He's made a name for himself being the attention-to-detail man, so it's no surprise that he's set a stunning table, that candles glow everywhere, that there's no last-minute fussing in the kitchen.

Over gazpacho with shrimp, caesar with tenderloin of beef and an amazing coconut creme brulee, Lee reminisces about his previous life as a South Beach party king.

If you were a player back when the Beach began stirring with renaissance cool, before things went Starbucks' and everybody still knew the drag queens by first name and lipstick preference, you knew Lee.

He owned Torpedo, one of the hippest clubs on the scene, the place where Gianni Versace and John Paul Gaultier went to, um, scout fresh-faced models. In fact, it was Lee who took Versace on his first tour of South Beach. The year was 1989 and Versace was here for the opening of his Bal Harbour shop. He wasn't thrilled about it. But after Lee got through with him -- lunch at the News Cafe, dinner at the Strand, and late-night partying at Torpedo -- Versace was a South Beach convert.

"I remember him literally being in amazement with what was going on. He had been here many years before, probably when I used to come here with my grandparents. The little old lady thing was still on his mind. But after that day, he fell in love." If you did the Beach thing when the Beach still had an edge, when Lincoln Road was home to funky art studios and colorful cafes, when there was no Gap and no Pottery Barn, when Madonna actually hung out, when the Kendall crowd still hadn't found its way across the causeway, you remember Torpedo at Sixth and Collins. You remember those over-the-top Halloween block parties with Gloria Gaynor and Viola Wills in the house.

But Lee, who ran Torpedo from 1988 to 1991, doesn't pine for those days. He's moved on.

"I'm not a South Beach person anymore. I'm a recovering South Beach person. But those were amazing days. The people who were opening businesses on the Beach were like a family. If we didn't run the place, we were definitely part of the group that was making things happen. We were taking chances, mortgaging our house two and three times, borrowing money from our families because the banks all turned their backs on us."

Lee was there the day Kitty Meow, one of the Beach's best-known drag queens, was christened.

"I always said he was long and lean, like a big black cat. He danced for the first time at Torpedo."

Lee got the VIP treatment all over the Beach. He partied like a rock star, and yeah, he's not beyond admitting it was a rush. "It was an instant high. Like poppers. When you had the hottest place in town, you're giving out free drink tickets, taking people off line, walking Versace and people like that inside and then the next day you're at their home, you live the high."

Lee never quite fell for it, he says. He quickly got in touch with the first rule of any high -- what goes up must come down.

"I remember getting out of [South Beach developer] Thomas Kramer's car and walking into Chaos past a thousand people in line, going to the VIP room, having the champagne poured. The next night you go back and you don't get in."

Lee works much bigger-stakes parties these days, if they are a lot more staid.

At the end of October, he threw the tuxedo-and-ball-gown masterpiece that was the Make-A-Wish Foundation's annual ball. There was the Inter-Continental staff in tails, the Indian buffet followed by the pull-all-the-stops sitdown, the Nell Carter performance, the roster of movers and shakers who paid $500-$1,000 per seat. At the end, Lee had helped the foundation raise nearly half a million dollars.

He did a lot of it by pulling personal favors. If there's a philanthropist in town, a socialite with a weighty last name, you can be sure Lee has rubbed elbows with them.

"Doing the kind of work I do, eventually you've met everybody, done a wedding for this one, a bar mitzvah for that one."

That's how he took the annual Thanksgiving Weekend White Party, the AIDS fund-raiser that had a huge gay following, but not a mainstream following, to new heights.

Four years ago, Lee helped create Friends of the White Party, for the high-end mainstream community types who may not be into the bumping and grinding dance party that is the White Party, but still have big bucks to give to AIDS.

This Saturday he was to pull off one more glittery night for Friends of the White Party, starting with a concert by Eartha Kitt and ending with a $500-per-person dinner at the home of record producer Desmond Child.

In February, he'll once again do the Golden Angel gala for the Jackson Memorial Foundation.

In January, he leaves the Hotel Inter-Continental to be special events and media relations director for Southern Wine & Spirits. But the party is hardly over. His event-planner mind is already in overdrive.

"I'll be doing a lot of special events for them, both locally and nationally. The great thing is that I'm keeping all of my contacts."

You don't take leave of Lee without asking him the secret to giving a great party.

"It's the ice. You need to have enough ice. The secret is one pound per guest."