Chef Tom Colicchio was the Chef/Partner of ‘Gramercy Tavern’ in NYC when he invited me to come up and do a “Share Our Strength” dinner with him in September of 1999. We’d been to the beautiful restaurant and the more casual ‘Tavern’ side a few time by then and were big fans. And ‘Share Our Strength’ was a charity we, as well as may other chef/restaurateurs believed in very much. Danny Meyer was every bit the gracious host he’s a legend for being. The entrance to the restaurant 42 E. 20th Street was sumptuously bedecked with huge floral arrangements like I’d never seen precedent to this.
My journal from that time notes these days leading up to our dinner and then just after.
9th: Janet and I were at Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles for the Veuve Cliquot “King’s Ball” to mark the millennial passage. Charlie was supposed to go but due to the fighting with Lynn he split France. Daniel Boulud, Elizabeth Blau, Sirio Maccioni, Todd English and others were there. It was amazing! We stayed at The Lancaster Hotel, 7 rue de Berri, Champs-Élysées, Paris.
10th: We had dinner in Paris at “Maxence” with Mireille Giuliano, President of Veuve Cliquot.
12th: We flew home.
25th: We flew to NYC for an S.O.S. dinner we did at ‘Gramercy Tavern’ with Tom Colicchio. Dinner at ‘Gramercy’ that night.
26th: We did the S.O.S. dinner event with Tom.
27th: We had lunch at ‘Daniel’ at 12:30 and the flew home at 7:30 p.m.
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In the ensuing years Tom went on to do some other stellar projects that most of you are familiar with. I was his guest on ‘Top Chef’ appearing twice with he, Palma and another guest chef and had a fine time. Even better times were when we would be at some after party to an event and he’d have his guitar and me my harps.
Chef Michael Anthony took the reins in 2006 and has served the community admirably. It is his book that I speak of in the video here. I hope you get yourself a copy if you have not already. I was given this as gift by one of my favorite team members of the original NORMAN’S, Kevin Mahan. Kevin came up the ranks with us from being a runner to one of our finest servers. He accompanied a few of us when we went up to NYC to do an event at the Beard House. He landed a job working for Danny Meyer soon after and we were all extremely happy for Kevin. Years pass and years do and he worked his way up there as well eventually becoming General Manager and a Partner. An immense accomplishment and testimony to his passion for service. He worked on this book, I am sure. Their combined talents along with other have wrought a world class book celebrating a world class restaurant. I cannot wait to return. In the meantime I will enjoy and cook out of this Treasure Book!