Under the Baobab Tree

My gastronomic tour through Montreal was not the only interesting eating experience I had this week. I also ate an astounding dinner in New York on Wednesday night, the night before I left for Canada.

We bought a table at Jazz for Justice, an event honoring contributors to New York's Legal Services division. It was held in the new Jazz at Lincoln Center facility which has been built into the new Time Warner building on Columbus Circle.

I had never been there but was expecting some windowless place -- either a ballroom or a concert hall with no view of anything, as per usual on the charity dinner circuit.

I was wrong.

The place was cantilevered out over Columbus Circle looking straight east down Central Park South. There was a small stage in front of a glass wall about four stories high. Tables were set back along risers up four levels to the back of the space -- each riser had room for one row of about 5 tables each.

Our table was on the second riser. We looked out over the darkening circle and it was as if we were suspended in the air above the traffic swirling around the pillar on which Columbus himself sits. The art deco buildings along Central Park South drew down to the East River -- the fin de siecle apartment houses on Fifth Avenue rose off to the north behind the park. Everything we could see was old, established New York -- we were floating in a glass and steel cage over timeless Manhattan architecture.

Our rising tables were covered in cream-colored table cloths and in the center of each table was a glass vase of cream colored, yellow Dutch tulips -- the kind with feathered petals and the occasional blood red streak.

On the small stage a jazz ensemble gathered and played Take Five and that gorgonzola song (name escapes me) and any number of Dave Brubeck and Kronos Quartet tunes. An amazing female vocalist came out and sang Dizzy Gillespie and Billie Holiday and evoked the New York of the 40s.

Under each performer the park glowed dark black and the traffic streamed around the circle with the yellow glow of headlights against the asphalt. Above each performer were the five set back rows of cream colored tables with the cream yellow Dutch tulips, rising into the dark black rafters. The rafters were invisible in the dark, except for the occasional red blinking light on the back of a straw-gold spotlight aiming down to the performer, the black backdrop of the park, and the gold headlights.

Men in dark suits sat around the cream colored tables and drank pale Chardonnay. Women in gold jewelry greeted one another against the dark outline of the park and stowed beaded purses under the cream colored tulips on the tables.

Speakers came up to the glass wall to talk about the importance of continuing to fund legal services, to help those unable to hire lawyers -- people facing homelessness and destitution and ruination. People who would never have the opportunity to attend a cream-and-gold tinged dinner floating in black glass over the southwest corner of Central Park.

The atmosphere was like antique linen. Something Edith Wharton might have worn. To a party Mrs Astor might have given. To honor an orphanage or a home for runaways -- someone like Horatio Alger, perhaps.

We are lucky people.