Event Location: Boylan Studios, Starrett Lehigh Building, 14th Floor, 601 West 26th St., NYC Dan Barber Michael Anthony Blue Hill Michelle Antonishek Gramercy Tavern Tomas Bengtsson Aquavit Susan David Tabla

Rémy Fünfrock
Café Boulud

Mollie Katzen
The Moosewood Cookbook

Rick Laakkonen
Ilo

Zarela Martinez
Zarela

Tom Valenti
Ouest

Michael White
Fiamma

Thursday, September 19 VIP admission 6:00-7:00 P.M., $125 members and guests; General admission 7:00-9:00 P.M., $75 members and guests

For more information and to find out how to purchase tickets, please call (212) 286-5326 or check out www.newyorkerreaderlink.com.

Gather some of the most imaginative chefs in the city. Challenge them to concoct a dish based on or inspired by a favorite work of literature. And then invite curious foodies to wander from dish to dish, from book to book, savoring the deliciously intriguing creations. From a juicy Yorkshire pudding worthy of Dickens to a delicate tea cake suited to Jane Austen, the menu of possibilities is as infinite as the literary imagination. But this isn't merely a flight of literary fancy. A Moveable Feast is a real live event to celebrate The New Yorker's first-ever food issue (August 19 and 26, 2002), a double issue that examines cuisine and culture.

From a Beardie perspective, a feast for the intellect is fine as far as it goes, but it's even better when comestibles (give us a break, it's The New Yorker—we had to use a big word) complement the food for thought. Ergo, The New Yorker's A Moveable Feast, which has borrowed its name from Ernest Hemingway's beloved paean to Paris. The magazine's marketing department has assembled a cast of characters who can sauté a sea bream or concoct a clafoutis faster than you can say "once upon a time."

You may already know that Blue Hill chef/owner Dan Barber and executive chef Michael Anthony were picked by Food & Wine as Best New Chefs for 2002. But did you know they share a taste for poetry? The pair selected a beautiful Pablo Neruda ode to a tomato as their literary inspiration. CIA-trained Michelle Antonishek was recently promoted from assistant to pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern. She'll be whisking and whipping to the cadences of Roald Dahl's childhood classic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Swedish-trained Tomas Bengtsson is the right-hand man of everybody's favorite haute Swedish chef, Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit. Bengtsson's dish, herring sushi with green tea mustard, takes its inspiration from a book set in the land of green tea—Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha. (Samuelsson, in a New Yorker-esque aside, adds that Memoirs' detailed descriptions of moods, emotions, and thoughts parallels the experience of cooking and eating, which is also full of details and complexities.)

Tabla pastry chef Susan David will be taking a page from Indian writer Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, one of her "very favorite books. It ties in with the kind of food I'm doing here at Tabla. The multicultural aspects of his writing go along with the multicultural food we do." Pre-Tabla, David did dessert time at Lespinasse, Tribakery, and Gramercy Tavern. To anyone who has dined at New York Times three-star Café Boulud, it should come as no surprise that pastry chef Rémy Fünfrock selected Remembrance of Things Past as his inspiration. Proust's madeleines may be the most famous cakes in literature, and Fünfrock's delicate, pillowy version at Boulud are arguably the best outside France. No wonder. Fünfrock was executive pastry chef at Roger Vergé's Michelin three-star Moulin de Mougins before coming to New York. Frances Mayes's tale of Tuscan discovery, Under the Tuscan Sun, was a natural for Fiamma's Michael White, whose deceptively simple Italian cookery recently earned three stars for Fiamma from Times critic William Grimes. Grimes praised the chef's "natural impulse to clear away clutter, to clarify rather than obscure, to nudge gently rather than to push."

Mexican-born Zarela Martinez's spirited and scrumptious Zarela may feel like a party every night, but Martinez's book of choice is very serious indeed; Joan Haslip's The Crown of Mexico: Maximilian and His Empress Carlota chronicles the Austrian emperor installed in Mexico by France. Maximilian introduced Mexicans to food like crêpes and cream, Martinez explained, which over the years fused with the native cuisine, as exemplified by the classic crêpes of huitlacoche, her dish for this Moveable Feast.

We don't want to give away the whole story here. What books will Mollie Katzen, author of the seminal The Moosewood Cookbook; Rick Laakkonen of Times three-star Ilo; and Tom Valenti of Ouest ("I loved this place," S. Irene Virbila wrote of Ouest in the Los Angeles Times) dip into to fire their culinary imaginations? Buy a ticket and chew on the answer. VIP tickets offer early admission (6:00 to 7:00 P.M.), a wine tasting with a noted sommelier, and previews of the chefs' creations.

DuPont, the presenting sponsor of A Moveable Feast, will showcase its range of kitchen and home products, from Stainmaster carpeting to Corian® tabletops. DuPont's generous sponsorship of this event is part of the company's bicentennial celebration. A Silent Auction will feature dinner at the restaurants of the participating chefs, a weekend at the Hotel du Pont, elegant Baccarat crystal with Corian® solid surface, a complete set of cookware coated with Teflon non-stick, and much more. The evening's hosts are our very own Len Pickell and New Yorker vice-president and publisher David Carey.

Proceeds from the evening will benefit The James Beard Foundation and the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund, which helps the families of food, beverage, and hospitality workers who died last year in the attack on the World Trade Center.