The Hot 10 Party for Feast or Fashion Was Baller

We threw a party. People showed up. Chefs and editors and fashionable types. Maybe it was the four floors of lower Manhattan real estate with indoor pool, rooftop terrace, and grand-ballroom-size living room. Maybe it was the wide array of celebrities and food-world-fashionistas, including Kyle MacLachlan, Danny Bowien, Amar'e Stoudemire, Andy Ricker, Warby Parker's Neil Blumenthal, and our very own Adam Rapoport. But probably it was the fact that we had the ten of the best chefs in America stationed all over the house, serving up their signature dishes from our September issue.

Abraham Conlon from Fat Rice fed party goers—what else?—fat rice, his Macanese specialty, and it was astounding: piles of clams, shrimp as big as your fist, buckets of ghost-pepper hot sauce. Terrence Gallivan and Seth Siegel-Gardner from the Pass & Provisions wowed us with their "ham & eggs": chicharrónes made from whole pig skins, which arrived still crackling, served with caviar dip. And this year's hottest of the ten chefs, Alma's Ari Taymor made all our knees weak with his seaweed and tofu beignets with lime mayonnaise. Feast or Fashion couldn't have been kicked off any better.

In a rare moment of down time, Taymor paused to reflect. "You know, six months ago, I thought we were going to close," he said. "Now we're doing triple tops, and our next free seat isn't until sometime in October. We had a lot of opportunities to compromise our vision, and we could have become a decently successful middling restaurant. I'm glad we stuck to our vision." Here's to high standards paying off.

Check out photos from the bash in our slideshow.