Last year’s Village Voice Choice Eats was a lot like that scene in GODZILLA where everyone is screaming and running away from the giant angry lizard as it stomps Tokyo, only in this case they screaming and running away in New York City and they kept stopping at my table for food.

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This year: more of the same. Only we were prepared. Still, how do you prepare for the Foodie Apocalypse? Answer: you try not to die. Pictures, shout-outs and a new Dirt Candy finger food fresh out of the lab – all after the jump.

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So this year we were definitely prepared, but can you ever be truly prepared for The Hands?

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Not the finger food I was talking about.

No, this is what it looks like at your

table as The Hands come for your food.

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After a year of serving our portobello mousse at these kind of public events we were ready for a change, and so this year we spent forever down in the secret Dirt Candy Labs turning our Pumpkin Salad into an appetizer that could be eaten with one hand. The result was an acorn squash mousse on a little piece of toasted baguette with maple-smoked butternut squash on top,  garnished with curried pepitas (pumpkin seeds). Last year we ran out of food early, so this year we were determined to make acorn squash mousse until it filled Dirt Candy from floor to ceiling. We were making it right up until the minute we left, and we were smoking butternut squash like nuts. We thought we had enough, but as we packed to leave it became clear that we were short. Squishing the smoked butternut squash into quart containers for transport it was apparent that we had less than we thought and so we quickly smoked a few more trays of it as we were racing out the door. Disaster (hopefully) averted.

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Our old friend, Table 24.

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Oddly enough, we ended up at the exact same table as last year. I guess table 24 is now the Dirt Candy table. But this year we had some fancy neighbors on either side of us.  On one side we had Fatty Cue, Zak Pelaccio’s new place, although Pelaccio himself wasn’t there, just his workers serving really great deviled eggs. On the other side of us was Kuma Inn, King Phojanakong’s LES restaurant that served as an inspiration for Dirt Candy. Christina, who organizes Choice Eats, read our blog post from last year in which I hero worshipped Kuma Inn and thought it would be nice to put us next to each other. King was really kind and even remembered me! I was, of course, incredibly shy and awkward. They were serving a pork dish that I didn’t try but Kristen, DC’s server, tasted it and gave it two thumbs up.

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Jesus, my sous chef, had to work his other job (yes – he works several) so we coerced a former intern of ours, Anne,  to help out. Thank god she had no idea of what she was getting into or she would have instantly refused.

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Team Dirt Candy: (l to r) Kristen,

Danielle and Anne.

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The doors opened at 6:30 and we were mobbed. Once again, we could not keep up. And still they came…the hands! The hands! The hands! I tried to take a picture of the hands but, like Bigfoot or the Chupacabra, they were too fast for my camera to capture.

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Anne, Danielle and Kristen plated furiously and we were doing our best to hold on. I must have said about 5,000 times, “It’s an Acorn Squash Mousse with Maple Smoked Butternut Squash and Curried Pumpkin Seeds,” and in my nightmares I’m saying it still.

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Dirt Candy’s Tower of Flower. And look

up top! It’s one of the bees from the honey dinner!

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

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But despite our best efforts, by 7:30 we were out of food. We weren’t the first to go down – actually we outlasted quite a few tables. We had brought 750 portions but it still just wasn’t enough.  I felt terrible that we ran out, but at the same time the Dirt Candy kitchen is too small to make more than 750 portions without exploding. I figure that for an 18 seat restaurant to keep up as long as we did, especially while bigger restaurants were getting sucked under the wheels of the bus way before us, we did okay.

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Our many, many, many plates of mousse.

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I want to give a special thanks to our paired beer, Magic Hat No. 9, who kept us supplied with cold bottles of liquid talent all night long (forget Red Bull – beer is my energy drink of choice), and also a big thanks to Perviaz Shallwani who kept bringing the Dirt Candy team food from other tables. We saw a lot of old friends at this event, and made some new ones (Tyler from No. 7: you are expected soon at DC), and I think that while we went down hard at 7:30pm, like an Ultimate Fighter we went down with our pride intact and with a pair of sweaty, muscular thighs wrapped around our face.

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Choice Eats (screaming with rage) taking down

Dirt Candy (on knees).

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(The Village Voice blogs also have some really great pictures of all the different dishes from the event, including ours)

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