“It was going to be family style, and it’s now French style,” Ms. Reichenbach added, meaning that waiters would serve each guest using tongs, rather than everyone helping themselves from communal platters. “We have got Purell at every opportunity, and we sent out a communication that people who had symptoms or felt uncomfortable, not to come.”

Concerns seemed to evaporate once the food appeared. Kitty Thammasat (of Ayada, a Thai restaurant in Queens) made a papaya salad appetizer. Esther Choi (Mokbar) contributed stuffed kimchi. And Joy Crump served beef with rosemary-scented turnip purée, using ingredients she brought from Foode, her restaurant in Virginia that’s a five-hour drive away.

Jenn Louis, a chef-at-large in Portland, Ore., tweaked her vegetable dish in light of the outbreak. “I was going to have whole roasted cauliflower heads which people could cut themselves, but it’s not practical right now,” she said. “So I made sure I cut those into pretty little wedges, and it was very interesting to think about, how can I do it that’s safe, but also very hospitable to everybody.”

The dinner took place around a 300-foot-long table set up in the market’s main hall. Several guests enviously eyed the free-standing hand sanitizer dispensers placed nearby; hand sanitizers have been as rare as white truffles these days.

Michael Phillips, the president of Jamestown Properties, which sold Chelsea Market in 2018 to Google, and whose foundation also disburses money from the fund-raiser, wasn’t letting on how they got so much of it. “We have our ways,” he said.