Amuse-Biatch Investigates: Elia Aboumrad *Can* Cater to Our Wishes

Our beloved paisana Elia Aboumrad Harfuch didn't fare so well during the catering challenge on the last episode of Top Chef. She was (unfairly, it seemed to us) blamed for not providing enough food for the party guests. The implication was that catering was simply not her thing.

However, we have found evidence that our Elia can handle the most stressful catering job of all, a family wedding. In the Mexican magazine Casas y Gente (Homes and People, and, as the title suggests, just as stultifyingly preening as any socialite rag north of the border), we located a one-paragraph story on the October 2005 wedding of our Elia's cousin, Elia Harfuch (and since our Elia's mother is also named Elia Harfuch, things must get a little confusing during Christmas-card season). At left is a picture of the bride and groom, followed by our rough and dirty translation of the itty-bitty article.

The wedding ceremony of Elia Harfuch and Alejandro Pinzón was an emotional one. A dreamlike backdrop, the San Nicolas Ranch, practically at the foot of the Eagle's Peak [Mountain] in the Ajusco [Mountains outside Mexico City] was the ideal setting for the festivities. Her cousin, Elia Aboumrad Harfuch, chef of the L'Atelier restaurant in Las Vegas, was responsible for preparing the delicious menu featuring Middle Eastern dishes.

See? Our Elia can cater. We were amused, though, at the typical socialite-magazine puffery that elevated her from sous-chef to the chef at L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon (and notice how the Joël Robuchon part was left out).

Tune in tomorrow for pictures of Elia herself working the hair and make-up. We know you'll come back for that, won't you, Google perv?

Bewitching, Bothered & Bespectacled

To obsessive “Top Chef” fans, no detail is too trivial, trite, or tangential. And so it is with not a whit of shame that we bring you this item from the Mexican daily El Universal, covering the wedding of Elia Aboumrad’s cousin, also named Elia (and did we mention our Elia’s mother is yet another Elia?).

The civil ceremony took place at the Mexico City spread of our Elia’s parents. Our bewitching, bothered and bespectacled Elia, then working at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, contributed her own spread. She catered the wedding, preparing “a delicious menu with predominantly Arab dishes” that was her gift to the happy couple. Given what we’ve seen of her talent and her taste in funky eyewear (and footwear), we certainly wouldn’t mind having her cater our wedding.

Speaking of funky eyewear, while reading Heat, Bill Buford’s superb memoir of kitchen slavery, we came across the story of how Casa Mono, Mario Batali’s Spanish tapas restaurant, came to be created. It is a gripping story in and of itself, but was of particular interest to us because Casa Mono is where cheftestant (yes, we have crumbled and adopted the term, if only temporarily) Ilan Hall works as a line cook. Since the menu features cockscombs (yes, those floppy red bits of millinery atop roosters’ heads), tripe and fried sweetbreads, we’re not surprised that Ilan wasn’t fazed by simple snails.

Mexican Spitfire Spits Tacks

As much as we understand the compunction or need for reality television to reduce contestants to a bite-size, easily digestible appellation for the ease of television viewers, it does bother us that the shorthand is often lazy and stereotypical and sometimes borders on the racist or offensive (e.g., Frankie the Bull).

For example, it irks us that the Bravo bio describes Carlos as "a handsome and zealous Cuban with a flair for cooking and a passion for life," and Elia herself as a "Latin firecracker."

A "positive" stereotype is not always a blessing, and can be just as limiting as a negative stereotype. God help the Latin who doesn't go in for passion or the gay who can't decorate. But lest we get too preachy, let's talk about Elia, who isn't exactly Lupe "Mexican Spitfire" Velez.
Her full name is Elia Aboumrad Harfuch, and, like Salma Hayek and Shakira, she is of Middle Eastern heritage. (There is a large and prosperous Lebanese community in Mexico, where they made an important contribution to the country's cuisine by turning the shawarma into the emblematic Mexico City dish, the perfect late-night on-the-run treat, tacos al pastor).

Elia's parents appear frequently in the society pages in Mexico, throwing Arab-themed dinners in their mansion in Pedregal de San Angel, the Bel Air of Mexico City, appearing at French Embassy shindigs, theater openings, and society weddings. This isn't exactly someone who learnt cooking at her family's taquería.

As she told Mexican daily El Universal last year, "Everything began three years ago when I left home to go study in Paris. Since I've always liked cooking, I planned to take a six-month course at Lenôtre, a school that, among other things, has the greatest number of Meilleurs Ouvriers de France winners (the highest title a French chef achieve)." She didn't know much about gastronomy, and so enrolled in a special course for people starting from scratch. She went on to take courses in pastry-making, ice cream-making, ice and sugar sculpture, and chocolate-making. She then worked for Joël Robuchon in Paris.

The article was published two weeks before Elia was to travel to Las Vegas to become the first woman, and only Mexican, to occupy the post of sous-chef at L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon, a matter of considerable pride. And now she works for Alain Ducasse at the Hotel at the Mandalay Bay resort. Not bad for a society girl from San Angel. Let's see Paris Hilton make a demiglace. Anyway, Elia, we still wish you had used tequila or rum for the flambé challenge, but we forgive you and wish you luck with the rest of the season.