Chef Andrew Carmellini Cooks up a Feast for the Lunchbox Fund

November 2014

Style.com

Kristin Tice Studeman

---

From former President Bill Clinton to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Lunchbox Fund has amassed an impressive group of supporters in its nearly 10 years in existence. Plenty of the charity's dedicated do-gooders were on hand at its annual fall benefit last night, including Sting, Salman Rushdie, Chuck Close, and Michael Stipe. The organization was raising funds to feed the impoverished children of South Africa. To feed the party's hungry guests, acclaimed chef Andrew Carmellini was dishing up farm-to-table fare at his newest restaurant, Little Park, in the newly renovated Smyth hotel in Tribeca.

While several of the night's hosts (including Lunchbox Fund founder Topaz Page-Green and Aimee Mullins) were in Prada, the title sponsor of the event, a pregnant Liv Tyler opted for a black Dolce & Gabbana number. "It still fits!" she told Style.com. "It's my own dress, and I've had it for, like, a year." Though Tyler hadn't had a chance to look at the art pieces on auction ("I always get very shy about bidding at auctions—maybe it's because I'm at things where the bids are so outrageous"), the rest of the crowd hurried to check out the works and place their final bids before sitting down for dinner. "There is one piece I have my eye on, but I can't tell you and have other people bid on it," Chuck Close said, as he looked around at the works by Enoc Perez, Kiki Smith, and more. Close's Polaroid diptych of Page-Green, which sold for $62,000, was one of the most coveted pieces of the night, helping to raise $390,000 in total for the cause.