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March 18, 2009
Taste Testing
by Kellee Terrell
Savor, a Gay Men’s Health Crisis event, serves up fine cuisine to raise needed AIDS funds.
Three hundred New Yorkers dined on a fund-raising feast for Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) called Savor: An Experience in New-American Cuisine and American Pop Art. The March 9 event, held at Tribeca’s Skylight Studios, boasted some of the world’s best chefs: Anne Burrell (The Food Network), Pichet Ong (of the restaurant P*ONG), Anita Lo (Annisa) and Suvir Saran (Dévi). Together, they prepared a stellar four-course meal of ceviche sea scallops with celery and green apple; duck confit; warm potato salad with mustard oil, cilantro and onions; and chevre cheesecake parfait with huckleberries and a walnut cookie crust. Yum!
In addition to the meal, guests were treated to visual and aural treats in the form of artwork from famed pop culture icons Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons and Roy Lichentsteinnd a performance from Tony Award–winning chanteuse Sutton Foster (Shrek: The Musical, The Drowsy Chaperone). The evening’s host was Emmy Award–winner Ted Allen, best known for Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and currently the host of The Food Network’s Chopped. “When they called me and asked to come back and host the second time, I was thrilled,” Allen told POZ. “GMHC does so much wonderful work, and as the face of AIDS has changed, they have really adapted.”
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| From left to right: Chef Suvir Saran, Ted Allen, Chef Anne Burrell, Chef Anita Lo, GMHC's CEO Marjorie Hill, PhD and honoree Robert Bank, Esq. Photo credit: Giovanni Koll |
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While dining on fine cuisine helped draw attendees to the second annual Savor, raising money for the nation’s oldest AIDS service organization took top billing. “With the current economic climate, we have seen an increase in people accessing general services, our meal assistance and career development programs,” said Marjorie Hill, PhD, GMHC’s executive director. Those programs and others will benefit from the $400,000 that was raised through a mix of ticket sales, donations, a silent auction of dozens of items and a public auction of luxury prizes.
The ASO also paid homage to one its own, Robert E. Bank, Esq. An AIDS activist, Bank worked at GMHC for 14 years in numerous positions—most recently as the chief operating officer—and is now the executive vice president for New York’s American Jewish World Service. As he accepted the honor, Bank recalled fond times working at GMHC but reminded the crowd of the mistakes the past presidential administrations made in dealing with HIV—a reluctance to act, an ignorance about facts, and still-enforced travel restrictions against positive tourists and immigrants, to name a few. “If actual children had ran the office,” Bank pondered, “would we have yielded better results? Children ask questions and would have understood that if needle exchange works then we should fund it.”
President Obama, are you listening?
Learn more about GMHC here.
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