We’re celebrating New York City’s vibrant food culture at our annual culinary benefit, where you will enjoy mouth-watering plates by some of NYC’s most exciting chefs—all to raise funds for Housing Works’ lifesaving services!
You’ll get to sample delightful dishes from a showcase of chefs curated by Brooks Headley, founder of Superiority Burger and 2019 finalist for the James Beard Foundation’s award for “Best Chef in NYC”. To accompany your food, we’ll have cocktails, wine, and a selection of beers!
Julia Bainbridge is the former food editor of Atlanta magazine and a James Beard Award–nominated writer. Formerly an editor at Yahoo Food and Bon Appétit, she has also worked at Condé Nast Traveler and Food & Wine, and her writing has appeared in Playboy, Organic Life, Jarry, Brutal, Bake, Paper, Man Repeller, and Food52, where she was the online publication’s first writer in residence. She’s also the host and creator of The Lonely Hour, a podcast about loneliness that’s not a bummer.
Mark Bittman is the author of 20 acclaimed books, including the How to Cook Everything series, the award-winning Food Matters, and The New York Times number-one bestseller, VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00. For more than two decades his popular and compelling stories appeared in the Times, where he was ultimately the lead food writer for the Sunday Magazine and became the country’s first food-focused Op-Ed columnist for a major news publication. Bittman has starred in four television series, including Showtime’s Emmy-winning Years of Living Dangerously. He has written for nearly every major newspaper in the United States and many magazines, and has spoken at dozens of universities and conferences.
Sonia Chopra lives in New York City, where she works at Vox Media as Eater’s director of editorial strategy. In her current role, she leads Eater’s engagement and operations teams and serves as an editorial lead and co-executive producer on Vox Media’s first broadcast TV show, No Passport Required. She has a newsletter about South Asian culture called Namaslay and is working on her first novel.
JJ Goode has written about food and travel for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Gourmet, Saveur, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Men's Vogue, Details and Every Day with Rachael Ray. He has co-authored several cookbooks, including A Girl and Her Pig with April Bloomfield, Truly Mexican with Roberto Santibanez, Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking with Masaharu Morimoto, and Serious Barbecue with Adam Perry Lang.
Daniel cooked for years in some of New York’s top American, Italian, and French restaurants—starting at the age of 13, when he began staging at the legendary restaurant Chanterelle. He spent nearly a year working on organic farms in Europe, where he harvested almonds and Padrón peppers in Spain, shepherded a flock of more than 200 sheep in Italy, and made charcuterie in France. When not working on, thinking about, cooking, and eating food, he blows off steam (and calories) as an instructor of capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian martial art.
Tia Keenan is a writer, cheese specialist, cook, and cheese industry consultant. She is the author of The Art of the Cheese Plate: Pairings, Recipes, Style, Attitude, writes the “Cheese Wisely” column for the Wall Street Journal, and is a regular contributor to Bon Appétit. Her work has been featured in various media outlets, including Food & Wine, The New Yorker, and on The Food Network. She lives in New York with her husband, award-winning sommelier Hristo Zisovski, and their son.
Krishna is a regular contributor for The New York Times, Bon Appétit, The New Yorker, and others, and the author of the cookbook Indian-ish published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2019. She also has a video series where she teaches the basics of said Indian-ish cooking on Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel.
Dan Pashman is the James Beard Award-winning creator and host of The Sporkful food podcast at Stitcher. He’s a contributor to NPR and Slate, and his work has been featured on Radiolab, Planet Money, Morning Edition, and All Things Considered. He’s also appeared on The Today Show, Guy's Grocery Games, and WTF with Marc Maron.
Ruth Reichl is the bestselling author of the memoirs Garlic and Sapphires, Tender at the Bone, and Comfort Me with Apples, and the novel, Delicious! She was editor in chief of Gourmet magazine for ten years. She was executive producer of the two-time James Beard Award-winning Gourmet’s “Diary of a Foodie,” which airs on public television across the country, and editor of the Modern Library Food Series. Before Gourmet, she was the restaurant critic for the New York Times, receiving two James Beard Awards for her work. She lectures frequently on food and culture. Her latest book is a memoir, Save Me the Plums.
Alison Roman is a cook, writer and author of the best selling cookbook Dining In published by Clarkson Potter in 2017. While she works on her second cookbook slated for October 2019, she stays busy as a bi-weekly columnist for the New York Times Cooking section as well as a monthly contributor to Bon Appétit magazine. Originally from Los Angeles, she lives in Brooklyn until she decides to move upstate like everyone else.
Jordana Rothman is Restaurant Editor-at-Large at Food & Wine, and a veteran of Time Out New York, where she held the reins as the magazine’s Food & Drink editor for six years. She’s a respected member of the national food writing community and a frequent contributor to print and digital publications such as Bon Appétit, New York Magazine, Cherry Bombe, Complex, MadFeed, Grub Street and Conde Nast Traveler. Jordana’s first book, co-authored with chef Alex Stupak of New York’s Empellón restaurants, was released in Fall of 2015 under Clarkson Potter. Tacos: Recipes + Provocations was nominated for three prestigious IACP cookbook awards and a James Beard Award for Best Single Subject Cookbook.
Mayukh Sen is a James Beard Award-winning food and culture writer in New York. He won the 2018 James Beard Award for Profile for his Food52 piece on Princess Pamela and was nominated for the 2019 James Beard MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for his Poetry Foundation piece on Maya Angelou’s food writing. He also won for the 2019 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing for his story on Felipe Rojas-Lombardi, published in TASTE. He is currently writing a book of narrative nonfiction, to be published by W.W. Norton & Company, on the immigrant women who shaped food culture in America. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.
Nicole A. Taylor is a food writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She has written for Wine Enthusiast, Food & Wine, Esquire, and the New York Times. Taylor is the author of The Up South Cookbook and recipes in The Last O.G. Cookbook (a TBS sitcom starring Tracy Morgan). Nicole serves on the boards of The Edna Lewis Foundation and EATT (Equity At The Table).
Kimberly Chou Tsun An is a writer, curator and event producer who lives in New York and Detroit. Her writing—from interviews with rapper Nicki Minaj and painter Ellsworth Kelly to literary criticism—has appeared in publications including The Wall Street Journal, Refinery29, and Art in America. She co-directs Food Book Fair, a festival that amplifies the voices of independent creators, women of color and queer folks in food media. She is an advisory board member for Equity at the Table.