Command Performance

Sean Murphy isn’t hungry. True, it’s 7 a.m. and he has a busy day ahead of him—one of the busiest of his life, in fact—but all he can eat is a bun and a cup of coffee. There’s a great restaurant downstairs in the lobby of the hotel, but breakfast is definitely not the most important meal of this particular day.

In exactly 12 hours, in the venerable townhouse of the James Beard Foundation in New York’s Greenwich Village, Sean will present what is called a Performance Dinner. In addition to his staff and some friends who have accompanied him up from Florida, the audience will be a cross section of epicures and foodies, including some of the world’s most knowledgeable—and finicky.

The menu is planned to highlight the food at The Concession, the opulent golf club near Sarasota where Sean is culinary director. Sean’s first visit to the Beard House, in 2005, was under the auspices of his legendary Holmes Beach restaurant, the Beach Bistro. Now he’s been invited back, but with a tradition-breaking twist. This is the first time that a private golf club has been invited for a Beard dinner.

It’s a cold, cloudy morning in New York, with a blustery wind that reminds Sean of his native Nova Scotia. From his hotel window he can see the wet and leafless trees of Gramercy Park. His wife, Susan, is up and working the phones, calling here and there, coordinating the day’s complicated flow chart of events.

So far, so good. True, a container packed with tomato soup and chocolate sauce broke, mixing the two. “Taste it,” Sean told the chef, just in case a Beard House miracle had occurred. But it hadn’t. It tasted awful. Replacement soup and sauce would have to be made. Another task to add to the day’s endless “to do” list.

Sean is going over the menu one more time. It’s a sort of elaborate tasting menu, starting with Roberto’s Farm Salad. Roberto is one of the kitchen workers, and his concoction of greens, strawberries, citrus and tomatoes is topped by a scoop of grapefruit and ginger granita, which melts slowly, like a snow cone, as you eat the salad. Next comes red snapper with pomelo and a Key lime sesame sauce, followed by Sean’s famous Floribbean grouper, with
a coconut and cashew crust. These three dishes typify classic Florida cuisine: fresh fish, and fruits both sweet and tart.

The next two selections display Sean’s signature technique of taking what is generally considered a “fancy” dish and giving it a twist, adding some humbler attitude or accouterment and coming up with a sort of high/low combination. The Gulf Coast holiday pan roast, for instance, is a luxurious takeoff on diner food: foie gras on a focaccio “raft,” floating in a seafood broth made with curry-flavored cream. And the dinner proper ends with grilled domestic lamb lollipops: “Big Kid Candy,” as the menu puts it, herb-grilled and served with rosemary-port demi-glace. And yes, you pick them up with your fingers and nibble the meat off the bone.

Before the dinner itself are some “Passed Smaller Bites.” These will circulate around the back garden room of the Beard House and are crucial to establishing a mood, serving as conversational ice breakers, and putting the diners in the mood for what is to follow. These are fun little things (on the menu they are called “Clever Asides”), and tonight they include bistro sliders and lobster with citrus grits, which may be the most “Sean Murphy” dish imaginable. It’s Canada meets Florida meets the South.

There’s only one problem. The staff has been looking for grits everywhere. It never occurred to Sean that grits would be hard to find in New York City. But they turn out to be nonexistent. There doesn’t seem to be a box of grits on the island of Manhattan.

Sean Murphy was born and raised in the quintessential seafaring town of Halifax, Nova Scotia. His father owned a printing company and his mother was a very bad cook. “She put everything in a great big pot and boiled the bejesus out of it,” he remembers sadly. His love of food comes from his grandmother. She took the other approach to Irish cooking—thick stews that simmer all day, fresh fish seared in a pan, homemade bread and jam.