The part of Thanksgiving that breaks people is not the turkey. It is the dessert, made last, in an oven that has been occupied since eight in the morning by something else, by a person who has already been cooking for six hours and who now has to blind-bake a pastry case. Which is why the most interesting line in a holiday collection order is usually the one at the bottom.
Somebody always ends up making four things on the same morning in the same oven. Ask Karpo which kitchens near you will hand you the hard parts already finished, and what the collection window is.
What is in the box
Lumiere, the French brasserie inside the Fairmont Century Plaza on Avenue of the Stars, sells the holiday meal as a feast to go: an organic whole roasted turkey, chestnut herb stuffing, creamy potato purée, and a pumpkin pie. It is built to serve four to six people and has run at around three hundred and eighty-five dollars.
Divide that by six and it is in the region of sixty-five dollars a head — roughly what you would pay to sit down to a set menu in a restaurant, except you are eating at your own table, at your own hour, in your own clothes, and nobody has to drive home.
The pie is the actual argument
A whole pumpkin pie from a brasserie pastry section is a different object to the one that comes out of a domestic oven at four in the afternoon under time pressure. The custard is set properly rather than cracked, the base is baked through rather than damp, and the edge is even the whole way round.
That is not a criticism of home baking; it is a recognition that pastry is the one part of this meal that punishes being rushed, and Thanksgiving is a day structured entirely around being rushed. A professional pastry section making two hundred of the same pie has an enormous advantage over a person making one while also basting something.
If you only take one element from a collection order, take the dessert. It is the course served last, to people who are already full and therefore paying close attention to texture, and it is the one that frees up the oven at exactly the moment the oven is the bottleneck.
Chestnut stuffing, and why it travels
Chestnut herb stuffing is a slightly old-fashioned, distinctly French-leaning choice and it is a sensible one for food that has to survive a car journey. Chestnut holds moisture and gives a dense, slightly sweet crumb that reheats without turning to sawdust — unlike a light bread stuffing, which does.
The same logic applies to the potato purée. A purée, which is potato and a great deal of butter and cream taken through a sieve, comes back from cold far better than mashed potato does. These are not arbitrary menu choices; they are the dishes a kitchen picks when it knows the food will be reheated by somebody else.
- Lumiere, Fairmont Century Plaza, 2025 Avenue of the Stars, Century City
- Feast to go: whole organic roasted turkey, chestnut herb stuffing, potato purée, pumpkin pie
- Built for four to six people, priced in the region of $385
- Works out near $65 a head at six — comparable to a sit-down set menu
- Order ahead; holiday collection slots close well before the week itself
What you still have to do
A feast to go is not a meal that arrives ready. You are reheating a whole bird, which needs a real oven, a thermometer and at least an hour, plus resting time. You need a board big enough to carve on and somebody willing to do it, and you need serving dishes, because nothing improves by staying in the tray it travelled in.
You will also want to add your own greens and something acidic. A box like this is deliberately rich all the way through — bird, bread, butter, cream, pastry — and it needs a sharp salad or a dish of cranberries against it. That part takes fifteen minutes and makes the whole thing taste considerably better.
Ordering, and the collection window
Holiday collection orders close early and quietly. Kitchens set a cut-off based on how many birds they can physically roast, and once it is gone it is gone — typically a week or more before the day, sometimes considerably earlier for the larger hotel operations.
Collection itself is usually a narrow window on the Wednesday afternoon or the Thursday morning, and Century City on the day before Thanksgiving is not a place you want to be improvising. Ask for the exact time when you order, put it in a calendar, and send somebody who is not also cooking.
Who this is actually for
Not the household that enjoys cooking Thanksgiving — they do not want this and should not buy it. It is for the table of six where nobody has a large enough oven, or where the person who used to do it cannot this year, or where two people work until six on the Wednesday and the alternative is a supermarket bird and a bad afternoon.
Framed that way it is not an extravagance so much as a straight swap of money for a day. Three hundred and eighty-five dollars buys back the entire morning, and it arrives with a pie that somebody else made properly.
Practical notes
Lumiere sits inside the Fairmont Century Plaza at 2025 Avenue of the Stars in Century City and cooks a French brasserie menu the rest of the year. Its Thanksgiving feast to go includes an organic whole roasted turkey, chestnut herb stuffing, creamy potato purée and a pumpkin pie, serves four to six, and has run at around $385. Order well ahead, confirm the exact collection window when you book, and plan for an hour or more of reheating at home plus carving. Add a sharp salad and something with acidity in it — the box is rich from end to end and does not include either.
Tags: #LosAngeles #Thanksgiving #TurkeyToGo #CenturyCity #PumpkinPie #HolidayBaking #Lumiere #CoffeeAndDessert #LAEats #HolidayDining #Takeaway #ThingsToDoLA #FairmontCenturyPlaza #Desserts
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Ask Karpo first
Want to know which kitchens near you do holiday collection orders, what is in the box and when you have to order by? Ask Karpo and it will sort the list out for you.
