‘I’m glad I’m not stuck back here all the time,” Beverly Streuli said as she entered Charlie Trotter’s hot kitchen, where too many chefs to count prepared for a fundraiser to benefit his Culinary Education Foundation. Brave Bev-who has been coming here for 17 years from Greensboro, N.C.-is willing to risk hair and makeup in the kitchen’s heat to sample canapes. Guests may have been expecting the bacon-and-egg ice cream that has diners flocking to guest chef Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck in the UK. Fat chance. Instead, he brought a tasty freeze of green tea and lime mousse poached in a cauldron of smoking liquid nitrogen. Everyone knows the food is great at Trotter’s, but it’s also about friendship and fun. You won’t find that in a restaurant-guide review of Charlie Trotter’s, but the sentiment flowed as smoothly as the Dom Perignon. Everest sommelier Alpana Singh, one of 100 guests, fondly recalled that she met her first Dom at the age of 3, when, after watching Joan Collins’ splashy presentation of a bottle during the opening montage of “Dynasty,” she discovered what her father thought was a well-hidden bottle in their home. Sounds like she had a pretty good Pop.
