The New York Philharmonic will inaugurate MUSICAL SUPPERS, four post-concert suppers featuring menus created by world renowned chefs Alain Ducasse, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Lidia Bastianich, and Daniel Boulud. The Friday-evening suppers, to be hosted by food critic Mimi Sheraton, will be prepared by Restaurant Associates and will take place at Arpeggio Food and Wine in Avery Fisher Hall on January 8, 2010 (Ducasse); February 12 (Vongerichten); April 16 (Bastianich); and June 4 (Boulud). Also joining the diners will be the guest artists of the evening’s concert; Philharmonic President and Executive Director Zarin Mehta; Philharmonic musicians; and Music Director Alan Gilbert (at the dinners that follow his concerts). Ms. Sheraton will introduce the chefs, who will be in attendance for their individual suppers, and engage in discussion about the menus, with input from Mr. Mehta, the musicians, and Mr. Gilbert. Tickets are $150 per person in addition to a concert ticket. For information, call (212) 875-5656 or visit nyphil.org.
“Chefs are the maestros of the kitchen, and there is a natural kinship between the aesthetics of great music and great food,” said Mimi Sheraton. “Bringing together these four chefs who are at the top of their profession, with musicians and conductors who are at the top of theirs, should make for stimulating evenings. I hope that those who share a love of music and a love of food will find their way to our Musical Suppers.”
“New York is known throughout the world for being a capital of both music performance and fine dining,” said New York Philharmonic President and Executive Director Zarin Mehta. “To follow the musical artistry of a New York Philharmonic concert with a culinary encore created by masters of their profession is a unique pleasure that one can only experience in New York.”
Host Mimi Sheraton joined The New York Times in December 1975 as a food reporter, became the restaurant critic in summer 1976, and stayed until 1984. Subsequently, she wrote freelance for Time, Vanity Fair, Condé-Nast Traveler, and New Woman. She has also written for Vogue, Eros, Avant-Garde, and Food & Wine. Currently she writes freelance food and travel articles for The New York Times and The New Yorker, among other publications, and she won a James Beard Foundation journalism award for an article in Vanity Fair on the Four Seasons’s 40th anniversary. She is the author of 15 books, including The German Cookbook (Random House, still in print since 1965) and The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup, which won both the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) and James Beard awards. Her latest book is a memoir, Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life (William Morrow), now in paperback.
Ms. Sheraton was raised in Brooklyn in a food-oriented family and studied marketing and journalism at NYU. She wrote home furnishings copy for an ad agency, and later for Good Housekeeping magazine, studying at the New York School of Interior Design. For about eight years she was a home furnishings editor at Seventeen and then managing editor of House Beautiful’s supplement division. Gradually, she began to write about food and to consult during planning stages for the Four Seasons restaurant before turning to food writing. She has studied with cooks and chefs in Denmark, Cambodia, Lebanon, and Turkey; at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris; and at The China Institute in New York City. She was a restaurant critic first for Cue, then for The Village Voice, and she freelanced on food and travel for many magazines such as Mademoiselle and Town & Country. For five years she was a contributor to the original New York magazine and had her first major story published there: “I Tasted Everything in Bloomingdale’s Food Department,” reporting on 1,196 products.
Alain Ducasse (January 8)
Born in 1956 on a farm in the south west region of France, Alain Ducasse was raised
among mainly ducks and geese and was surrounded by boletus mushrooms and foie gras. This was where he developed his tastes at a very early age and quickly learned to appreciate these ingredients, to preserve, and to cook with them. He started working at the age of 16 in the southwest of France, and spent the next years of his life working for famous chefs and restaurants, including Michel Guérard, Gaston Lenôtre, and Roger Vergé’s Moulin de Mougins. In 1978 Alain Chapel, his spiritual master and mentor, employed him at Chapel’s restaurant outside of Lyons, before he took up an offer from Roger Vergé to be chef at his second restaurant, L’Amandier in Mougins (southeast France). A year later Mr. Ducasse led the kitchen at La Terrasse at the Hotel Juana in Juan-Les-Pins. It was here, in 1984, that he was awarded two stars in the Michelin Red Guide. In 1987 he moved to the Hôtel de Paris in Monaco to become chef des cuisines, managing Le Louis XV; the restaurant was subsequently awarded three stars in the Michelin Red Guide, the first hotel restaurant to be so honored. In 1996, Mr. Ducasse opened the restaurant Alain Ducasse in Paris, and by 1998 he became the first six-star chef — three for the Alain Ducasse restaurant in Paris and three for Le Louis XV-Alain Ducasse. This was followed by the opening of his first concept restaurant, Spoon, in Paris, which ultimately led to the opening of the same concept in Mauritius, Saint-Tropez, and Hong Kong. On January 1, 2007, Alain Ducasse was awarded the Eiffel Tower food services contract for a period of nine years. In November 2007 Alain Ducasse Enterprise opened a restaurant at the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane in London. In January 2008, he opened a signature restaurant at the flagship St. Regis New York hotel, Adour Alain Ducasse at The St. Regis New York; this was followed by the opening of Benoit Bistro in New York City in April 2008, and Adour at The St. Regis Washington, D.C. in September 2008. In May 2009, Mr. Ducasse opened École de Cuisine Alain Ducasse, his first culinary school for non-professionals, in Paris.
Jean-Georges Vongerichten (February 12)
Jean-Georges Vongerichten was born and raised on the outskirts of Strasbourg in Alsace, France, and his earliest family memories are about food. He trained in a work-study program at the Auberge de l’Ill and as an apprentice to chef Paul Haeberlin. He went on to work under Paul Bocuse and master chef Louis Outhier at L’Oasis in southern France. With this three-star Michelin training, he traveled to Asia and took positions at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, the Meridien Hotel in Singapore, and the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong. It was during this time that he developed a love for the exotic and aromatic flavors of the East. His signature cuisine abandons the traditional use of meat stocks and creams and instead features the intense flavors and textures from vegetable juices, fruit essences, light broths, and herbal vinaigrettes. Mr. Vongerichten has published several cookbooks reflecting his influential style of cooking, including Simple Cuisine (Wiley, 1990); Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef (Broadway Books, 1998), for which he won the Best Cookbook Award from the James Beard Foundation in 1999; and Simple to Spectacular (Broadway Books, 2000). In October 2007 he released Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges, featuring beloved recipes from his restaurants Spice Market, Vong, and 66.
Involved in every aspect of his restaurants, Mr. Vongerichten and his business partner, Phil Suarez, have worked together for more than 17 years. In 2007 they partnered with Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. and private equity firm Catterton Partners to create Culinary Concepts by Jean-Georges. This new company develops international, multi-concept restaurant and licensing businesses for Starwood’s luxury hotel brands. In their latest venture, they have partnered with the Matsushita brothers to open Matsugen in New York City, which earned a three-star review from The New York Times in 2008. Mr. Vongerichten has earned multiple James Beard Awards, including Outstanding Restaurant for Jean-Georges in 2008 and holds four Michelin stars for Jean-Georges and Perry St.
Lidia Matticchio Bastianich (April 16)
Lidia Bastianich is a popular television chef and a best-selling cookbook author,
restaurateur, and owner of a flourishing food and entertainment business. Her cookbooks include Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy and Lidia’s Italy — both companion books to the Emmy-nominated and James Beard award-winning television series, Lidia’s Italy — as well as Lidia’s Family Table, Lidia’s Italian- American Kitchen, Lidia’s Italian Table and La Cucina di Lidia. Ms. Bastianich is the chef/owner of four acclaimed New York City restaurants: Felidia, Becco, Esca, and Del Posto, as well as Lidia’s in Pittsburgh and Kansas City. She is also founder and president of Tavola Productions, an entertainment company that produces high-quality broadcast productions including Lidia’s Italy. In addition, Ms. Bastianich has developed her own line of specialty sauces that are sold at discriminating retail establishments nationally. Together with her son Joseph, she produces award-winning wines at their Bastianich Vineyards in Friuli and their La Mozza Vineyards in Maremma, Italy.
With her daughter Tanya and marketing director Shelly Burgess Nicotra, Ms. Bastianich heads up an exclusive travel company that develops and implements customized excursions to Italy that often combine gastronomy with art history. Her signature line, “Tutti a tavola a mangiare!” — which translated means “Everybody to the table to eat!” — is something that has been said in Italian households for centuries, and is still repeated in Italian homes everyday all over the world.
Daniel Boulud (June 4)
Daniel Boulud is chef-owner of several award-winning restaurants and the Feast & Fêtes catering company. While he hails from Lyon, France, it is in New York that he has truly mastered the dining scene and is today considered one of America’s leading culinary authorities. Raised on his family’s farm in the village of St. Pierre de Chandieu, the chef remains inspired by the rhythm of the seasons and a cooking style driven by the quality of his ingredients. Since arriving in the U.S. in 1982, Mr. Boulud has become renowned for the contemporary appeal he adds to soulful cooking rooted in French tradition. His New York City restaurants include DANIEL, a three Michelin star Relais & Châteaux member; the elegant Café Boulud with its adjacent new Bar Pleiades; DB Bistro Moderne; Bar Boulud; and most recently DBGB Kitchen and Bar. Beyond Manhattan he has created Café Boulud in Palm Beach, and in summer 2010 will open a new DB Bistro Moderne in downtown Miami. The chef extended his culinary reach internationally with Maison Boulud in Beijing’s Legation Quarter, as well as Vancouver’s DB Bistro Moderne and the renowned Relais & Châteaux restaurant, Lumière.
Daniel Boulud’s culinary accolades include James Beard Foundation awards for Outstanding Restaurateur, Best Chef of New York City, and Outstanding Chef of the Year. In addition, he has been named a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government. Restaurant DANIEL has been cited as “one of the 10 best restaurants in the world” by the International Herald Tribune, earned a coveted four-star rating from The New York Times, and Wine Spectator’s Grand Award. Mr. Boulud’s culinary style is reflected in his six cookbooks and his television series After Hours with Daniel.
