There are several rules you are tacitly agreeing to just by swinging open the vault-like door of the snow-white, ice-cold crypt of design that is Moss. The first rule, of course, is that you will not, under any circumstances, touch anything. Your children—and please take a moment to hang your head in shame for bringing them along in the first place—must be held at all times. And do remember that you are risking possible ejection should you even think about eating or drinking anywhere near items like Melissa Dixson’s taxidermied canis lupus.

Murray Moss has been known to bend the rules on that last one for his parties, serving only innocuous, quarter-filled glasses of white wine (which I whined about during the Los Angeles store opening). Still, each time a glass falls to the concrete floor—even with the design-conscious it’s bound to happen—I see him wince, or perhaps that’s the secret signal to dispatch the team of minions who quickly sweep away all memory of shattered glass, Men In Black-style.

Last night at Moss it was, at first blush, the same old scene. Philippe Starck and Sam Nazarian were there to hype their new SLS Hotels, in which Moss will have a store. Starck smiled, Nazarian shmoozed, glasses shattered, Moss winced, minions dispatched, but something was…different.

Moss served food.

Of course, this being Moss, he still wanted to curate the experience. That’s why if you wanted caviar wrapped in proscuitto, chef José Andrés had to prepare it for you.

Which meant placing it directly on your tongue.

We were allowed to self-administer other items like black squid ink olives. (No idea if these were actually olives or ink, by the way.)

Scallops in yuzu were delightfully citrusy without being too scalloppy.

Little plastic pouches of watermelon juice had grilled shrimp attached. Like a ceviche injection?

They called this a Spanish omelette. Eggs whipped to the consistency of clouds.

They said: Bagels and lox. I said: Caviar ice cream cones.

“Airbread” was balloons of dough, stuffed with some pretty intense cheese and that mouth-watering proscuitto.

And of course, your own personal mojito atomizer for a spritz between bites.

Moss even ventured into drinks of color, serving these orange gelatinous martinis. Some klutz near me ended up breaking one of those. After roughing her up a bit, they let her stay.

On the way out I was sure to thank the lovely Gita, who does PR for Moss. The food was amazing, I told her, and I took lots of pictures. “Good,” she said. “Because it’s never happening again.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 7:20 am and is filed under designing, eating, partying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.