Entertaining With shows how a party came together, with expert advice on everything from menus to music.
The florist Ren MacDonald-Balasia, 35, is known for her bright, tumbling avant-garde arrangements: towers of giant orange orchids for the Hauser & Wirth gallery in Los Angeles; a sweeping, spiky installation of tropical bananas and burgundy hanging amaranthus for the Beverly Hills Loewe boutique. But for the December opening of her new Renko Floral showroom and store in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, she stuck to a more neutral palette. Standing near the front of the space was a loose composition of fanlike Bismarck palm leaves and creamy orange banksia flowers, draped with white Dendrobium orchid and tuberose leis that she’d had overnighted from Lin’s Lei Shop in Honolulu. In a corner, dozens of Asian pears spilled out onto the floor, shrouded in braided seaweed and white lace-like Micronesian ginger leis.
Designed by the architect Marcela Olmos, 35, MacDonald-Balasia’s 1,000-square-foot shop emulates the rusty orange and brown color palette of her beloved Japanese grandmother’s home in Hawaii’s Manoa Valley. A large cabinet finished in cocoa-colored plaster and reddish wood veneer serves as a partition between a showroom at the front, displaying floral arrangements available for purchase, and a studio in the back.
In a further nod to MacDonald-Balasia’s heritage, the chef Angel Dimayuga, 39, transformed the space into a Zen garden for the party. With help from the production assistant Anna Kernecker, 35, they set up an interactive Japanese-inspired landscape of drinks and snacks around the store. For dessert, the artist and baker Rosalee Bernabe, 35, of the cake company Chariot made Hawaiian and Asian-inspired sweets — including coconut sponges with lilikoi curd and orange blossom buttercream — that were designed to match Dimayuga’s theme; some were blanketed in edible “moss” made from crumbled matcha sponge.
The first guests arrived just before 5 p.m. and immediately volunteered to help. The florist Jenya Tsybulskyi, 39, was put to work plucking white star-of-Bethlehem flowers to add to an ice sculpture of craggy rocks that served as a raw bar. “People will move mountains for Ren,” said MacDonald-Balasia’s assistant, the florist Jessica Juarez, 34. As more friends arrived, they wandered between the food stands, eating off sticks and out of the palms of their hands. They picked chocolate-covered Korean shine muscat grapes hanging from a treelike structure of red-osier dogwood twigs, and grazed on pink pickled radishes carved into the shape of flowers, snacking and talking until long after the event had been meant to end.
The attendees: MacDonald-Balasia’s guests included Ariel Rezek, 34, the founder of the fashion brand Rezek Studio, and her partner, the documentary photographer Lindsay Apatow, 34; Danny Khorunzhiy, 39, a co-owner of Los Angeles’s Café Tropical restaurant (which MacDonald-Balasia supplies with floral arrangements) and a co-founder of the nonprofit organization Feed the Streets, and his partner, the costume designer Camille Garmendia, 48; and Hiroko Maruyama, 39, the owner of Soot art gallery. “We can all nerd out on weird, artsy, crafty things,” said MacDonald-Balasia. Also in attendance was the fashion designer Noémi Sebayashi, 34, who partnered with MacDonald-Balasia to develop the shop’s branded merchandise, including clothing and accessories.
The décor: MacDonald-Balasia’s office table served as the party’s dessert centerpiece. The seven-foot-long aluminum-veneer desk — made by the carpenter Van Robinson, 32, who was also a guest — was topped with towering cake stands displaying Bernabe’s sweets. The florist and food stylist Nell Henderson, 37, added an assortment of candies including gray sugarcoated chocolates resembling rocks, tiny metallic sugar balls and pashmak, an Iranian cotton candy with a hairlike texture that she’d sourced from the Middle Eastern market Zeytun in Hollywood. The sweets were presented in and around ceramic plates made by MacDonald-Balasia’s grandmother, one of which included a nude self-portrait.
The food: “I’ve admired Angel’s work for so long,” said MacDonald-Balasia of Dimayuga. “I feel like we’re kindred spirits.” In the back of the shop, Dimayuga set up a miniature garden comprising a small bonsai tree and “sand” made of toasted brown and black sticky rice powders, sesame and nori. Guests grabbed skewers tipped with mugwort-and-moringa mochi, coated them in the liquid from a sesame oil pond, rolled them in the fragrant sand and dipped them in a shoyu and scallion sauce. At the other end of the space, Dimayuga served halved Japanese sweet potatoes that had been steamed, roasted over pinewood until charred and then smeared with a caramelized coconut milk curd miso paste. At the nearby raw bar were fresh Kumiai oysters and Hokkaido scallops adorned with swirls of sea grapes.
The drinks: At a steel table by the entrance, guests served themselves glasses of Ghia’s nonalcoholic Le Fizz beverage and Blanchard Perez’s cava, as well as coconut water in the shell. A little after 5 p.m., MacDonald-Balasia began mixing a cocktail that Dimayuga had designed called a Bread and Butter. Composed of plum compote and kvass — a fizzy fermented drink originating in Eastern Europe — it was accompanied by a butter-flavored culinary vape pen that guests were asked to inhale from before blowing the mist over the top of the glass and taking a sip.
The music: MacDonald-Balasia had recently fallen for the Japanese city pop musician Tatsurō Yamashita’s early 1980s track “Sparkle” and tasked her husband, the filmmaker Andrew Balasia, 34, who was also at the party, to curate a jazz-centric playlist inspired by it. He played an NTS radio stream that featured songs from the Japanese improvisational jazz musician Kaoru Abe.
The conversation: “Ren just brings people together,” said Juarez. Several new friendships were formed at the dessert table, where guests nervously asked one another if they could eat the very realistic looking chocolate rocks.
An entertaining tip: Early in the night, MacDonald-Balasia had expressed her regret that she rarely manages to eat the food at her own parties. This time, she made an effort to walk around and try all the dishes. “It’s great to carve out time to do that as a host,” she said, “so you can actually enjoy the fruits of your labor.”
