A small square package, bound by an elegant white ribbon, greeted the 300 diners who showed up last weekend for the James Beard Foundation’s annual Super Sunday at Chelsea Market.
Was it an amuse-bouche prepared by one of the 17 chefs who donated their skills to the fund-raiser, which this year benefited culinary programs related to International Women’s Day?
Better yet, it was a three-pack of sanitizing hand wipes, a nod to the anxiety about holding a large group dinner during the coronavirus outbreak.
“We are very mindful of this, and we put in a whole series of additional precautions,” said Clare Reichenbach, the chief executive of the foundation.
“It was going to be family style, and it’s now French style,” Ms. Reichenbach added, meaning that waiters would serve each guest using tongs, rather than everyone helping themselves from communal platters. “We have got Purell at every opportunity, and we sent out a communication that people who had symptoms or felt uncomfortable, not to come.”
Concerns seemed to evaporate once the food appeared. Kitty Thammasat (of Ayada, a Thai restaurant in Queens) made a papaya salad appetizer. Esther Choi (Mokbar) contributed stuffed kimchi. And Joy Crump served beef with rosemary-scented turnip purée, using ingredients she brought from Foode, her restaurant in Virginia that’s a five-hour drive away.
Jenn Louis, a chef-at-large in Portland, Ore., tweaked her vegetable dish in light of the outbreak. “I was going to have whole roasted cauliflower heads which people could cut themselves, but it’s not practical right now,” she said. “So I made sure I cut those into pretty little wedges, and it was very interesting to think about, how can I do it that’s safe, but also very hospitable to everybody.”
The dinner took place around a 300-foot-long table set up in the market’s main hall. Several guests enviously eyed the free-standing hand sanitizer dispensers placed nearby; hand sanitizers have been as rare as white truffles these days.
Michael Phillips, the president of Jamestown Properties, which sold Chelsea Market in 2018 to Google, and whose foundation also disburses money from the fund-raiser, wasn’t letting on how they got so much of it. “We have our ways,” he said.
No Shows
While the James Beard dinner went ahead as scheduled, other events were canceled over concerns about the outbreak.
Among the first fund-raisers to drop off the social calendar was the 29th annual Bunny Hop, a family-friendly affair hosted by the Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering and Bonpoint.
Nate Berkus and Jenna Bush Hager were the honorary chairs of a benefit committee that also included high-wattage social names like Mary Dillow, Meredith Melling and Brent Neale Winston. On Monday morning, word went out that the party would not take place “out of an abundance of caution.”
Then on Tuesday afternoon, a few hours before 500 guests were expected at the much-anticipated opening of Peak, a restaurant on the 101st floor of 30 Hudson Yards, the plug was pulled.
It may be unrelated, but The New York Post had reported that a man who worked at 55 Hudson Yards, a different building within the development, had been infected with coronavirus.
“We are working with City Harvest and God’s Love We Deliver to donate the food from tonight’s event to those in need,” said Alexandra Metz, the director of events at Rhubarb Food, which operates Peak. The restaurant is still expected to open on Thursday.
Fortunately for New York’s social animals, some events are still taking place. As of Tuesday afternoon, “Six,” a Broadway musical about the wives of Henry VIII at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, was scheduled to open on Thursday.
But it remains to be seen whether the famous names on the guest list, including Katie Holmes, Jimmy Fallon and Anna Wintour, will show up.
