Notes from the James Beard Awards 2009: Day 1

I know, I know. Late pass to me on not being a hyper fast blogger. But dude, I was working and tired as hell when it was over so there. I'm finally recovered AND done with my internship at Pure Food and Wine (more on that shortly) so I'm ready to type!
May 3, 2009
Super super rainy day. I had volunteered to work the "chef's night out" party, one of the kick off events for the James Beard Awards. The party was held at At Vermilion, the relatively new NY branch of the Chicago Restaurant Vermilion. I arrived at 3 PM to report for duty along with another student from the Institute of Culinary Education I appeared to be the only Natural Gourmet student there and most of the others were from ICE or the Culinary Institute of America. After suiting up (instead of my usual chef's cap or bandanna I wore a rather smart looking hounds tooth scarf, fetchingly matching my checked pants!)I reported for duty. Chef De Cuisine Ipshita Pall assigned me to get to work frying cakes for the party. One of the signature desserts is a piece of deep fried cake flavored with plantain and spices and paired with luxurious sauces. having worked only in a raw restaurant and attending a cooking school which doesn't deep fry much I had no real experience with the fry station but got the hang of it pretty quickly. As they were expecting about 1000 guests we had to fry about 900 pieces of cake which took about 4 hours. Although my hand took a bit of a beating it was surprisingly satisfying and I think I only burned a few of the cakes which was pretty lucky. Working alongside the line cooks and at the direction of the two women chefs and expediter Eli (formerly of of At Vermilion, now at Table 8) was really wonderful.
When the party started I was assigned to the plating station inside the the kitchen and also two stations in the upstairs party to make sure that they didn't run out of food. It got hectic but was really fun. I sadly didn't get to see my hero Rick Bayless who I understand was there but did see a bunch of food network B listers and some top cheftestants and the winner of season one.
One of the reasons I was excited to work this was the the owner of the restaurant and the executive chef Maneet Chauhan (as well as the aforementioned chef de cuisine) are all women. It was interesting to see the dynamics between the staff and the women in charge, particularly since there were some vast cultural differences between them. I noted that the main key to bridging these differences is humor and of course, good tasting food.