afterparty afterparty

September 17

Summary for news hounds:
1) Will Godfarb’s moving to Bali.
2) Windsor? What Windsor?

“If you see me at Allen & Delancey, tell me to go home,” Rick Smilow said last night.
Rick’s the head of the Institute of Culinary Education. He and I were at the first afterparty of Starchefs’ “Rising Star Review,” which in New York is held at the end of the International Chefs Congress, which has become Starchefs’ flagship event. This year the Review was at the Museum of Natural History, in the Blue Whale room.
I kept meaning to go to the congress. I heard it was great this year, but, well, I have a job to do.
“Your job and the congress mesh!” Dave Arnold half-slurred at me. He’s the director of culinary technology at the French Culinary Institute and one of the nicest, coolest people in the New York food scene, and he had a point. In fact, I should have gone to the congress, which is a three-day event that gathers hundreds of chefs from all over the world to watch interesting demonstrations, engage in workshops, network etc., etc.
But deadlines take precedence over interesting demonstrations and bonding time with chefs, and I guess I’ve been having time management issues lately.
The afterparty was at the Royalton Hotel, where Rising Star Review attendees regrouped and drank.
Dave introduced me to Bob Truitt, who will be the pastry chef at Corton, the Paul Liebrandt-Drew Nieporent collaboration that’s scheduled to open in the former Montrachet space in a couple of weeks.
The name Bob Truitt rang a bell, and despite the late hour and quantity of wine drunk, I thought I’d remembered why.
“Hey, are you one of the guys rumored to be involved in The Windsor?” I asked him.
He clearly had no idea what I was talking about, but looking in my archives today, I discovered I was right, which means the rumor’s almost certainly wrong.
Poor rumor.
Bob worked under Will Goldfarb at Room4Dessert for a long time and he shared another rumor, which he stated as a fact, that Mr. Goldfarb is moving to Bali.
So I e-mailed Will today to ask if it was true.
“But of course", he said.
So, best of luck to the Goldfarbs. May your lawar always be delicious and the drunk Australian surfers behave themselves.
I guess he won’t be involved in The Windsor either.
The second afterparty, at Allen & Delancey, was starting at 1:30. That’s what Rick Smilow was talking about. I laughed at him, because I had no intention of going to Allen & Delancey. I have a day job.
Then I ran into George Mendes, who kissed me on the cheek for including his upcoming restaurant, Aldea, in The fall preview I wrote for The New York Sun.
Then he forced me to go to Allen & Delancey: He got me into a headlock — he had the strength of ten men! — and dragged me into a taxi.
Okay, he didn’t really. He said “let’s go.”
So I rode downtown with him and his wife, Bonna, a Cambodian-American from Jacksonville. So we talked about Cambodia during the taxi ride (her family left in 1970, phew!). Her name is Cambodian and means "goodness" in Sanskrit, reminding us how big the family of Indo-European languages is.
I worked my way through the scrum at the Allen & Delancey bar, where Alex Day was shaking his new cocktails, into the back of the restaurant where no one was drinking Carignan or eating anti-pasti. So Bonna and I dug in and were soon joined by George and many, many others, including a couple of chefs from Charlotte who helped me assess my dinner options for when I’m there for our Culinary R&D conference (Register now! I am not kidding, do it).
My boss, Pam Parseghian, politely expressed dissatisfaction at my tardiness this morning. She has a point.