Decadent Dining With Relais & Chateaux? Color Me “Oui!”

The table settings were lovely in that delicate way of the French. The water goblet had a wash of either pink or lemon at the base giving extra depth, but all the champagne flutes were clear.

Relais & Chateaux hosted its Grand Chefs 2012 event, “Springtime in New York,” at Gotham Hall in New York. French-American agency Ariameetis, which was credited for “technical and artistic productions,” oversaw the entire affair and the companies that worked on it.

As expected, there was no scrimping here. The entry tent from Stamford Tents was festooned with floral ropes with pink roses. The flowers were supplied by L’Atelier Rouge, a New York firm new to me. Tres romantique.

Upstairs for champagne (no booze, there were a few philistines grumbling) hosted by Pommery, the hired greeters from Cosmopolitan Management wore these cap-sleeved gold lamé numbers well. The dresses came from France, but neither of these ladies had remembered to look at their tag, so I left it at that.

Cocktail hour was in the Gotham Hall balcony, lit in pink and red with rose arrangements to match. Lighting by Bentley Meeker had its peaks and valleys, truth be told. One valley that needed crossing was the directional lighting that lit the Pommery’s toile fabric brand curtains between the columns. The panels looked great, but if you found yourself in a conversation that required you to look the other way, well, the Bruce Springsteen song “Blinded by the Light” comes to mind.

Everyone knows that toile patterns are designed to tell stories, right? So these banners told the tale of Pommery, starting with the champagne house’s founder, Madame Pommery, who was obviously a prestigious and accomplished lady. But judging from this portrait, not a bubbly type.

So here’s where they make their wine. One assumes it’s a chateau, doesn’t one?

On the way out of the Pommerey cocktail room I took a moment to thank the dead soldiers (that’s what my father called an empty champagne bottle) and pay my respects.

Time for dinner. And the entry was pretty spectacular. One giant tree of cherry blossoms lit seriously from above. It was a beautiful spectacle, if a wee bit crowded for the area it stood in. And I’m not sure the table charts needed that much incandescence ... but then again, I had a handler, and didn’t need to hunch and squint.

The room was pretty spectacular. This is the aerial view of the first lighting set, which was perfectly nice but a little boring I thought at first. But I didn’t know what was planned.

It was time to slap on the old feedbag. Being a journalist—well, sort of—they let me go backstage and check out the kitchens, which were set up all around the oval-shaped dining area. The event had 45 chefs and their sous chefs and captains and sauciers, and it was kind of comical to see them all slaving away on top of each other. Comical but tense. Very tense.

One chef, German Thomas Bühner of Restaurant La Vie, took the time to explain his template for us. The chefs set up a complete plate in advance exactly the way he or she (oh, let’s face it—there aren’t many female chefs at these European-style places) wants it to look. Then the sous took the time to explain his dish to me. It was two scallops barely cooked with a prig on miniscule haricot verts. (I love all the super-tiny vegetables that rich people get, don’t you?) Lest you mistake it for anything less, the shapeless, gray blob was once truffle ice cream that had melted.

Here’s my effervescent French friend Daniel Boulud on hand to work with Restaurant Daniel executive chef Jean François Bruel on their dish. With Daniel’s station all atwitter, he had made last-minute changes to his dish and brought them hand-written on a piece of paper, which he clutched like a relay baton. But I was able to wrestle it away ...

Here is a look backstage of a master chef’s evening. Check out the super-detailed timeline of the dinner, along with Daniel’s recipe for Scallops Rosace (that’s rosette for us Americanos). Note that he had to sneak away to go to another event, the Tribeca Ball honoring Robert De Niro, then race back to Gotham Hall for the R&C grande finale.

The centerpiece for each table featured more tall cherry blossoms, here more like spikes that the lilting branches of the entry installation. The votive candles were washed with some sort of bronze gilt finish, that cut the glare of the candles that often ruin this type of setup. A home run.

Here’s the view from a little farther away that I thought made the cherry blossom entry pop hardest. Nicely done, Bentley.

Here’s how my place setting looked—that is, if I were Elizabeth Olsen. The vine rings were neatly woven and became a party favor of sorts.

Ugh, that reminds me—there were celebrities there. In addition to Ms. Olsen, here’s Greta Gerwig and Coca Rocha looking like she is ready to get some food in her.

Finally here comes some food, from Michael White of Marea. His Maine lobster burrata, eggplant al Funghetto dish’s elements looked like this in the prepping station.

Then they got cleaned, staged, and cleaned up to look like this.

Here’s the dish that I actually was served: Michael White's Maine lobster burrata, eggplant al Funghetto. Did I explain that every table gets a different meal? Through some sort of algorithm, different chefs do one of three courses. Each chef prepares 30 meals. There are six teams that serve all the courses. And each team changes the tables that it serves with each course. I thought the burrata, a soft gooey sponge of lobster goodness was sublime, but my seating partner, Katarina Wolschner, the editor of German culinary magazine Rolling Pin, pointed out that the plate and dish should have been warm and that was the case for another course, too, and she was not wrong. Sometimes at these grandee things they get so ambitious it is hard to deliver on every note. But I had no problem choking mine down.The best thing about these international cooker fests is that you meet interesting people. Across from me, Alysia Casebeer wore an eye-catching jeweled dress she got in India. On my right American Elisabeth Armington had just returned from four years living in London to meet up with her English boyfriend, Benjamin Alderman, who works here. To thank her he gave her a ring, popped the question, and everyone at our table had another excuse to drink more of the six or seven different Pommery vintages passed throughout the night. (Cuvée Louise 1990 was my favorite. It was a very good year. It was, look it up.)

Here’s how the room looked during dinner.

Out come the speakers and down goes the energy, right? This one at least wore a nice dress. But lo and behold, music interrupted, et voila the room came to life with an amazing 3-D projection. What you are seeing is a still shot of a brief animated movie: The effect was that the four columns came to life, first with a few green vines, then a small flower or two, a super-memorable (and not-so-appetizing to some) centipede slithered up one of the columns. Finally the piece ended on the lavish floral garden you see here. It was pretty magnificent.

Then out march all the chefs, to great fanfare and waves from the stands. At these big international foodie things they give medals hanging in grand ribbons (this is, after all, Grand Chefs) for best confiture or most supreme crème de la crème or something like that. The sound by Eastern Stage Productions made it so I couldn’t really follow what was going on. Winners were awarded and it was much, much ado. Did I mention this dinner took over five hours?