The table seemed to go on forever. Dozens of place settings ran down the center of a sprawling tent on chef Einat Admony’s Kerhonkson lawn, where nine chefs were about to serve a meal that would eventually total more than 15 courses.
The fourth annual Nine Chefs, One Table, held September 6 in support of the James Beard Foundation, brought Admony together with a starry lineup for 2026. This year’s visiting chefs were: Esther Choi, Miriam Milord, Viet Pham, Ilan Hall, Spencer Coplan, Timon Balloo, Ali Saboor and Antony Nassif. They came from kitchens around the country, but the dinner was a perfect showcase of the bounty of the Hudson Valley at the tail end of summer.
Lawn Service
Before anyone sat down, guests gathered across the lawn at various stations to sample cocktails and small bites. Guests were treated to appetizers from CookUnity chefs Maribel Rivero and Vanessa Cantave, helping themselves to Peruvian cod ceviche with ají amarillo and leche de tigre, Haitian patties filled with habanero epis chicken, and crostini topped with charred eggplant, garlic confit, and pickled beets.
On an adjacent table, Dorasti dispensed osetra caviar bumps with gold flake directly onto outstretched hands. The bar offered a small, but mighty cocktail menu, allowing diners to choose between the Cassis in the Catskills, made with Isolation Proof gin, Current Cassis, lemon, and mint, and the Bermuda Storm, made with Loren Hotel Barrel Reserve Rum, pineapple, lemon, and finished with Goslings ginger beer, as well as wine offerings from Segura Viudas.
Nine Chefs, One Table is part of the Friends of James Beard Benefits series of independently organized events supporting the foundation’s work in the restaurant industry, which extends beyond its well-known awards to include business and leadership training, industry research, and food-policy advocacy for independent restaurants. “By highlighting excellence on the plate and beyond the plate,” a JBF representative told the crowd, “we’re helping to inspire people beyond the food to support and guide their local communities.”
From there, dinner unfolded family-style, with dishes arriving in waves throughout the evening. As each course reached the table, the chef, or chefs, behind it stepped up to introduce themselves and explain what they had made and their inspiration, turning the meal into part dinner and part Ted Talk from the people cooking it.
For the next few hours, the excellence on the plate came with an unusual amount of collaboration behind it.
Many Hands, Many Courses
Courses belonged to individual chefs and, just as often, to combinations of them. Admony and Timon Balloo collaborated on hummus and grilled eggplant, using a colorful assortment grown in Admony’s own garden. Balloo, who has been cooking for 35 years, looked over the haul of orange, Turkish, purple, and other varieties and admitted some were eggplants he had “never seen in my life.”
Ilan Hall and Viet Pham took pan con tomate somewhere less expected. Local bread was grilled and brushed with garlic from Hall’s garden, then layered with tomatoes, smoked salmon mousse, and Dorasti caviar. “We wanted to recreate the feeling of a fancy bagel,” Hall told the table.
Antony Nassif of Hen House served Lebanese-inspired kafta made with Hilltop Farm Wagyu, accompanied by tomato tabbouleh, crispy rice, perilla, and tahini mole. Hall followed with oyster mushroom kebabs with pickled vegetables, toum, and scallion ash, while Balloo returned with a Thai-style heirloom tomato salad.
With tomatoes that good, Balloo told the crowd, “you don’t need to do much.” His version dressed them with coconut nam pla, Thai basil, and chile oil.
Viet Pham brought one of his specialties from Salt Lake City’s Pretty Bird: hot chicken tenders topped with pickled chile, toasted garlic, and shallots and a tangle of Vietnamese herbs. He singled out rau răm, or Vietnamese coriander, as particularly important to the dish. “It’s very distinctive,” he explained. “It really makes the chicken.”
Among chefs who had traveled in from New York City, Florida, Utah, and elsewhere, Kingston’s Restaurant Kinsley executive chef Spencer Coplan represented the Ulster County home team. “I’m the local,” he announced, before introducing a whole roasted red grouper. He had salt-cured the fish to firm its skin, filled it with fresh herbs and citrus, then “lathered a lot of mayonnaise on it” before grilling, a trick that kept the fish from sticking while helping the skin crisp.
The grouper came with what Coplan called a Southern-style bean and corn succotash: fava, green, black, and purple beans alongside pattypan squash and cherry tomatoes. “Just the highlight of the end of summer. All the best flavors the Hudson Valley has to offer,” he said. Green chile salsa verde and fresh herbs and flowers finished the dish.
Ali Saboor served hashoo mahi black cod with tamarind, saffron butter, and herbed rice, while Coplan and Nassif joined forces on squash skordalia with pumpkin, Aleppo salsa macha, and za’atar honey. Admony followed with a wood-fired leg of lamb carrying Persian flavors of preserved lemon, pistachio, and herb chimichurri.
By then, even the people running the dinner had lost count of what was coming out of the kitchen. “We’re starting to get to the point where we can no longer keep track of the dishes on two hands,” Chef Einat announced. “We got three more coming for you.”
One was summer corn and kimchi tahdig, a collaboration between Admony and Esther Choi. When Admony credited Choi with the dish, Choi rebutted, “Chef is too kind because she actually executed the entire dish, I was just the idea.”
That exchange fit an evening where chefs seemed far more interested in talking about one another than claiming territory. Pham had earlier prompted applause for Admony, telling the crowd that “all of us are here because of her.” Choi, now in her fourth year participating, described Nine Chefs as “one of the events that I look forward to every single year.”
She pointed, too, to the setting. “We’re up here in the Hudson Valley, the most amazing place at this time of the year,” Choi said, praising the local produce before introducing her Korean barbecue Salisbury steak with Hilltop Farm Wagyu, wild mushroom gravy, and a fruit kimchi made with local apples and Asian pears.
Eggs and the City
There was still one considerable surprise left.
The final course belonged to Miriam Milord of Brooklyn’s BCakeNY, whose dessert for the evening was aptly titled “Eggs and the City!” Known for elaborate custom cakes and remarkably realistic decorative work, Milord has created cakes for Jay-Z, Rihanna, and the Kardashians. Here, she built a sprawling edible country scene, complete with sculpted hens and a rooster, chicks wandering through bright green grass, a nest filled with eggs, a box overflowing with flowers, and a barrel emblazoned with “Nine Chefs One Table.” Beneath all that farmyard architecture were vanilla, chocolate, and carrot cakes.
Outside the tent, the lawn had gone dark, with strategically placed lights scattering tiny green dots across the grass and surrounding trees to mimic fireflies, while the long table glowed beneath rows of string lights. What had begun hours earlier with cocktails and caviar had stretched across a dozen dinner dishes, many conceived, cooked, or served by more than one set of hands.
Early in the evening, guests had been told they were sitting down to “a very special dinner” made “with a lot of love, from some really special humans.” Several hours later, after watching chefs share ingredients, dishes, jokes and credit, it was difficult to come up with a better description.
Nine chefs, one table, and very little concern over where one chef’s contribution ended and another’s began.
