Golden Globe stars to dine on desserts of gold

LOS ANGELES: When Hollywood's top stars, including George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Steven Spielberg, attend the Golden Globe Awards next week they will sip vintage champagne and nibble edible gold.

Golden flakes will top their dessert following a meal that chef Suki Sugiura will prepare using foods flown in from around the world for the event, which is one of Hollywood's most-watched film and television awards shows.

But unlike the film world's Oscars or TV's Emmys, where stars sit side-by-side in a theater, guests at the Golden Globes are treated to a gourmet meal by the event's organizers, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Moet & Chandon, which has been the official champagne for the Golden Globes for 21 years, will serve its traditional Imperial mini bottles on the red carpet to arriving guests.

Inside the venue guests will sip its Grand Vintage 2002 for the first time.

Five hundred magnums of the 2002, which was bottled and has been sitting for seven years -- the longest resting period of any of the Moet Grand Vintages -- will be served at the Golden Globes on January 15.

Sugiura, the executive chef at the Beverly Hilton Hotel where the event takes place, has created a three course meal with a "global food harmony" theme that includes a combination entree of braised prime short rib of beef and sea bass marinated in miso from Sendai, Japan.

"They produce some of the best miso in Japan," said Sugiura. "We bring it here to share with each other, to appreciate each other and to enjoy it together. It's East meets West -- one world -- at the Golden Globes."

For dessert, executive pastry chef Thomas Henzi will serve a chocolate almond crunch terrine with acacia honey, caramel and fresh berries. The chocolate will be flown in from Switzerland, while the acacia honey caramel will arrive from France, the Tarragon hazelnuts from Italy and the Valencia almond paste from Spain.

"It's a rich desert," said Henzi, not only figuratively but literally.

Each desert plate will be sprinkled with 23-carat edible gold flakes along with a white chocolate ball sprayed with gold dust.

"In today's market, Gold costs $1600, $1700 for an ounce, sometimes up to $2000, so it's expensive," said Henzi. "We're looking at $1.20 per plate just for the gold flakes. And we're preparing 1500 plates!"

Flower arrangements by celebrity florist Mark Held, of Mark's Garden, who has been creating the floral centerpieces for the Golden Globes for about a decade, will complement the meal.

Held said he is working on an eight color combinations of flowers, all in deep winter tones of burgundy, gold, green and maybe even a deep pink.

"This year, we'll see a lot more color across the room. It'll be fun and lively because this is a lively event," he said. (Reuters)

Golden Globe audience up, Gervais' hosting panned

LOS ANGELES: Host Ricky Gervais may have turned off the audience members and critics at Sunday night's Golden Globe Awards, but viewers seemed turned on, watching the show in larger numbers than one year ago.

The Golden Globes, an annual film and TV awards show in Hollywood, drew just under 17 million total viewers to network NBC, which was up slightly from 2010 when British comedian Gervais, who is known for his acerbic sense of humor, hosted for the first time, according to audience figures released on Monday.

Last year's ceremony was up 14 percent from 2009's roughly 15 million viewers, and the upward trend shows the telecast is recovering somewhat from the 2008 Hollywood writers strike which reduced the Globes to a news conference.

Still, this year's viewership of 16.99 million show is down from 2007, when some 20 million viewers tuned in to watch Hollywood's A-list stars parade up the red carpet in their finest gowns and tuxedos and, for the lucky few, accept awards for movies, TV shows, performances and music.

Gervais' hosting duties on Sunday night brought some often harsh criticism from reviewers. During the show, the comedian took shots at Charlie Sheen's drinking and partying, Robert Downey, Jr.'s years-ago issues with drugs and alcohol, the critically panned movie "The Tourist" that was nominated for best comedy, and even the organizers of the show.

His sense of humor on the ceremony's center stage was so caustic that Downey, Jr., remarked on stage that Sunday's ceremony was "unusually mean-spirited."

Many critics seemed to agree. Los Angeles Times TV critic Mary McNamara wrote on Monday that "it quickly became clear that his material wasn't just falling flat, it was making many audience members and presenters uncomfortable and even angry."

Washington Post reviewer Hank Stuever wrote, "Somehow Gervais has lost some of his ability to be funny about being true."