Gavin Brown, New York's most amusing art dealer, held a dinner the other night in the space over his downtown gallery. I think he threw another dinner party the next night. Giving dinners is his latest enthusiasm, and it has a lot to do with the presence in New York of his friend Freddie von Escher. Mr. Von Escher's name is deceptive. He's a Sicilian. But Sicily was the crossroads of the Mediterranean for millennia, and his being deeply Sicilian is somehow connected to what makes Sicilian food the best. Sicilian culture is the product of a deep, fantastic collision of cultures, and when Freddie cooks dinner it's a sort of mini-history of Western Civilization that's enlightening, fascinating, and delicious.

Freddie, who works with museums in Europe and likes to combine the art of cooking and eating with the visual arts, fed us great Sicilian cheeses and sausages, anchovies with beautiful thin-sliced lemons, a salad of oranges, a pumpkin dish with balsamic vinegar, sandwiches made with ricotta and Sicilian tuna, pasta with tomato and fennel pollen, and fried veal steaks. Fantastic. Best of all was the extraordinary aromatic quality of the wild fennel pasta and Freddie's own brand of extra virgin olive oil.

Most good olive oils are made from blends of olives, but this one is a heady, unbelievably aromatic, silken oil made from a single variety. Wine enthusiasts are used to thrilling aroma, but I must say that I have never experienced a synergy of taste and smell that was richer than that provided by Freddie's oil, his wild fennel pollen sauce, and the delicious red wine he offered. I came away with a bottle of this limited-edition oil (120/144) and I plan to center some great meals around it.

Gavin Brown was the perfect host, gathering together a congenial and scintillating group that drank prosecco under the stars and the neon of the FedEx Building on his terrace and dined with distinction in his cleverly "crudo" upstairs room.

Here's Gavin with foxy artist Hope Atherton:

And the philosophical hotelier Sean McPherson with Visionaire's alluringly demure Cecilia Dean:

And the droll, devil-may-care painter John Tremblay, whose conversation is less abstract but no less compelling than his work.