Business & Tech

Kate's Kreations New Craze in Verona

Essex Fells resident Kate Steer is known for her healthy and fresh cooking.

Kate Steer left the corporate world years ago to start a catering business and has never looked back. 

Now Steer has opened Kate’s Kreations, moving the business out of her home kitchen into a cheerful space in Verona, while additionally offering lunch and dinner as well as gourmet takeaway.

The Grove Avenue restaurant has taken off with the lunchtime crowd, Steer said.

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Salads options include mixed greens with crumbled blue cheese, candied walnuts and dried cranberries with honey balsamic dressing ($5.95) and a spinach salad with strawberries, thinly sliced Vidalia onions and poppy seed dressing ($6.50). 

Sandwiches include grilled chicken, basil pesto, roasted red peppers, lettuce and tomato on an Italian sub roll ($7.50) as well as vegetarian options like grilled vegetables, caramelized onions and goat cheese on herb focaccia ($6.95). 

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Steer said her catering business was built on Wednesday dinners, which she said offered a healthy and fresh alternative to takeout. 

Many of the popular items on the catering menu are now offered by the pound in the refrigerator case, including Asian noodles, very veggie couscous, quinoa salad with grilled vegetables, grilled hanger steak, chicken cutlets and kebabs

To make it even easier to throw an impromptu dinner party at home, she also sells appetizers, including mini chipotle corn crab cakes, Boursin creamed spinach stuffed mushrooms, summer pizza, roasted red pepper dip and homemade hummus.

Her signature walnut toffee (she sold 1,000 pounds over the holidays) is also available at the shop in gift-wrapped pound and pound-and-a-half boxes.

Steer said she worked on Wall Street, but had another career in mind.

“I always loved to cook and I always said eventually I would like to own my own catering business,” she said.

When her husband said — “Why eventually, why not now?” — she quit her job and enrolled in the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago (now Le Cordon Bleu). She is also trained in allergen-free cooking and denotes gluten-free items on her online menus.

Steer lives in Essex Fells with her husband and their three sons, all students at West Essex Schools.

Kate's Kreations

20 Grove Ave., Verona

973-239-0423

www.kateskreationsinc.com

Tuesday through Friday, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Saturdays, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.


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