My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals / Portraits, Interviews, and Recipes - Hardcover

Melanie Dunea

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1596912871 ISBN 13: 9781596912878

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2007

Synopsis

Melanie Dunea meets Heat in this award-winning photographer's stunning celebration of world-famous chefs and their final meals.
 
Chefs have been playing the "My Last Supper" game among themselves for decades, if not centuries, but it had always been kept within the profession until now. Melanie Dunea came up with the ingenious idea to ask fifty of the world's famous chefs to let her in on this insider's game and tell her what their final meals would be. My Last Supper showcases their fascinating answers alongside stunning Vanity Fair-style portraits. Their responses are surprising, refreshing, and as distinct from each other as the chefs themselves. The portraits--gorgeous, intimate, and playful--are informed by their answers and reveal the passions and personalities of the most respected names in the business. Lastly, one recipe from each landmark meal is included in the back of the book. With My Last Supper, Dunea found a way into the typically harried, hidden minds of the people who have turned preparing food into an art. Who wouldn't want to know where Alain Ducasse would like his supper to be? And who would prepare Daniel Boulud's final meal? What would Anthony Bourdain's guest list look like? As the clock ticked, what album would Gordon Ramsay be listening to? And just what would Mario Batali eat for the last time?
 
Featuring: Ferrán Adrià, José Andrés, Dan Barber, Lidia Bastianich, Mario Batali, Rick Bayless, Michelle Bernstein, Daniel Boulud, Anthony Bourdain, Scott Conant, Gary Danko, Hélène Darroze, Alain Ducasse, Wylie Dufresne, Suzanne Goin, Gabrielle Hamilton, Fergus Henderson, Thomas Keller, Giorgio Locatelli, Masa Kobayashi, Nobu, Jamie Oliver, Jacques Pepin, Gordon Ramsay, Michel Richard, Eric Ripert, Marcus Samuelsson, Charlie Trotter, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and more...

About this title

About the Author

Melanie Dunea's work appears regularly in Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Town & Country, Gourmet, People, New York and InStyle. She has received an American Photography Award and a Society of Publication Design Annual Award, and will serve as an ambassador to India for Operation Smile. She lives in New York.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Dunea, an award-winning photographer, wrote to 50 famous chefs and asked them to describe their ideal last meal. Their answers, compiled in this weirdly absorbing and gorgeously designed volume, range from the comforting (Lidia Bastianich bids adieu over a plate of linguini and clams) to the cheekily self-aggrandizing (Laurent Tourondel wants nothing more than a BLT sandwich from his own restaurant). The meals are curiosities, and the few recipes included are pleasant enough; it's the photographs of each chef that make this book so irresistible. One needn't have heard of them, much less dined in their restaurants, to appreciate their portraits: from a graceful Gabrielle Hamilton nursing her son to a dashing Guillaume Brahimi reclining in front of the Sydney Opera House, each image is iconic, surprising, and quite often, oddly appetizing. Marcus Samuelsson poses, impishly, in a Japanese-style headband made of salmon; Wylie Dufresne leans like a centerfold on a table stacked with American cheese; and Anthony Bourdain poses totally nude, strategically wielding a butchered leg bone. But perhaps no picture is more memorable than Dan Barber's, a soft-featured New York chef, posing alongside a massive boar named Boris. His last meal is rack of boar, of course: "If I'm going, so is Boris."
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Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1596912871
• ISBN 13: 9781596912878
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224