A night at the (food) Oscars

Last night wifey and I got to attend the big food event of the year, the James Beard Foundation awards, at the Lincoln Center. Wifey got a reduced ticket because she’s married to a culinary student, and I got free admission for doing what I do best: pushing around carts of food on freight elevators.

I volunteered to help chefs preparing food at the event to load in their wares. It was stupid work, but I got to ride the ‘vator with the likes of Top Chef alumni Michelle Bernstein and Jeff McInnis (pardon the blatant starfucking, here).

The awards were boring, mostly because myself, wifey and fellow student slave Bruno were hungry for the morsels waiting outside the auditorium. The chefs were actually told to wait from 6 p.m. until the awards ended at 9 p.m. to begin serving. Not fun, especially when I was working all day without lunch. Bruno was also despondent that wd-50 chef Wylie Dufresne did not win best chef in New York City, though he was later exuberant that Jean-Georges won best restaurant.

However, the food was great, with only a few duds, and the liquor was flowing nicely. Among the standouts in my mind:
-- Cured bone marrow on mustard croutons with parsley and ramps (can’t go wrong with “butter from God,” though they were lukewarm when served and a tad salty)
-- Oyster and champagne stew
-- Beet brownies with Veldhuizen Bosque blue cheese, honeycomb and Swedish-style Texas pecans
-- Warm coconut-cardamom rice pudding with rhubarb and kumquats

The topper of the night for me was meeting Eric Ripert, of Le Bernardin, the outstanding fish restaurant where I’m angling to work. Bruno’s wife muscled through the crowd and told Ripert, who was already cornered by a semi-circle of onlookers, that there was somebody who wanted to meet him. I sheepishly walked over and introduced myself.

It would have been perfect, except that I kept repeating “I love fish. I love fish,” and mistakenly told him that my wife used to work on the fish market at Fulton Street. So now I’m coming across like the culinary version of the retarded weatherman from Anchorman and my wife is a burly fishmonger. Somehow, Ripert found this acceptable enough to dole out his last business card and invite me to get in touch regarding an externship. Either that or he was terrified I might snap at any moment and was placating me.

All in all, a great night and well worth the few hours of manual labor. Security was tight on picture-taking, so I could snag only a few shots of the set-up before the awards began.