Well, that was fun. I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of the rock n’roll chef lifestyle before, but with the Starchefs Congress in town I got a chance to live the dream, and it made me feel kinda cool.

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We’re back to normal business here at Dirt Candy, but after the break: humiliating stories, beaten by ice, lots of pictures and the flower arrangement that almost killed me.

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The first day was Sunday and the other eleven Rising Star Chefs and and I had a panel to do.

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This is our audience. The view from behind the table!

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The much larger audience for co-presenters

Matt & Ted Lee. They are apparently a bigger

draw than the rest of us put together.

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Our “Farm Lounge.” This probably seemed like

an awesome idea on paper but note to

designers: hay is not comfortable.

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There was a reception that night and then a bunch of us went out afterwards. An after-party! I never get invited to after-parties! In an attempt to sound cool, when someone asked if there was an after-after-party I said, “Yeah, weren’t you invited?” They challenged me: “So where is it?” We were in a hotel bar. Everyone was looking at me. My lie was being called out. So what did I do? Told a bigger lie. “It’s in room 709,” I said. Now the talk was moving around the room: “Did you know there’s an after-after-party in room 709?” And then came the moment I was dreading…”Let’s go to room 709,” someone said.

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Pastry chef Will Goldfarb and Antoinette Bruno,

the woman who runs Starchefs.

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Luce Abrate is the woman on the ground

at Starchefs, the one with the worst job of

all: she is…the chef wrangler.

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So there we went, a group of chefs I barely knew, following me to the room 709 after-after-party. We got to the seventh floor, we found room 709, there were people inside. I went up to knock because when you’ve told enough lies there comes a point where you just need to ride it out to the bitter end. And then, the door opened and a guy came out. “Um, hey, is there an after-after-party?” I asked. “Maybe,” he said. “Where did you hear it was?” “In, uh, room 709?” I said. “Can’t be,” he said. “That’s my room.” And then I realized who he was: Jeremy Fox of Ubuntu.

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Ubuntu is the big vegetarian restaurant on the West Coast that Frank Bruni called one of the best restaurants in America. I’ve never met Jeremy Fox but we’ve emailed before and I think of him as my nemesis: we both run vegetarian fine dining restaurants; he’s West Coast, I’m East Coast. But I’m the Penguin and he’s the Batman because every time I go to do something he’s gotten there first and I’m foiled again. He turned out to be very nice, however, and and I used his appearance as a distraction and escaped back downstairs. No one mentioned room 709 again, thank god.

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The next day there were a few things to do, and then on Tuesday night it was the big reception and gala to-do. I was going to get the award that night, but the other Rising Star chefs and I also had to work the party, providing food for over 600 guests. So it’s like you get an Oscar, but you also have to cater the Vanity Fair after-party the same night. At past events, I’ve always had my table right next to Gramercy Tavern and they always have massive, gorgeous flower arrangements that make me feel about two inches tall. But this time I vowed that I would be prepared for this thing. I was going to make a pink gerbera daisy flower ball!

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It was harder than I expected.

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Much, much harder.

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Building the ball…what have I

gotten us into? For the record, this

is the third. The first one I bought would have

needed 210 gerbera daisies to cover it.

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It turned out alright, though.

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Of course, I got there and found out that we were next to Morimoto’s table and they had this…

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Tower of frozen seafood and ice…you

have defeated me once again!

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But they didn’t have awesome vegetable

lollipops. Fear the power of my lollipops.

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Set-up went quietly enough…

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…but the event itself was chaos and

wall-to-wall people.

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Dirt Candy server, Kristen, keeps  a watchful

vigil over many, many bottles of wine.

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Daytime prep, Danielle, and my sous

chef, Jesus, before the crowds attacked.

We were happier and younger then.

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Once again, the portobello mousse…

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…courtesy of our awesome purveyor, Riviera. They

were kind enough to donate the mushrooms

for tonight’s event which was a total surprise to me

and just more evidence that they’re

extremely nice people.

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Things went on until after 4 in the morning and while it was fun to be a hard-partying chef for once and get invited out to the late night chef drinking orgies, I don’t think I could make a habit of it. After all, this event also reminded me of another, more important, thing…

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I am just a very small fish in a

really, really big pond.

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(Official Starchefs coverage of the Congress)

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(And, of course, congratulations to all the other Rising Star chefs. It was a real honor to be named with them. Here’s a list of all their names.)