When Lauren Tran, pastry chef and owner of bakery Banh by Lauren, was asked to coordinate a Vietnamese dinner at the Platform by James Beard venue in New York City, she jumped at the chance and immediately got in touch with two chef friends with Vietnamese restaurants in the same lower Manhattan neighborhood.
Tran was in charge of the dessert course, and the savory portion of the dinner would focus on the Highlands region of Vietnam, prepared by Jerald Head, chef-owner of Mắm, and Nhu Ton, executive chef of Bánh Anh Em.
For Tran, who opened Banh by Lauren in 2024 after operating as a pop-up post-COVID, this was a chance for great exposure. “I didn’t have as much experience in this industry as I thought I did, and this dinner was a celebration of the rising scene of Vietnamese food in New York City. I’m glad to be putting Vietnamese baked goods into the mix, because the savory side is so much more familiar,” said Tran, who was also named a 2026 James Beard Award Semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery.
The Vietnamese dinner started with passed Banh Beo: Steamed Rice Cake with Shrimp Floss, Chive Oil and Crispy Shallot. | Photo courtesy of Platform by JBF
About 60 food-obsessed guests sign up for each of Platform’s collab dinners, and they’ve grown in importance to the chefs as a marketing opportunity. “What’s really happening industry-wide over the last few years is that chefs can no longer stay behind their own four walls,” said Kiri Tannenbaum, director of public programming and events for Platform by JBF. “Visibility is part of the job, but the collab dinners have to offer a unique selling proposition as well.”
Tannenbaum curates the dinners with that in mind, teaming up restaurants that may be on the New York Times 50 Best list, coordinating with holidays associated with a cuisine, like the Indian festival of Diwali, or inviting restaurants from a popular travel destination, such as Portland, Maine or Puerto Rico. Guests pay an average of $150-$200 for a multi-course dinner, or up to $400 for premium events for the one-night-only experiences and they often sell out.
There's a long history of bringing chefs and their teams to the James Beard House to cook and host dinners, but those were usually focused on a single restaurant. The concept has evolved from there, said Tannenbaum, and the Platform events are more collaborative, interactive and experiential.
While Platform was designed as a venue to host dinners, cooking classes, chefs’ cookbook launches and the like, independent restaurants are holding their own collab dinners. Michelin-starred Esme in Chicago, an art-focused restaurant with experiential chef Jenner Tomaska at the helm, has held several collaborative dinners, which range from $285-$295 per person and are usually held on a slower night. Chefs including Johnny Spero of Washington, D.C.’s Reverie and Paolo Griffa of Caffe Nazionale in Aosta, Italy, have been invited to cook the themed, multi-course dinners with Tomaska.
OpenTable and Visa have even tapped into the trend with Friends in Town, a national chef collaboration series designed for eligible Visa cardholders. Last year, they held 35 events across 10 U.S. cities, pairing chefs from different corners of the world.
An ego-free zone
For Platform’s Vietnamese dinner, the three chefs got together virtually to discuss the menu, which was billed as “New York’s Vietnamese Hotspots Team Up for a Sweet and Savory Feast.” They had little time to plan between the time it was announced and the date at the end of March.
Tran comes from a fine-dining background and worked in the front-of-house before she returned to school to become a pastry chef. During the dinner planning stages, she thought a lot about how to plate all the courses and how to expedite service. But all three chefs wanted to make the meal special, so they piggybacked on each other’s ideas to create the menu and schedule.
Lauren Tran plates the signature dessert from her bakery, Banh by Lauren. | Photo by Pat Cobe
Tran already knew what she wanted to showcase. “My signature is a pandan chiffon cake, and I wanted to be true to who I am and what the bakery is, but it really didn’t tie into the rest of the dinner,” she said. “So I decided to also make a sweet dessert soup as a ‘pre-dessert’ that would ease diners into the sweet part of the menu—kind of like a palate cleanser.”
That turned out to be Che Bap, a sweet corn soup, which led into Pandan-Coconut Chiffon Cake, Tran’s signature, showstopping dessert. She also served a mini cup of Iced Vietnamese Coffee topped with Salted Cream, leaning into the foam-topped coffee trend.
Tran did a lot of the prep work ahead of time in her Chinatown bakery. “The cake is a three-day process that involves baking the layers and making a mousse and letting it set,” she said, and “I didn’t know if I’d have enough room to make the soup, but because it’s a chilled soup, I was able to make it ahead and bring it over. That’s what’s nice about pastry; you can make a lot of the components beforehand and bring them together at the venue.”
Going backwards from dessert, the savory chefs prepared six courses that highlighted why their restaurants were named 2025 New York Times Best Restaurants. The lineup included Fish Mint Salad with Dried Pork Belly, Pickled Allums and Pork Crackling; Semi-Dried Beef Jerky with Salted Ants and Rau Ram Vietnamese Coriander; Green Mango-Eggplant Salad with Crispy Anchovy; Wild Bamboo Shoot Soup with Yao Leaves; Jogging Chicken with Hand-Pounded Herbs, Calamansi and Fish Sauce; and Roasted Pork with Mat Mat Leaves. There also were two passed hors d’oeuvre to start.
The crunchy, salty ants are mounded near the greens in the Vietnamese beef jerky dish. | Photo courtesy of Platform by JBF
Many of the guests (including me!) had never eaten ants before, so Chef Head, who operates Mắm with his Vietnamese wife and business partner, Nhung Dao Head, told the story behind their place in the jerky dish.
“We dehydrate the beef at a very low temperature to mimic the way it dries in the sun in Viet Nam,” he said. “To enjoy the dish, take the lime and squeeze it over the ants, and eat this dish with your hands, getting a good pinch of the ants as you scoop up the semi-dry jerky. The ants do all the work—they’re very flavorful as they have formic acid that provides a beautiful citrus note.”
He sources the ants from Viet Nam and stores them in the freezer to have on hand. They are salty and crunchy and provide both a flavor and textural element on the plate.
When the Pandan-Coconut Chiffon Cake arrived for dessert, Tran spoke about pandan, an ingredient not familiar in the U.S. “Everyone always asks me ‘what is pandan,’” she told the guests, “so there’s a leaf on the plate next to the cake and a little demitasse spoon with pandan syrup to taste. That’s what flavors the cake and turns it green.”
Cake slice with pandan leaf and pandan syrup. | Photo by Pat Cobe
“The idea of getting these emerging chefs together for collaborative dinners is to offer a little more meaning than just putting food on a plate,” said Tannenbaum. “The storytelling adds a richness and provides a unique experience for guests.” And no doubt encourages them to return to the chefs’ restaurants and bakeries to sample more of the menu and experience.
Seizing a marketing opportunity
Earlier in the month, When Nigel Lobo and Ajay Singh of Indibar in Scottsdale, Arizona, were invited to cook at Platform, it coincided with the Indian celebration of Holi, which marks the arrival of spring. They were joined by Sarabjit Singh Assi of Sanjh in Dallas and Neel Kajale of Adda in NYC.
When the three chefs held a virtual planning meeting, they discovered that they had very different cooking styles, said Lobo. “But it was very important to us to show our skills and give the guest a seamless experience in terms of the options we were offering,” he added.
Lobo and Singh were in charge of the second course, and their goal was to “put a little bit of ourselves on the plate; a take on our journeys,” Lobo said. Charcoal-scented Chicken Tikka and branzino wrapped in banana leaves were paired for that part of the menu. “Our course really took the guests back to India, with the spices and contrasting preparations,” he said.
Cooking the chicken on a grill instead of in the tandoor required some technique adjustments for the Indibar chefs. | Photo courtesy of Platform by JBF
Although Platform provides a range of cooking equipment and procures ingredients for the collab dinners, the chefs flew homemade chutneys and pickles with them from Scottsdale, as well as signature spice mixes. They also had to adapt the chicken recipe, which is usually cooked in a tandoor, to preparing it on the grill. To get the smoky flavor, Singh heated up charcoal, topped it with ghee and infused the chicken with the smoke.
Indibar, which was also named a semifinalist for Best New Restaurant this year, promoted its appearance at Platform to the local community in greater Phoenix. That resulted in a bump in traffic and visibility.
“It helped reinforce the fact that Indian cuisine is having its moment and we’re part of that conversation, which is helping reshape the perceptions of the cuisine,” said Lobo. “It was great on both a personal and professional level. It allowed me to show my cuisine under a different lens, in a different context, and it showed that it can be as precise, as refined and as dynamic as any other cuisine in the world.”