Dan's Papers - June 22, 2007

We went to three fundraisers this past Saturday night. The season has begun. And the guest list at each one will be long every single Friday and Saturday night until Labor Day. There's a whole army of us who try to go to as many as we can.

What I noticed about last Saturday night, however, was that there was a serious problem with the food. The first fundraiser was for the Group for the East End and it was held at the Woelffer Estate Vineyard in Sagaponack. We milled around under a big white tent in a field and the waiters came around with Mojitos, white wine, red wine, some gulf shrimp in cocktail sauce, seedless grapes rolled in creamy Roquefort and pistachios, bruscetta with grilled fennel, sundried tomatoes and crumbled goat cheese, salmon and crab cakes with fresh tarragon mayonnaise, belgian pommes frites in homemade mayonnaise served in paper cones, grilled croque monsieurs of thin sliced ham, gruyere and Dijon and vegetable and shiitake mushroom spring rolls with sweet soy chutney dip. There was also a bar where you could get anything you wanted to drink and, on the bar counters, there were bread sticks in hot sauce.

The second fundraiser we went to was a benefit for the Natural History Museum on the Sag Harbor Turnpike in Bridgehampton. There, waiters walked around with sweet corn fritters with maple mustard sauce, buffalo chicken bites with celery spears and blue cheese dipping sauce, wild mushroom and leek empanadas with fresh thyme, miniature crab cakes with chipotle aioli and mini pork barbecue sandwiches with slaw.

The third fundraiser wasn't exactly a fundraiser, but was a private party to celebrate Real Estate Power Brokers with Debra Schoeneman and Phil Witt. It was held in Mecox at the home of Andrew Borrok and was presented by Hampton Style Magazine, which is part of the Dan's Papers family. Waiters walked around with trays of Dover sole served with curry leeks, shot glasses of gazpacho, mousseron mushroom risotto, lamb with roasted figs and a marmalade of oignons and bison with peeled English peas.

At all three of these events, a four-course sit-down dinner followed the cocktail party and in every case, we declined to go because we had all these other things to go to.

Honestly, my stomach was a mess Sunday morning. And there are thirteen more weeks to go.

I think that for all of us, and there are many of us, who are multiple-partygoers, there should be a coordination about what is served at these different parties. I suggest there be a "food theme," for each weekend that could be announced ahead of time. There could be Italian weekend, Japanese weekend, Chinese weekend and so forth and so on.

But I do think this is going to be difficult to achieve, and so what I want to do on these pages is shine a light on this situation. We have got to show the powers that be what we have to go through trying to wade through this horrendous display of culinary cacophony.

To accomplish this, I ask you, our readers, to go out next weekend and send me a list of wherever you went and what food was served. I've opened a new blog at "Dan's Blog" on www.danshamptons.com for you.

What good is it to have these fundraisers if the givers die?

By the way, there was no dress theme at either the first or third party, but at the second party it was supposed to be cowboys and cowgirls. We put on bandanas in the car for the second party, then took them off when we left.

There is more than $20 million to be raised for charity at fundraisers and parties in the Hamptons this summer. It's a big job. After we get the food fixed up, I suggest we go after coordinating the dress requirements.