Last Thursday was the Let Us Eat Local event down at the South Sea Seaport on the Water Taxi Beach. It was also the night that the massive rain storm/hurricane/tornado/horrifying weather event smashed into New York City. Let Us Eat Local took place outdoors. In a giant tent.

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Read the tale told by the survivors after the jump.

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It started so innocently. There I was at Dirt Candy getting all my carrot buns ready for Let Us Eat Local and there were no major disasters at the restaurant that day, we were ready to go on time and everything was quiet. Too quiet. Team DC and I clambered into a cab and headed down to the South Street Seaport and that’s where it all started to go wrong. The cab driver refused to believe there was a back entrance to the pier and insisted on dumping us several blocks away. With all of our crates.

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What it looked like (later that night).

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Jesus and I are used to this because we have to lug our crates for blocks at pretty much every event, but the two event n00bs with us, Diana and Marie, had never experienced Dirt Candy Event Luck before and they were protesting as I strapped crates to them like pack mules and led them down the street to look for the event location. And look. And look. And look. Maybe I should have gotten better directions? At one point I stopped to chat with some unruly local teens who recognized me from Iron Chef but Jesus was not amused and cut the conversation short. Finally an event organizer found us and whisked us to a destination that was far, far away from where we were. So far that I don’t think we ever would have reached it if she hadn’t showed up and led us to safety. I’d like to say that other chefs got lost on the way, too, but no. Just us.

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Poor Almond. Their only crime was having their

table placed inside our bad luck field. For this mistake

they would pay, and pay, and pay….

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Finally we reached our station inside the big, white tent. Still feeling good, certain that our bad luck was out of the way now that we had all wandered the streets for an hour. All of us hustle and set up the Dirt Candy station with plenty of time to spare and then we waited. And waited. And waited. Jesus gave me a look. This look says, “You know it only takes us 20 minutes to set up so why do you make us arrive 2 hours early.” And I give him a look that says, “I don’t know. I worry? I get stressed out? I like to be prepared? I get to the airport 3 hours early. I show up for dinner with friends half an hour early. This is just the way I am.” And he gives me another look that says, “Please stop giving me looks.”

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The Dirt Candy station pre-setting up.

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Team Dirt Candy at the station. Completely

set up except for…food.

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Jesus giving someone a “look.”

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Team Dirt Candy on one of the rare

occasions when we’re all smiling at the same time.

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The one wrinkle at this point is the lack of electricity at our station. It doesn’t feel like a big deal since they knew we needed power for the induction burners so we can steam the carrot buns, and the organizers make it sound like we’ll be all powered up in mere moments. Time passes. More reassurances are made. The restaurant next to us, Almond, doesn’t have electricity either. And the lights behind our booth keep blowing the breakers. I’m still confident this will all be resolved by Daniel, the man who appears to be in charge of the electricity. But after a while there is still no electricity and Daniel stops talking to me. Then he goes missing completely.

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Daniel, where did you go?

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The storm approacheth.

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By now, the rain has started. It’s sheeting down and while we are inside tents, nothing can stop this torrential downpour. The floor floods and major waterfalls start gushing down from the ceiling. Amazingly, the event organizers have flip flops for everyone whose shoes are soaked through by now, which is a really nice touch. Sort of like the way Alain Ducasse at Essex House used to have a special chair for a lady’s purse.

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Finally, the event starts and we still have no electricity – it’s like we’re trapped in the Dark Ages before there were electric lights and induction burners and everyone lived in the mud. Jesus and I make a display bun, just like the display food you see in the windows of Japanese restaurants, and we sit it out on the table all by itself.

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Prep table with empty plates waiting

for piping hot carrot buns.

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Display carrot bun. And no, we would not

sell the floor model, no matter how many times

people asked for it.

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Suddenly – electricity! Fresh power surging through the outlets! But not at our station, nor at the station for Almond, who have the bad luck to be next to the Dirt Candy booth and thus well within the influence of our bad luck bubble. Candle 79 lets us use their butane burners for a bit, but that’s not enough. It’s 2 hours into the event and we have no food. People are milling around the Dirt Candy station like barracuda, hungry for carrots.

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What you can’t see is the water pouring

down on everyone.

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Then I met Mike Gibson, the chef at the Water Taxi kitchen. He becomes my own personal hero when he says, “Why don’t you use the Water Taxi kitchen?”

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Mike Gibson, man of the hour and my

personal hero that night.

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Jesus in the Water Taxi kitchen. Will

our crazy plan work?

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Success! We have carrot buns!

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Buns start to emerge and by this point people have been waiting on them for so long that everyone wants one. They’ve taken on near-mythological status due to scarcity, “Have you seen the carrot buns? I saw one at the table for Dirt Candy. It looked lonely. Are the buns coming yet?” The barracuda swarm and strike. By 9:15 we are completely out of the 500 buns I thought I’d have to throw away. (And I apologized to Almond for being too close to Dirt Candy’s bad luck by sneaking them into the Water Taxi kitchen so they could heat up their soup.)

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Diana and I feeding the carrot-eating barracuda.

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Like the survivor of some cataclysmic event, or an Academy Award winner, I am full of gratitude right now. Thank you, barracuda people, for eating all my carrot buns. Thank you Mike Gibson for letting us into your kitchen. Thank you everyone who gave me food and flip flops and guided me and my team in from the wilderness. I promise, Dirt Candy caused lots of the bad luck that night, but we had nothing to do with the storm.

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