Before the guests arrive, Emily Rosen stands in front of an empty table and imagines what it could become. Over the next two or three hours, she fills it from corner to corner—wedges of cheese, artfully folded charcuterie, colorful fruit, fresh herbs and flowers—until the table looks less like a buffet than a still life. Through The Social Graze LA, the Los Angeles native creates everything from intimate cheese boards to elaborate grazing tables for weddings, b’nai mitzvah celebrations, memorials and milestone birthdays. “I’m helping people create memorable celebrations and a place where everyone can gather around and just enjoy and love and talk,” she says. “It’s a happy business.” The finished tables may appear effortless, but Rosen knows how much thought goes into every detail. “This is not just throwing a piece of cheese on a platter,” she says. “You have to have a vision.”
In many ways, Rosen has found her way back to where she began. She grew up Deep Canyon, just above Beverly Hills, and graduated from Brentwood School in 1997, in a class of just 97 students. “It was a challenging high school for me,” she says. “School was not my best friend.” Rosen was the creative one, the people person—much like her father, an artist by temperament who built a garment and textile business. She left Los Angeles for the University of Wisconsin, drawn to the cold weather and the idea of building a life outside California. But before Thanksgiving of her freshman year, Rosen woke up to find one finger inexplicably bent. Doctors initially suspected a sprain, but when a second finger followed, a rheumatologist diagnosed her with psoriatic arthritis. Rosen was 18. “And I was like, ‘What? Arthritis? How?’”
The disease spread to her knees, hips and legs, and there were stretches when she could not get out of bed. Doctors advised her to leave Wisconsin for a warmer climate, but Rosen refused. When she was later told her grades might prevent her from graduating, she spent her senior year in the library and finished on time. It was an early glimpse of the determination that would carry her through far greater challenges: Rosen might have to change her approach, but she was not going to stop moving forward.
After college, she moved to New York exactly as planned, despite having signed a lease for October 2001, right after September 11. “It was the best decision I ever made,” she says. “I feel like I truly blossomed and grew up as a person there She spent the next 18 years working in interior design, retail and fashion. Around 2011, her father asked her to help run DL & Co., the luxury candle company he had taken over. As head of sales, Rosen helped launch the line at Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys and traveled to China to source materials. “That’s really where I started to get the love for glass, textures, merchandising and seeing colors,” she says. “I guess now it kind of all makes sense.”
New York was also where Rosen fell in love with her longtime boyfriend, Eric. When his work brought him to Los Angeles, the couple moved west together for a year before eventually returning to New York, where they believed they were beginning their next chapter. Then, tragedy struck. Just a few months later, in 2017, Eric was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at only 45-years-old. Rosen stepped back from work to care for him throughout his treatment. “I really, deep down, am a caretaking type of person,” she says. “And that’s what I wanted to do.” Eric fought the disease for 16 months before passing away in January 2019.
That May, deep in grief, Rosen’s friend Cayli Cavaco asked her to run the Knockout Beauty store in Bridgehampton, a place Eric had loved. By August, Cavaco was planning a Brentwood location and asked Rosen to return home. The shop opened that October in Brentwood Village, bringing Rosen back to the neighborhood where she once picked up turkey sandwiches from Bellwood Bakery after school. She remained there for four years.
The Social Graze LA arrived almost by accident. In December 2023, between leaving the shop and undergoing surgery on her hand, Rosen’s younger sister, Kate, an entertainment publicist, began pricing charcuterie boards for a combined birthday and housewarming party. Rosen volunteered to create one herself, even though she had never attempted anything like it and had only a week to learn. “I just watched Instagram Reels. I Googled, I YouTubed,” she says. “In one week, I learned how to make salami roses.” On the night of the party, her sister’s eight-foot dining table was covered from end to end with food for 100 guests. Among the first to arrive were Kate’s clients Nicole Richie and Joel Madden, who immediately asked who had been hired to create the elaborate spread. When they learned Kate’s sister had made everything—and had never done it before—Madden delivered a simple verdict: “Okay, she’s got a talent.” Throughout the evening, guests repeated some version of the same message: “I know you’re trying to figure out your next step, and I think you might have found it.”
By January, a former Knockout Beauty client had asked Rosen to create a spread for her father’s memorial, attended by 200 people. Hand surgery followed in February; once she healed, Rosen launched an Instagram account and officially opened The Social Graze LA with an investment of about $5,000. Today, she works from a small space near Brentwood Village, creating cheese and charcuterie boards, dessert boards, brunch spreads and abundant grazing tables for parties.
The holidays offer an especially rich canvas. For Thanksgiving, Rosen incorporates autumnal colors and comforting flavors; Hanukkah might inspire a spread of latkes and accompaniments, while Christmas brings greenery, jewel-toned fruit and festive sweets. New Year’s Eve calls for something more glamorous and playful. She adapts each display to the home, holiday and people being celebrated, whether it is a large family gathering or an intimate evening with friends. September through December is her busiest season, and she hopes eventually to open a Brentwood storefront with a kitchen in the back.
What clients may not realize is that Rosen constructs every intricate display on her own, with hands she cannot fully bend. “I’ve gone through a lot of ups and downs with it—times when I can’t walk, times when I can’t move—but I always just keep going,” she says. “That’s just something about me. I always keep moving forward.” She shares her story because she wants others to understand that living with a disability does not mean giving up the ability to make something beautiful. “The fact that I’m able to create this type of work with my hands, I really find that kind of incredible,” she says.
Above all, Rosen loves helping people transform familiar spaces into something special. “I love to help them take that dining room table or that outside area and really make it a magical place,” she says. Her path to The Social Graze LA was neither straight nor easy, but perhaps that is what makes the business feel so personal. After years of illness, reinvention and loss, Rosen has built a life around something she understands better than most: the comfort of a table and the people who gather around it.
The Social Graze LA
917-566-4345
thesocialgrazela.com
“I’m helping people create memorable celebrations and a place where everyone can gather.”