By Ted Kruckel
"New York is Book Country" is the name of an annual publishing promotion, but last week New York was cookbook country, with food tomes being debuted by Daniel Boulud, David Bouley and Rocco DiSpirito.
Book parties are a category unto themselves. We all know they really don't accomplish much—a little publicity hopefully—but off we go, hosting them or rushing to attend them. And the nature of a book itself is hard to celebrate. After all, the whole premise of a book is somewhat antithetical to a party—isn't a book best experienced, understood and enjoyed when the reader is all alone?
Some people try and conquer this divide by having a reading. I say, by all means, do not subject a guest to that.
But a book party for a chef, one with recipes no less—well that's as close to a party in a book as you are going to get. So I decided to strap on the feedbag and see for myself at parties for Daniel and Rocco.
Boulud has been writing a column in Elle Decor for eight years now, so the mag's publisher, Hachette Filipacchi, has collected them into a handsome new $40 volume. At a party given by Elle Decor's editor, the beautiful and charming Margaret Russell (disclaimer: she's a pal and my editor there, but look at the picture and judge for yourself), Chef Boulud sold books to benefit Citymeals-on-Wheels. Daniel's majordomo, Georgette Farkas, who is glamorous and peripatetic (also a pal, sorry), explained to me why. There are two classy ways to distribute books at book parties: One is to give the books as gifts to all guests. (In Style always does this, and they don't come free. FYI: For you greedy people who take two, the standard "author's" rate is 50 percent of the cover price.) The second way is to sell them for charity. The thinking is, if you ask people to celebrate your success, you can't really then profit from them. I agree wholeheartedly.
The risk of this strategy, of course, is that no one will buy them. But the food was so fabulous and so plentiful (and all the recipes were in the book) that one would have been ashamed not to plunk down two twenties, and when Russell waved good-bye to take a business group to dinner, Daniel was still signing away with five buyers queuing.
Now for the food: First there were baked littleneck clams with proscuitto. I consider myself a clammy person (my favorite restaurant is a Long Island shack called the Clam Bar) so I was in heaven. With just a thin dusting of buttery bread crumbs, they were browned on top, but still wet and, well, clammy on the inside. They were also served consistently hot. (As a sacrifice to you, dear reader, I had about a dozen throughout the night, testing them in different parts of the room just to see if the waiters, from Boulud's catering company, Feast & Fetes, were circulating properly, and they were.) I assume this was a benefit of the event being in the stylish—and functional—Bulthaup kitchen showroom. This being a magazine event, hosting the party at an advertiser abode is, of course, de rigueur. But instead of knocking around the vitrines of a boutique, the setting felt just perfect.
Anyway, some clam eaters were flummoxed by juggling a drink, a seafood fork and a clam. I simply forewent the fork, slurped the little sucker into my mouth and then dropped the shell in the nifty enamel pail that each waiter carried. Next!
Also good were the crispy parmesan baskets with herbed goat cheese (so easy, Daniel says—the secret is putting the cheese in just before serving them). But la pièce de résistance was a tiny pancake, a generous but not sloppy bit of salmon, and a boiled quail egg perfectly halved and cooked exactly to the point where the outside of the yolk is cooked but the inside is a tiny bit runny (again, I checked way more than two). I know of no other way to describe this than to say it is not until you get all these things together in your mouth and chew them around once or twice that you understand. This was served in one of those ceramic party spoons that are all the rage, but which I find a tad wide. An intimidating mouthful, to be sure, but, like sex, once you got the hang of it you're fine with trying it again and again. Assuming I'm right, I wish the waiters, who all spoke French graciously, explained or encouraged the guests to eat the thing in one fell swoop.
Rocco's party offered plenty of contrast. DiSpirito's book, Flavors, has been many years in the making, and as his former publicist I remember the concept as such: There are four flavor groups—bitter, sweet, salty and sour—and only when all four flavor pistons are firing at once are you enjoying a complete experience de la bouche. The book, which unlike Daniel's adopts moody black and white photos, wildly divergent art direction, and lots of pictures of you-know-who, is much hipper on first glance.
Rocco's (assumed) new largesse from his reality show, The Restaurant, and all those American Express commercials did not extend to book giving. Guests—who braved the rain—paid for books (and there didn't seem to be a charity involved) and waited interminably for his imprimatur, taking the chi and flow out of the spacious room.
I was too grumpy to buy a book after it became clear to this wandering eye that other, more important, guests were being taken aside and given freebies. Well, I guess the problem was that they weren't being taken far enough aside.
Union Pacific, the 22nd Street eatery that put DiSpirito on the map, is a great site for a party. The dark entry area serves as a perfect welcome mat at events. After disgorging your belongings, you cross an arched bridge of troubled water (a Japanese idea, to separate you from the outside world, works for me) to a high-ceilinged, tastefully decorated ballroom-type space. Upstairs shoji-screened private dining rooms are perfect for VIP hideaways (I once stored a Survivor winner in one) and a dining balcony provides the crucial see-and-be-seen vantage point.
But tonight the vibe was wrong, and doubting my own objectivity I got opinions from lots of people I know: "Too hot." "Too crowded." "Not enough food." There were two food stations, beautifully laid out. One offered uni (it took me awhile to figure out that it meant sea urchin, served raw), bay scallop and eau de tomate (yes, tomato water). Apparently this combination meets Rocco's "four flavors" litmus test; he serves it all the time. But even this dedicated shellfish lover can barely choke one of these slimy, watery concoctions down.
The other station was too overrun by uni-phobic guests for me to get a clear picture of what was being proffered. Luckily, there were chefs and foodie VIPs galore on hand (Le Bernardin's Eric Ripert and impresario Drew Nieporent stood out). I was lucky enough to fall under the spell of Beppe's Cesare Casella and was taken just a block and given some much needed sustenance. A few stuffed zucchini flowers later I emerged fed and tired.
Lest you think I spent the entire last two weeks among gourmand-types, please know that I made it to the Youth AIDS gala hosted by Cat on a Hot Tin Roof's Ashley Judd and her famous family, and to Jean-Paul Gaultier's makeup for men launch.
Youth AIDS held an awards ceremony at Capitale, one of New York's newer and hipper function spaces. Like Cipriani 42nd Street, it's an old bank making use of the marble, brass and dark wood. While I'm sure the cause is worthwhile, paying folks were herded into the foyer and held like prisoners at the beginning of the event while unorganized yet unhurried event planners used the entire ballroom, which looked guest-ready to me, as an event backroom/VIP holding area, complete with a full unused bar. Sometimes I wonder why regular charity eventgoers who fork out $300 per person don't just say, "Here's a hundred, with the rest of my money I can eat at Daniel."
At Jean-Paul Gaultier's boutique event, I went under the completely wrong impression that his new makeup, "Tout Beau Tout Propre," was unisex. I felt sorry for the poor girls looking to get made-up by one of the complimentary makeup artists on hand, because it seemed hard to out-elbow one of the many guys on line. Caterer Tinker Boe of Mood Food had her waiters all made up in advance, wisely, and Alisa Grecco from Gaultier explained that this was a men's-only makeup.
Oh. Well that explained quite a bit about the colorful crowd.
For a party in a store, normally a non-starter, this one worked. Drag queens, she-males and couture doffers all mixed without knocking each other over. The secret was keeping everything moving. If you serve only one cocktail, make it champagne, and Piper-Heidsieck did a limited-edition bottle with Gaultier a few years back, all trussed up in red and black, which fit the mood perfectly.
Anyway, Mood Food offered a little essence of peche blanche (that's white peach and yes, it's imported from France) on the side if straight champers isn't for you (and for me it is not). With drink and gougère (that's a gruyère stuffed cheese puff), still warm, in hand, it was a great show to take in. Gaultier was in town to receive his Fashion Group International award from Uma Thurman the next night, and something about his goofy, Franco-chic arrival brought out the kooky in the crowd. That is something impossible to fake at a party and I wish I had stayed longer to see how it deteriorated.
Posted 11.05.03
Columnist Ted Kruckel is an experienced and opinionated former event and PR pro who ran events for 20 years for high-profile clients like Vanity Fair, Elle Decor, Christian Dior and Carolina Herrera. He shuttered his firm, Ted Inc., earlier this year.
"New York is Book Country" is the name of an annual publishing promotion, but last week New York was cookbook country, with food tomes being debuted by Daniel Boulud, David Bouley and Rocco DiSpirito.
Book parties are a category unto themselves. We all know they really don't accomplish much—a little publicity hopefully—but off we go, hosting them or rushing to attend them. And the nature of a book itself is hard to celebrate. After all, the whole premise of a book is somewhat antithetical to a party—isn't a book best experienced, understood and enjoyed when the reader is all alone?
Some people try and conquer this divide by having a reading. I say, by all means, do not subject a guest to that.
But a book party for a chef, one with recipes no less—well that's as close to a party in a book as you are going to get. So I decided to strap on the feedbag and see for myself at parties for Daniel and Rocco.
Boulud has been writing a column in Elle Decor for eight years now, so the mag's publisher, Hachette Filipacchi, has collected them into a handsome new $40 volume. At a party given by Elle Decor's editor, the beautiful and charming Margaret Russell (disclaimer: she's a pal and my editor there, but look at the picture and judge for yourself), Chef Boulud sold books to benefit Citymeals-on-Wheels. Daniel's majordomo, Georgette Farkas, who is glamorous and peripatetic (also a pal, sorry), explained to me why. There are two classy ways to distribute books at book parties: One is to give the books as gifts to all guests. (In Style always does this, and they don't come free. FYI: For you greedy people who take two, the standard "author's" rate is 50 percent of the cover price.) The second way is to sell them for charity. The thinking is, if you ask people to celebrate your success, you can't really then profit from them. I agree wholeheartedly.
The risk of this strategy, of course, is that no one will buy them. But the food was so fabulous and so plentiful (and all the recipes were in the book) that one would have been ashamed not to plunk down two twenties, and when Russell waved good-bye to take a business group to dinner, Daniel was still signing away with five buyers queuing.
Now for the food: First there were baked littleneck clams with proscuitto. I consider myself a clammy person (my favorite restaurant is a Long Island shack called the Clam Bar) so I was in heaven. With just a thin dusting of buttery bread crumbs, they were browned on top, but still wet and, well, clammy on the inside. They were also served consistently hot. (As a sacrifice to you, dear reader, I had about a dozen throughout the night, testing them in different parts of the room just to see if the waiters, from Boulud's catering company, Feast & Fetes, were circulating properly, and they were.) I assume this was a benefit of the event being in the stylish—and functional—Bulthaup kitchen showroom. This being a magazine event, hosting the party at an advertiser abode is, of course, de rigueur. But instead of knocking around the vitrines of a boutique, the setting felt just perfect.
Anyway, some clam eaters were flummoxed by juggling a drink, a seafood fork and a clam. I simply forewent the fork, slurped the little sucker into my mouth and then dropped the shell in the nifty enamel pail that each waiter carried. Next!
Also good were the crispy parmesan baskets with herbed goat cheese (so easy, Daniel says—the secret is putting the cheese in just before serving them). But la pièce de résistance was a tiny pancake, a generous but not sloppy bit of salmon, and a boiled quail egg perfectly halved and cooked exactly to the point where the outside of the yolk is cooked but the inside is a tiny bit runny (again, I checked way more than two). I know of no other way to describe this than to say it is not until you get all these things together in your mouth and chew them around once or twice that you understand. This was served in one of those ceramic party spoons that are all the rage, but which I find a tad wide. An intimidating mouthful, to be sure, but, like sex, once you got the hang of it you're fine with trying it again and again. Assuming I'm right, I wish the waiters, who all spoke French graciously, explained or encouraged the guests to eat the thing in one fell swoop.
Rocco's party offered plenty of contrast. DiSpirito's book, Flavors, has been many years in the making, and as his former publicist I remember the concept as such: There are four flavor groups—bitter, sweet, salty and sour—and only when all four flavor pistons are firing at once are you enjoying a complete experience de la bouche. The book, which unlike Daniel's adopts moody black and white photos, wildly divergent art direction, and lots of pictures of you-know-who, is much hipper on first glance.
Rocco's (assumed) new largesse from his reality show, The Restaurant, and all those American Express commercials did not extend to book giving. Guests—who braved the rain—paid for books (and there didn't seem to be a charity involved) and waited interminably for his imprimatur, taking the chi and flow out of the spacious room.
I was too grumpy to buy a book after it became clear to this wandering eye that other, more important, guests were being taken aside and given freebies. Well, I guess the problem was that they weren't being taken far enough aside.
Union Pacific, the 22nd Street eatery that put DiSpirito on the map, is a great site for a party. The dark entry area serves as a perfect welcome mat at events. After disgorging your belongings, you cross an arched bridge of troubled water (a Japanese idea, to separate you from the outside world, works for me) to a high-ceilinged, tastefully decorated ballroom-type space. Upstairs shoji-screened private dining rooms are perfect for VIP hideaways (I once stored a Survivor winner in one) and a dining balcony provides the crucial see-and-be-seen vantage point.
But tonight the vibe was wrong, and doubting my own objectivity I got opinions from lots of people I know: "Too hot." "Too crowded." "Not enough food." There were two food stations, beautifully laid out. One offered uni (it took me awhile to figure out that it meant sea urchin, served raw), bay scallop and eau de tomate (yes, tomato water). Apparently this combination meets Rocco's "four flavors" litmus test; he serves it all the time. But even this dedicated shellfish lover can barely choke one of these slimy, watery concoctions down.
The other station was too overrun by uni-phobic guests for me to get a clear picture of what was being proffered. Luckily, there were chefs and foodie VIPs galore on hand (Le Bernardin's Eric Ripert and impresario Drew Nieporent stood out). I was lucky enough to fall under the spell of Beppe's Cesare Casella and was taken just a block and given some much needed sustenance. A few stuffed zucchini flowers later I emerged fed and tired.
Lest you think I spent the entire last two weeks among gourmand-types, please know that I made it to the Youth AIDS gala hosted by Cat on a Hot Tin Roof's Ashley Judd and her famous family, and to Jean-Paul Gaultier's makeup for men launch.
Youth AIDS held an awards ceremony at Capitale, one of New York's newer and hipper function spaces. Like Cipriani 42nd Street, it's an old bank making use of the marble, brass and dark wood. While I'm sure the cause is worthwhile, paying folks were herded into the foyer and held like prisoners at the beginning of the event while unorganized yet unhurried event planners used the entire ballroom, which looked guest-ready to me, as an event backroom/VIP holding area, complete with a full unused bar. Sometimes I wonder why regular charity eventgoers who fork out $300 per person don't just say, "Here's a hundred, with the rest of my money I can eat at Daniel."
At Jean-Paul Gaultier's boutique event, I went under the completely wrong impression that his new makeup, "Tout Beau Tout Propre," was unisex. I felt sorry for the poor girls looking to get made-up by one of the complimentary makeup artists on hand, because it seemed hard to out-elbow one of the many guys on line. Caterer Tinker Boe of Mood Food had her waiters all made up in advance, wisely, and Alisa Grecco from Gaultier explained that this was a men's-only makeup.
Oh. Well that explained quite a bit about the colorful crowd.
For a party in a store, normally a non-starter, this one worked. Drag queens, she-males and couture doffers all mixed without knocking each other over. The secret was keeping everything moving. If you serve only one cocktail, make it champagne, and Piper-Heidsieck did a limited-edition bottle with Gaultier a few years back, all trussed up in red and black, which fit the mood perfectly.
Anyway, Mood Food offered a little essence of peche blanche (that's white peach and yes, it's imported from France) on the side if straight champers isn't for you (and for me it is not). With drink and gougère (that's a gruyère stuffed cheese puff), still warm, in hand, it was a great show to take in. Gaultier was in town to receive his Fashion Group International award from Uma Thurman the next night, and something about his goofy, Franco-chic arrival brought out the kooky in the crowd. That is something impossible to fake at a party and I wish I had stayed longer to see how it deteriorated.
Posted 11.05.03
Columnist Ted Kruckel is an experienced and opinionated former event and PR pro who ran events for 20 years for high-profile clients like Vanity Fair, Elle Decor, Christian Dior and Carolina Herrera. He shuttered his firm, Ted Inc., earlier this year.
