| 10.14.09 12:33 PM |
Food Network's Festival Stretches Its Scope (and My Belt)
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 | Guy Fieri, up to his usual theatrical antics, at the New York City Wine & Food Festival
Photo: Courtesy of the New York City Wine & Food Festival |
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FROM NEW YORK
If there is one thing that really struck me about the second annual Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival, sponsored by Food & Wine and Travel & Leisure, it was the sheer size and diversity of it all.
Last week, I wrote about the plethora of food festivals happening this month in New York, most of which have no problem filling kitchens, dining rooms, stores, and other venues with paying, eager eaters. Yet at the same time, the industry’s oldest and most prestigious magazine, Gourmet, up and folded, and downtown, perennially top-rated Chanterelle closed its doors.
But at the New York City Wine & Food Festival this past weekend, it was as if those closings happened on an altogether different planet. The four-day affair kicked off with “Celebration,” a V.I.P. event on Thursday at the Food Network studio. There were so many celebrity chefs that festival founder Lee Schrager found himself in trouble when, during his speech, he began thanking present network personalities Alton Brown, Guy Fieri, and Sandra Lee, and suddenly a bunch of others started shouting out their own names. Lee wisely widened his thanks to “everyone at the Food Network, including the security guard, who five years later still doesn’t recognize me.”
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New York City Wine & Food Festival |
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| 10.06.09 4:59 PM |
As Gourmet Bites the Dust, October Is Food Month in New York
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 | Jacques Pépin at New York magazine's Culinary Experience
Photo: Larry Busacca |
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FROM NEW YORK
It’s getting hot in here and the pressure is mounting. I’m in the kitchen with Jacques Pépin and about 20 students who are racing against the clock to complete their stuffed ballotines of chicken. Pépin is perspiring and working furiously as he goes from one student to the next, showing each the main steps that he demonstrated twice onscreen already.
It is 4:15 on a Saturday afternoon at the French Culinary Institute, and I’m sitting in on a New York magazine-sponsored deluxe weekend of instructional cooking, the New York Culinary Experience, with some of the world’s leading chefs. In addition to Monsieur Pépin, fellow F.C.I. deans André Soltner (formerly of Lutèce) and Alain Sailhac (formerly of the 21 Club) are sauntering around the room, assisted by six sous chefs, by my count. In two days, the announcement that Gourmet is closing will shock this community, but today we are all blissfully enjoying Food Month.
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New York Magazine, Gourmet magazine, Bon Appétit, French Culinary Institute |
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| 09.30.09 9:00 AM |
Rules for the Recovery
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I enjoyed Tina Brown’s Daily Beast post about the death of Robert Isabell, “Farewell to the King of Parties” (July 12), up until the end, when she did the obligatory linking of his passing to the end of the proverbial big party. “Our revels now are ended!” her piece ends (without Shakespeare’s attribution, by the way).
Maybe it’s a result of having sat in that Vanity Fair top seat; from there everything else is downhill. Remember Graydon Carter after 9/11, eclaring “the end of the age of irony”? Now he can be found most nights monkeying around the Monkey Bar, his second high-priced and low-access bôite, and, well, isn’t that just a little bit ironic?
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Tina Brown, Robert Isabell |
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| 09.11.09 7:57 PM |
I'm Flabbergasted By Fashion's Fabulous Night Out, Despite My Torn Plastic Bag
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 | Anna Wintour and Michael Kors bravely faced the masses at the Macy's Queens Center.
Photo: Julienne Schaer |
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FROM NEW YORK
My editors, and no doubt you readers, will be glad to know that I am going to skip the obligatory themed intro and get right into the meat of Fashion’s Night Out, the shopping bonanza organized for the night of September 10 by Vogue, NYC & Company, and the Council of Fashion Designers of America to get people out in stores and buying again.
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| 09.02.09 4:17 PM |
Where the Wild Things Are, Part II: At the "Too Popular" Surf Lodge, in the Axe Lounge, and on Booze Buses
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 | Lilybugs to the rescue!
Photo: Eli Gormezano |
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FROM NEW YORK
It’s a long drive to Montauk from the “regular” Hamptons, but the Clam Bar in Napeague makes the perfect pit stop for tuna “bits” and BlackBerrying. I was on my way to see the hotspot Surf Lodge and wanted to check in with the general manager, who had nicely emailed and called me confirming my property tour, when I hit a publicity roadblock by the name of Shelby Meade of Fresh and Clean Media. It had taken us a week to get anyone from the place to even return a message, so I wasn’t surprised by the reverse logic of getting the PR people active after the appointment was booked.
See, they are very busy at the Surf Lodge. Opened last year by the same team behind Cain Luxe nightclub in the city, the place was filled to the rafters every weekend with Montauk hipsters and press-hungry celebrities like Molly Sims and Michelle Trachtenberg. This year, I thought the heat had cooled enough to risk a visit, but I was wrong.
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| 08.27.09 8:00 AM |
Where the Wild Things Are: In the Hamptons, Spending $600 on Rosé
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 | Networking at Day & Night, Southampton's new all-day drink 'n' dance party
Photo: Steven B. Ekerovich/Courtesy of Day & Night |
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FROM NEW YORK
Just as we civilians were getting comfortable with the knowledge that our planet, our solar system, our galaxy was just a speck of dust on an elephant’s ear in a giant jungle, word came that there were (possibly) other vast hidden dimensions, whole universes slicing through ours; imperceivable but nonetheless real and equally incalculable in size and complexity.
Well, I for one was not surprised, because I have always sensed that there were whole other strange new worlds among us, invisible but to the trained eye. In fact, I kept hearing about one right under my nose, here in the Hamptons; a world where the recession didn’t exist, where excess was still en vogue (if no longer in the pages of Vogue) and where $595 rehoboams of Bertaud Belieu Côtes de Provence rosé can’t be iced fast enough.
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| 08.04.09 4:05 PM |
Super Saturday Shows No Signs of Slowing, Not Being Super
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 | Southampton Hospital's Summer Party suggested period attire.
Photo: Blanche Williamson |
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FROM NEW YORK
Like almost everyone else, Super Saturday designer/donor Carmen Marc Valvo laments the summer of 2009’s weird weather. Over brunch served at his elaborately landscaped Bridgehampton home, he mourned, “The roses didn’t even bother to bloom.”
I nodded. But secretly I had been thanking the gods for the lack of heat this summer. (Is global warming over? Are the icebergs getting bigger?)
You see, I am what In Style associate publisher Ron Prince called “a schvitzer.” That’s Yiddish for a person who sweats in excess. I was standing inside at Super Saturday 12, praising the forced cool air, when an event worker assured me apocryphally, “We’ve always had air conditioned tents.”
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Super Saturday, Southampton Hospital Foundation |
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| 07.28.09 12:49 PM |
Wacky Watermill Center Still Draws Dress-to-Impressers
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 | The Watermill Center has all sorts of education and community programs, many involving children.
Photo: Alice and Chris for BizBash |
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FROM NEW YORK
The gardens and grounds surrounding the Watermill Center were positively crawling with photographers, camera crews, and commentators during the cocktails preceding the annual summer benefit held on Saturday. But unlike most other Hamptons gangbangs, they weren't all packed together, clamoring for Kelly Ripa’s attention. In fact, while I asked Rufus Wainwright about his second annual concert here ("Last Song of Summer" with Norah Jones on August 29), I sensed photogs whizzing behind me, unawares.
That’s because there were tons of crazy and (mostly) interesting art performances and installations to shoot. This year’s theme, “Inferno,” was especially fruitful, yielding:
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Watermill Center, James Beard Foundation |
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| 07.14.09 8:00 AM |
ArtHamptons Delivers Much-Needed Summer and Style
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 | ArtHamptons International Art Fair
Photo: Courtesy of ArtHamptons |
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FROM NEW YORK
Summer 2009 just can’t seem to kick-start itself, what with the cold, dreary weather, empty beaches, and unrented manses. But this has its benefits… P. Diddy took his White Party elsewhere, after all.
But there are signs of life. There’s a new Diane von Furstenberg store in Southampton, and the Montauk Yacht Club had a splashy redo. But so far the biggest harbinger of better times I’ve seen is this year’s ArtHamptons, a four-day show in Bridgehampton that opened July 9 with a benefit kickoff for East Hampton’s Guild Hall.
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ArtHamptons |
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| 07.10.09 2:28 PM |
Remembering Robert Isabell, Partydom's King of Elegant Style
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FROM NEW YORK
First came the flowers. When I was working for Elle in the early 1990s, I went to the relocation launch of Henri Bendel, when the store moved from 57th Street to Fifth Avenue. When you entered the atrium, there were two giant urns of white French tulips, one on each side. Hundreds, maybe thousands in each setting, but not one touching another, all of them just sort of drooping out in perfect symmetry—and lit so dramatically that, honestly, the sneak peek of the multimillion-dollar store was a bit of a bore after that. “Who did the flowers?” I asked. Robert Isabell.
Later I came to work with Robert a number of times. It fascinated me how much he hustled to make the parties fun—but never really participated himself. Once at some $5,000-a-plate dinner, God knows where, I was lurking around, trying not to be seen, talking on the phone, and I bumped into him. He was hiding behind a statue and a little curtain. He was wearing a black leather biker jacket, but in a fancy way. "Shhhh, I don’t want the clients to know I’m still here.”
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Robert Isabell |
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