Marrying Creativity and Culinary Experience
You’ve just arrived at Stonefields Estate, a historic wedding venue in Beckwith, Ont. There are beautiful bouquets on the tables. The candles are lit. The cocktails are flowing. Live music is playing. But there’s no bride or groom. In fact, there’s no wedding at all. Not tonight, anyway. Tonight, it’s a Stonefields Dinner Club, a four-course dining experience that allows you to enjoy all the estate has to offer without needing a wedding invitation.
The dinner clubs are hosted monthly from April through November in The Loft, a 100-year-old barn that co-owners Stephanie Brown-Malenfant and Steve Malenfant bought from a neighbouring farm and refurbished into a French-country inspired event space. It’s one of several buildings on the property that’s open for guests to explore during these events.
“When people walk in, we see it in their faces. For those who never have come to Stonefields, it's like their jaws drop,” Brown-Malenfant says. And that’s before tasting the food.
Local ingredients, international inspiration
Executive chef Angela Hodgson leads the Stonefields culinary team with a love for local ingredients. Each dinner menu has a unique theme that will take you around the world with international flavours brought to life using seasonal ingredients, from Mediterranean Excursion to Mexican Fiesta to Fall Harvest and beyond.
“I like to make food taste like it's intended to be,” Hodgson says. “So, once you start with great ingredients, you're going to come up with a great product. That's really the inspiration for me — farm to table. It's back to my roots. And just treating those ingredients really well and using the techniques that aren't going to mask and overshadow [the ingredients].”
The idea to host events other than weddings has been on the co-owners’ minds from the beginning. When they first bought the property in 2009, they always envisioned hosting dinner parties, but decided to focus on weddings at first.
“We had a consultant, Mark Saunders from Saunders Farm, that we hired when we first bought the [property],” BrownMalenfant recalls. “The one piece of advice he gave us, which really stuck and really allowed us to do things well, he said, ‘Pick one thing, get really good at it, and then diversify your business’ and that is when we decided on weddings.”
Something new
The pandemic led to their first experiment with a new type of restaurant-style event. At the time, they were only allowed to host small groups on the veranda.
“We were [asking], ‘How do we get our team to work? There's no work. There were no weddings. So, could we just try that?’” Brown-Malenfant says. “Fast forward a few years later, now that we've got this solid culinary team with Ange, and Steve and I were really excited about, ‘Could we expand on that idea? And what would that look like?’”
Getting to develop the dinner clubs and bring them to life lit a creative spark not only for them, but for the whole Stonefields team.
“It's a very collaborative approach between our executive chef, her team and our event team and we have the best time hosting them,” Brown-Malenfant says.
Malenfant agrees, “With the wedding season, it can drain you a little bit, right? But this [event] gives a little extra excitement to the team to be creative in the kitchen and also for the service aspect too.”
Now that they’ve started, they say, “We love it way too much to stop.” And plan to continue hosting dinner clubs every year.
“The feedback that we're getting from our guests is that it's some of the best food they've ever had and they're completely blown away,” Malenfant says.
Different than a wedding
There’s something uniquely intimate about a dinner club compared to a wedding from a business owners’ perspective. “Different than hosting a wedding, when we are receiving guests for these dinner clubs, it feels like we're receiving them at home,” Brown-Malenfant says. “Even as they're leaving, people are hugging us… and it's just so rewarding for us.”
One of the special things that differentiates a dinner club from a wedding is that the chef gets to shine. Hodgson describes each course to the guests as part of the experience. Malenfant explains: “Here’s the thing, we know what Ange and the team can do behind the scenes in the kitchen. Now, it gives us great pride and joy to showcase her skills and talents out front.”
But maybe the biggest factor that sets these events apart from a wedding: the culinary team has more control over the menu. For a wedding, the couple getting married selects options to create their dream menu. For a dinner club, it’s about Hodgson’s dream.
“It's me on a plate, essentially,” she says. “It's rich. It’s delicious, you know, it brings a smile to your face.”
As much as she loves the creativity that comes with the dinner clubs, it’s clear Hodgson loves to cook for wedding couples as well. With a background in restaurants — including The Opinicon where she spent seven years as executive chef — Hodgson says it was emotional when she first moved into the wedding industry. “I knew I was making somebody's day the best day,” she says.
“Angela is all heart and talent and passion. I mean, we could not have asked for a more perfect fit to lead our culinary team at Stonefields,” Brown-Malenfant says.
The next chapter
Beyond the dinner clubs, Stonefields recently launched other packages so guests can experience the estate even if they aren’t celebrating a wedding. This includes corporate events, Christmas parties and build-your-own event packages too.
Although the owners always enjoyed hosting weddings, and will continue to do so, they’re excited to be launching new options that were on the backburner for so long.
“Now, we are finally, you know, 13 years later, opening up that side of the business, which is diversifying and opening up opportunities for anyone to come and experience Stonefields,” Brown-Malenfant says. “We have a lot of fun things to look forward to and it's a whole new chapter for us.”
You can find information about all of Stonefields’ event options on its website, including the dinner club schedule and tickets.
Stonefields Estate
1985 9th Line, Beckwith, Ont.
stonefieldsweddings.com | 613.253.3313 | @stonefields_estates
