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High
rollers
Dazzle
guests with cigar catering at bachelor party, wedding reception
By
Lee Cabot Walker
for The Brooklyn
Bride
In the last couple of years, some Brooklyn brides have decided
that five nights in a Vegas penthouse suite with an a la carte
menu of sugary cocktails, skanky strippers and racks of lamb
wouldn’t quite reflect the uniqueness of their engagement;
that a wedding reception at the foot of a Spanish castle with
a 300-name guest list, 1,000 imported orchids, air-conditioned
dinner tents and elephant rides for the little ones wouldn’t
exactly express the poshness of the occasion.
Bensonhurst native Dennis Briganti was there to help. For
$975, Briganti’s cigar company, CF Dominicana, will cater
your bachelor party, bachelorette party or wedding reception,
sending a professional “master roller” to about
50 cigars for two hours as your impressed guests observe.
“It’s a powerful image,” Briganti says. “Cigars
are equated with status, money, success. When you have a cigar
roller at an event, the visual is so unique that it makes
a very strong impression: The bride and groom really went
over-the-top. It’s an upscale flair.” Briganti will
even send cigar servers to work the reception. He has catered
events for many clients from Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill.
CF Dominicana offers about 25 different cigars, varying in
size and shape, all filled with “ligero” tobacco
leaves — medium-mild leaves — from the Dominican
Republic.
While Cuban tobacco still has the popular reputation of being
the best, Briganti says, Dominican tobacco has been recognized
around the cigar industry as superior in quality for about
the last 10 years. The cigar called the “SoHo” is
his brand’s most popular. Classified by its size as a
“robusto,” the SoHo measures about five and a half-inches
long and has a large gauge — or circumference —
of about three-quarters of an inch. Its gauge, or thickness,
makes for appealingly cooler, milder smoke, and it’s
wrapped in Connecticut Shade leaves, “a mild, light-medium
wrapper that lends perfectly to the cigar blend.”
The “CF” in CF Dominicana stands for “Cigar
Flavors.” When Briganti started the business in 2000,
the focus was on offering interesting cigar flavors —
amaretto, chocolate and cognac, for example. As an afterthought,
Briganti began offering cigar bands custom designed with clients’
initials or with messages like “John & Tina, Sept.
14, 2004.”
Although the flavored cigars are still available, it was the
custom bands end of the business that took off quickly, and
Briganti teamed up with master roller Juan Espinal to offer
the custom catering that now carries the custom brand’s
name. They now have in-house event planners and master rollers
working for them across the country.
“When you’re from Brooklyn, you tend to have a bit
of a street edge,” Briganti says. “I’m aggressive.
I know people. When I started advertising the catering on
the Internet, suddenly Chicago was calling, Detroit was calling.
I went to Juan: ‘Juan do you have any family in Chicago?’
We knew a guy in LA. We networked.”
Briganti says that in February, during the NBA All-Star in
Houston, CF Dominicana catered ’Zo & Magic’s
8-Ball Challenge, a charity fundraiser hosted by Alonzo Mourning,
Magic Johnson and Queen Latifah. CF Dominicana has also appeared
in scenes in “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the
City.”
“It used to be that you had to fly a cigar roller in
from Miami for your event. You paid for the guy’s lodging
and food, and you paid him to be at the party. It was unbelievably
expensive. It wasn’t a streamlined operation like a Brooklynite
would make it!
“Now I’ve got 15 cities going. It’s unbelievable.”
For more information
on CF Dominicana’s catering service, purchasing cigars
and custom-designed cigar bands, call (888) 467-8400 or visit
the Web site, www.cigarcatering.com..
March
25,
2006 edition |. Read
more about Brooklyn Weddings
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