NYC: Celebrating The Tonys With Todd English And A 100-Foot Raw Bar
I popped over to the Tonys afterparty last night — yes, I happily went out at 11 p.m. on a Sunday right after Mad Men — to admire the glittery Broadway stars, catch a few bars of songs from "Once," the musical-based-on-a-film that cleaned up at last night's awards and chow down on the best of what the Plaza Hotel Food Hall has to offer. I asked Todd English, chef and genius behind the Food Hall, what it's like to put together a late-night feast for 1,700. His advice? Give the people what they want. And Broadway folks? Well, you can imagine they work up an appetite, what with all the tap-dancing.
"We're putting out three of our top-selling pastas and setting up the raw bar and sushi bar, pizzas, sliders, all the traditional dishes that showcase what we do," said English, gesturing towards a massive wood-fired pizza oven. It wouldn't be a world-class hotel famous for fine food without one of those. "This time of night, people want carbs and everybody's starving."
English, a fan of Broadway himself, was recently one of the lucky ticketholders for Book of Mormon. Could he create a dish inspired by the famously ireverrent show? He looked thoughtful and introspective for a moment, then laughed and admitted he didn't know.
"In many ways I feel like we're in the entertainment business too — the theater of going out to dinner. It's the same kind of expectations, you want to have fun and enjoy food and you're either paying for a ticket to a show or to have a great meal."
Or on a really great night, both.
Roast beef sliders with fries — also in attendance, crab cake and mini-Reubens.
Best filling in a wonton wrapper goes to...these dumplings!
Don't call yourself one of the most famous hotels in the world unless you have a 900-degree wood-fired pizza oven going at all times.
Beet and goat cheese ravioli with pesto. That's right, 900 of them.
Some other numbers from last night's post-awards feast:
- 8 pounds of frosting on Billy's Cupcakes
- 40 pounds of sushi rice
- 75 pounds of lobster meat from Luke's Lobster Rolls
- 325 pounds of short ribs
- 500 mini brioches filled with duck and foie gras
- 450 pounds of flank steak
- 1,600 mini salmon ceviches
- 2,000 empanadas.
This being a men's website, I won't delve into how many pairs of Spanx went into keeping me in that dress. But it was three.