Aug 6 + Buca Di Beppo at 6:30 Aug 7

Any preferences? I will be calling back these places by Sunday to
confirm or cancel.

-Shirley

On Jul 27, 11:06 pm, "John Cumbers" <johncumb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Attila,
> could you also include a rough count of any vegans / vegetarians for
> sandwiches at lunch in your mail?  Else if you give me the mails I can mail
> people and just tally up the numbers.  Maybe a Wufu quiz / google
> spreadsheet might be in order to collect all this?
> cheers,
> John
>
> John Cumbers, Graduate Student, SETI Institute
>
> NASA Ames Research Center
> Mail Stop 239-20, Bldg N239 Rm 371 Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA.
> cell +1 (401) 523 8190, fax +1 (650) 604-1088
>
> Graduate Program in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry
> Brown University, Box G-W Providence, RI, 02912, USA
>

[shwu]

The other thing is exact head count. TaiPan is charging by 10-person
table, so we either fill to a multiple of 10, or eat the remaining
cost amongst those attending.

All of the places will require an exact head count by Tuesday at the
very latest. I think we could get away with +/- 4 people for
Cheesecake Factory and Buca di Beppo's, however, like I said, TaiPan
will charge a flat rate per table, regardless of how may people are
seated there.

-Shirley

[cesar_castro]

There's also Gordon Biersch, right across the street from Bucca Di
Beppo:

640 Emerson Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301
phone: 650-323-7723

they may be able to hold a table for 10-20 people. Let me know if you
need a reservation there.

********************************
Cesar Castro
Research Director
Institute For The Future
cca...@iftf.org
********************************

[shwu]

Thanks Cesar, I did talk to Gordon Biersch, but they wanted a set menu
and a minimum of at least $1500 and I wasn't comfortable with setting
a minimum since we're not sure how many people we'll have. At any
rate, Buca di beppo has no problem with a party our size; right now
our reservation at Buca is for 50 people which I think is more than
enough.

-Shirley

On Aug 4, 11:45 am, cesar_castro <co.cas...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There's also Gordon Biersch, right across the street from Bucca Di
> Beppo:
>
> 640 Emerson Street
> Palo Alto, CA 94301
> phone: 650-323-7723
>
> they may be able to hold a table for 10-20 people. Let me know if you
> need a reservation there.
>
> ********************************
> Cesar Castro
> Research Director
> Institute For The Future

> ccas...@iftf.org