Gossip Central

Food Bank of New York’s Can Do Dinner

The carpet was orange at Cipriani Wall Street, for the annual Food Bank of New York’s Can Do Dinner this week. The Four Tops in white sequined jackets as well as Neil Patrick Harris and his partner David Burtka basked in its glow. One prize auctioned at the gala was a meal cooked by Cordon-Bleu trained chef, Burtka for your guests at your home. The couple would take over your kitchen, Harris acting as mixologist. With Christie’s Lydia Fenet keeping it fast and funny, that item went for a tidy $30,000 with the money going to help the hungry. Among the honorees, Jose Andres was feted for the great work he’s done this year, particularly in bringing food to Puerto Rico still recovering from two hurricanes two years ago, when the island suffered food and electricity shortages. You do remember a certain orange person tossing some Bounty to the hungry populace.

John Lloyd Young Sings Songs of Love at the Café Carlyle

Photo: David Andrako

“You’re just too good to be true,” goes the lyric of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” a signature hit for John Lloyd Young. Now in his eighth residency at the Café Carlyle, the line, the first of the night, also describes his dreamboat performance. Some men just don’t get old: Dark glasses cannot hide John Lloyd Young’s dimple-chinned prom date good looks, but then again, his music does not age either. Just ask his fans who follow wherever he plays, and return to the Carlyle night after night.

Chef Flynn: “Don’t Hold the Salt:” The Hamptons International Film Festival Celebrates Summerdocs in its Tenth Year

Under a makeshift tent, a staging spot for plating his culinary creations at the Brock residence in East Hampton, Flynn McGarry, a phenomenon as a young chef with his own Lower East Side restaurant, Gem, and a new documentary about him, Chef Flynn, shook hands, his fingers coated in egg yolk. “That’s how you want your chef,” smiled Flynn, at the party celebrating him, the movie about him, and the Hamptons International Film Festival’s Summerdocs 10th Anniversary: “Enjoy my food, and my life,” he told the crowd. He is 19. His Beef Tartare on a grilled lettuce cup, beautifully situated on trays, was a delight to look at, fleurettes with a sprinkle of sesame seed, and even better to eat.

Carla Hall Bucks Food Trends: Stirring the Pot with Florence Fabricant

Carla Hall is all about cooking with love. Sharing her food notes and anecdotes with Florence Fabricant at Guild Hall’s popular series, “Stirring the Pot,” the two foodies could not agree more about the limiting nature of food trends. For example, who says that beets must always be served with goat cheese? Duh. Well someone decades ago made that combo a standard and now diners expect that. Cooking with love is way more intuitive about what can go with what, and what is fresh and available.

Remembering Anthony Bourdain

The irreverence of Anthony Bourdain’s CNN series, “Parts Unknown” always struck me as a sign that behind this foodie’s yen for travel and exotic eats was a beat soul. One segment had him on an island off Italy fighting with the fishermen. In Tangier, a city I know well, he found the funkiest place to shoot a crackerjack Moroccan feast. His programs did not feel over-produced. He allowed for the mayhem of spontaneity. And I loved that.

Waiting for Alec Baldwin at the Guild Hall Gala

Yes, G. E. Smith previewed Guild Hall’s first annual guitar masters festival, to take place in July, but that was not the only music at this year’s winter celebration of Guild Hall. Honored for her career in the visual arts, Audrey Flack, brought her History of Art band to The Rainbow Room to perform her tribute to Jackson Pollock on banjo and spoons. Her feminist take on the iconic painter dovetails with the current Me Too movement, and as she is quick to tell you, “he came on but nothing happened. He was way too drunk.”

Variety’s Salute to Service: Honoring Those Who Stand Up

Whenever I see Lee and Bob Woodruff, I know the event is going to be serious, and I’m going to laugh. At Variety’s inaugural Salute to Service luncheon this week at Cipriani on Broadway, the brainchild of Gerry Byrne, vice chair of Penske Media and a Vietnam War veteran, Bob Woodruff got up to introduce Caroline Hirsch of Caroline’s, the city’s premier comedy club. Their relationship goes back to when she saw a documentary about him, a correspondent who was severely injured in the Iraq War. She was looking for a way to help those returning from combat and they, with Lee Woodruff and Andrew Fox, began their annual Stand Up for Heroes event. Soon Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, and others, came to deliver the most outrageous monologues to benefit veterans and those who serve. What started at Town Hall, grew to the Beacon Theater, and now takes place at Madison Square Garden. It is a never-to-be-missed evening, with the most important attendees, our military and their families.

Jessica Molaskey and John Pizzarelli at the Café Carlyle

Guitarist John Pizzarelli and singer Jessica Molaskey are man and wife, and married in music. Headlining the Café Carlyle this week, their act is a sublime mix called “The Little Things You Do Together” after a Stephen Sondheim tune; they perform standards such as Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields’ “A Fine Romance,” a Joni Mitchell favorite, “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” and Sondheim’s classic “Children Will Listen” and “Finishing the Hat.” Jessica sits back as John does “Baubles, Bangles, and Beads,” and then exclaims, “Now you know why we are together for 20 years. He had me at ‘baubles.’” Cute, yes, and their banter works as well onstage as it does on the radio, even when they plug their respective albums, such as her new “Portraits of Joni,” urging your purchase. (They have a kid in college.) Yes, they can sing!

Florence Fabricant Stirs the Pot at Guild Hall

When I spoke to longtime New York Times food and wine writer Florence Fabricant just before her entertaining “Stirring the Pot” series resumes its residency at Guild Hall this weekend, she was deep into writing her fall preview of new restaurants. The August interviews with chefs, she notes with pride, “gradually built an audience,” hitting the Zeitgeist fascination with all things food, and reflect her expertise and easy manner with celebrated guests. Her columns, “Off the Menu” and “Front Burner,” focus on eateries, opening, closing, or branching out: “A genuinely new restaurant is a “Front Burner” item,” she says about her column which also focuses on new products and events that are noteworthy: “I get a ton of pitches about flavored waters that will enhance your life. I say, if you are going to get thirsty, drink water.” A new vinegar or mustard does not cut it with Fabricant: “To catch my eye, it has to be astonishing.”

“Fly Into the Sun:” Cocktails at the Watermill Center

The grounds at Watermill Center, Robert Wilson’s art retreat on the east end are always difficult to navigate, what with slippery grasses and rock paths. It would have been good to follow Daedalus’ flight, as the evening’s theme suggested, flying high—but not too high-- into the sun. Alas in myth, the sun’s heat melts his wings and he perishes. That’s what happens when you soar too high. Evoking this myth as well as Lou Reed’s lyric, this year’s pre-gala cocktails had hubris galore on the paths through the woods. And there, in the large courtyard, a wall boasts, “SHE OUTWITS HIM/ SHE OUTLIVES HIM.” On its other side, artists, formal in black suits, one from Lithuania, graffiti with spray paint, the art called “Too M@ch Talk.” These days, walls say much.