Barneys New York took the prize for first holiday party with their “Foodie Holiday” event held November 16. The invite explained that the party was to unveil the new holiday windows, which feature celebrity chefs, and to toast the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival Cookbook by Lee Brian Schrager. It listed four hosts (Brooke Johnson, Dana Cowin of Food & Wine, and Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch) and credited four sponsors: Food Network, Cooking Channel, Illy Caffè and Perrier Jouët. Phew.
I almost didn’t make it. As I hoofed the last few blocks up Madison, it started to rain, heavily, but I was heartened by the looming tents. Just as I was about to sneak under them for shelter, a security guy stopped me and told me that this entrance was only for celebrities. Ugh. Why do people do this? It is so lame and so easily fixable.
But when I noticed the other wetter and angrier people coming up, and watched event organizers who didn’t plan for rain squabble about solutions, I quickly raced around the corner to the regular people’s canopy and used my schadenfreude to keep my cockles warm.
But once inside, I froze. It was mobbed with hundreds of people and it was like a zoo. One lady with showy gold jewelry and plenty of face paint squeezed by me, then pointed out angrily, “You’re wet!”
I told the dame that it was raining outside, but she was unforgiving. Then a couple of perfect strangers came up to me and offered to wipe off the back of my down vest. (There was no coat check in sight and no one knew where one was.) We chatted as I handed them dry napkins from a food station and put the wet ones in my pocket. They told me it was a good party and that lady seemed like a real bitch—all the things I wanted to hear. So I stayed.
The food station, by the way, was ridiculously ill-placed, hard on the highest volume entrance with old-fashioned chafing dishes and little plates—the bane of foodie events the world over. But the staff inside the repurposed jewelry counter was doing something atypical for these foodie things—they were working all sides of the counter, passing out plates and—praise the lord!—taking used plates and putting them in a bin. So often you get your little plate and then carry it for half an hour, holding it level lest the saucy evidence of your gluttony spill on some gold jewelry lady with face paint.
Drinks too were miraculously easy to come by. Even though the white wine was so pale you couldn’t distinguish it from water on the trays, it was perfectly acceptable once quaffed.
The call time was 8 to 10 p.m., which is tricky. I think you should expect to serve dinner at those hours, but conversely, I had no expectations of being properly fed at a Barneys main floor party. I was wrong.
There was station after station and bars with short waits and tons of circulating waiters.
I made it from the back to the front to watch the celebrity chefs arrive. Barneys creative guru (and missing link to the great store of old), Simon Doonan, had whipped up his usual set of windows, and chefs were posing in front of theirs, then coming into the party to great fanfare. I watched as Paula Deen manhandled her way next to Bobby Flay for her closeup, shoving Lee Schrager out of the frame. I’m not a big fan of hers since I sent her magazine three handbags for a shoot and only got back one, badly used. After months of asking, I received a form letter, unsigned, from Ms. Deen thanking me for my gift. Eesh.
I was more surprised by the joint arrival of Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse. Intent (I assume) on heading to the elevators for American Express’s V.I.P. event upstairs, Mario shoved his way angrily through the room, making eye contact with no one, and almost overturning one of his own little walkie-talkied handlers. Ouch. Made me wonder. Emeril followed at the same pace, at least smiling and gesturing to the people. He is the sultan of salami.
I came across a couple of platinum cardholders who had just come from upstairs, “where Simon was,” and they were just giddy with their gift bags, which seemed ample. They started to show me the contents, but I got bored. And for some reason they cured me of even wanting to go upstairs—I was happy here in the madness. And fascinated.
There was no getting around the fact that this was a hot mess of a party.
“Too crowded, too hot, too loud,” Marcy Blum said. “Plus, you can’t buy anything.”
“I get worried with the people and their greasy fingers touching the Celine bags,” observed In Style executive editor Catherine Hong.
Liz Neumark of Great Performances was taking pictures of everybody. “It’s a great excuse to really stare at people,” she said.
“I had calamari. No octopus. Who knows? It’s crazy here,” Pamela Morgan of Flavors told me. “Plus, there’s no coat check.” (There actually was—in a corner, a bad place for a coat check.)
Bobby Flay asked me, “Is this your pen?” I was about to say yes, just to get the spare, but someone else beat me to it.
“Celebrity chefs are the new fashion designers,” Fern Mallis pointed out, in what may have been some sort of clue about her future.
Gail Simmons of Top Chef told me her wedding was great, no kids planned yet, then filled me in on some controversy about one of her shows (she does the new dessert one too) changing nights and I pretended to care. When I heard the phrase, “I’ll be happy to be on either night,” I figured the story was over and excused myself—but not before thinking she was nice.
Less nice, but hard to ignore, was Anne Burrell. I recognized her as a TV chef from a reality show, but she apparently had her own series, a bunch of books, you get the drill. She was very annoyed when I asked her to spell her name and even more annoyed that I didn’t know she was one of the chefs in the windows.
I think the best way to describe Ms. Burrell is as a cross between Anna Nicole Smith and Kathy Griffin. She’s big. She’s brassy (particularly the hair). She’s vulgar as all get out. And she’s got her muzzle on the heel of the fame monster and is not letting go.
“My depiction is the best,” she challenged, while drinking her “big girl soda, champagne.” After telling me about all her tie-ins and upcoming promotions—“you really should just check my Web sites for these details”—I asked her what she thought of the food. “I haven’t eaten a thing.”
I promised to send her a copy of this story, but her manager/publicist who was tagging along had no business cards. Bet that girl’s days are numbered, judging from the look she got.
I kept noticing this well-dressed brunette with a walkie talkie and a tray who never stopped moving about the room. Her name is Niki LeBouquin and she is the catering manager of Fred's at Barneys. She’s one of those people who is always looking for the next thing to fix and is always moving, and as a result, her people were equally energetic and resourceful. I asked her if I could interview her and she said I should talk to the Barneys chef, Mark Strausman, instead. She’s a real pro.
