The Eater Awards

The Eater Awards

Chefs I Idolize:
Dan Barber
Michael White
Eric Ripert
Joe Bastianich (not really a chef but I like him anyway)

Chefs I worked with/saw last night:
Dan Barber
Michael White
Eric Ripert
Joe Bastianich

Words cannot adequately describe my night last night, but I will try, for you all. So I volunteered a couple weeks ago for this event called the Eater Awards, which is a new event that Eater.com (a food and restaurant blog/news website), held this year. They give away some of your standard restaurant awards....Restaurant of the Year, Chef of the Year, etc, but then they also give out some really hilarious and creative awards like Shitshow of the Year for a restaurant that didn't live up to all it's hype and sucks in every way possible, or an award poking fun at Chef Marcus Samuellson for the way he overexploits himself in the media, leaving his restaurant and food by the wayside. So this event didn't start until 8 pm, five hours after school ends at 3, so I was wondering out loud in class about what I would occupy all that time with when my friend Shannon ran over and told me that I have to go help her at Blue Hill, this restaurant that I've been dying to try for months and is one of the better restaurants in Manhattan at the moment. They were doing this event called Menuless Mondays and were feeding 170 people when they typically only do 150 at the most. So I was persuaded by Shannon to go to Blue Hill with her, my first time ever being in a restaurant kitchen and I go to Blue Hill? Really? Did that really happen?

Needless to say I was pretty much scared shitless...(sorry, no other way to say it.) And to top it all off, not only was my first time in a restaurant kitchen going to be in one of the best restaurants in NYC, but the well-known chef, Dan Barber, would be there as well! The concept of Blue Hill is really interesting and the chef has gotten a lot of praise for what he's done there. They are two Blue Hills, one is in NYC, the restaurant, and the other is Blue Hill Stone Barns at a farm in the Hudson Valley. They source almost all of the food that they serve at the restaurant from their own farm. Very cool. I knew I wouldn't be doing much of anything in the kitchen, definitely nothing important, but it was still really nerve-racking to be in that kitchen, which was the size of the workstations at school that we've been sharing with four people, but fit 15 people, all moving in different directions. My first task was to clean 100 radishes and strip them of their ugly leaves. Next, I cleaned frisee, keeping only the white and yellow parts of it and separating it into little fluffs of lettuce. After that, I spent approximately 45 minutes stripping the stems from this lettuce called ruby streak, which is a dark purple/red color and sort of looks like baby arugula, but with more pronounced tips. It stained the edges of my fingertips bright purple and took the longest time. Some of my other important tasks included dicing basil, which due to my dull knife, destroyed a small bowlful of what was once pretty basil. They needed it in perfect squares, no imperfections, so the chef on garde manger finally gave me his knife so I could chop it properly. I think it's time I move on from the knives the school gives us...they really kind of suck. I had to awkwardly sneak out of the kitchen (impossible due to the kitchen being about the size of my bathroom) at 8 pm in the middle of service so that I could get to the Eater Awards on time. The chef de cuisine even asked me to come back when I left, so I guess I didn't mess anything up that badly. I did almost fall down the extremely narrow and steep staircase to the "locker room" on the way out though. And by "locker room" I mean a cramped hallway in the basement of the restaurant, with maybe four lockers. All in all, it went pretty well, although I'm not sure I'm really cut out for the kind of stress that being in a restaurant kitchen causes. I felt like I didn't breathe the whole time for fear or doing something wrong.

At the Eater Awards, I met up with my friend Lisa, who was also volunteering for the event. When we arrived they gave us our volunteer t-shirts that read, "My other restaurant is a Shitshow." Love it. Unfortunately it's a large so you won't see me rocking it as anything other than a dress. The guy who was coordinating the volunteers and planning the whole event told us that the chefs didn't really need our help so we could just enjoy the party, eat the food and have a drink if we felt like it. Best volunteer job I've ever had. So we basically walked the room, eating the small plates from Momofuku (pulled pork buns...sooo yummy!), Convivio (Pig head terrine, not as yummy), John Dory Oyster Bar, and more. We also grabbed a glass of champagne, (why not?) and chatted with one of our chefs from Level 1 whose wife works at Eater so he was there enjoying the party as well. In between all the snacking, chatting and a little bit of drinking, we spotted Joe Bastianich (Owns restaurants like Babbo, Del Posto, Esca with his mom Lidia Bastianich and partner, Mario Batali), Eric Ripert (chef at Le Bernardin) and Michael White (Chef of Marea, Alto, Convivio and Osteria Morini) in the crowd. Eric Ripert unfortunately did not stay for long and I didn't have a chance to attempt to redeem myself from the embarrassing comments my brother made to him as we dined at Le Bernardin this summer (not that I really would have ever mentioned that to him anyway just in case he does remember it), but I still saw him (and may have followed him around). Here's a picture of myself and two other volunteers waiting outside the korilla Korean taco truck in the freezing cold!

http://ny.eater.com/archives/2010/11/eater_awards_2010_gala_celebration_at_public_in_nolita.php#eater-awards-53

Tonight I'm volunteering at another event with Gail Simmons, one of the judges on Top Chef and tomorrow I'm helping Chef Pascal at the James Beard Foundation Gala event at the Four Seasons Restaurant. I'm going to be super tired by the end of the week, but who needs sleep when you can see famous chefs everyday?