Chefs and their last meals

Check out My Last Supper, a photoessay on famous chefs and the foods they'd choose for their last hurrah before leaving this world. Who wants a foie gras terrine? Who wants chips and guac? Who's photographed wearing a totally awesome hat made out of pasta? Find out here. Oh, and Ferran Adria, father of molecular gastronomy? His last-meal picks involve no foams, no spheres of whatever suspended in something, nothing you'd need an immersion circulator to make. Which isn't surprising, I suppose. Even Ferran Adria has comfort foods. Food is still love, even when your life's work involves playing chem lab in the kitchen.

I'll have to think more about what my own last meal would involve. What about yours?

the return of Top Chef, and what not to do with plastic wrap

First off, a public service announcement: the new season of Top Chef starts tomorrow! If you have BRAVO and you missed out last time, tune in. Seriously, people, come on. I need somebody to obsess with.

Remember in January when I posted about the amazing dinner we had at Komi on my birthday? I'm pretty sure that was the best meal I've ever had in my life. Well, Komi chef Johnny Monis has been named to Food and Wine magazine's annual Best New Chefs list, an honor whose now-superstar alums include Thomas Keller (French Laundry, Per Se), Nobu Matsuhisa (Nobu), Tom Colicchio (Craft; also, these days the head judge on Top Chef), Wylie Dufresne (wd-50) and Grant Achatz (Alinea), to name a few. The announcement itself isn't really news, as the list came out weeks ago. D.C. area food blogs were all atwitter with the news (one headline read: You're Never Getting Into Komi Again). But I'm posting about this now because I finally got the Best New Chefs issue in the mail today, AND because Mark thought ahead and made us reservations at Komi for our anniversary. We ARE getting into Komi again!

I'm so excited. I don't even care what's on the menu: I will eat anything Chef Monis puts on the table. If he were to open up a box of Kraft Mac n' Cheese, I would have utter faith that it would be better than anything I could ever make.

I remember I said back in January that the attention to detail at Komi was amazing. Well, this slightly obsessive-compulsive quote from Monis in his Food & Wine Q&A made me laugh. After having seen him back there in the kitchen, crouched over dishes he was plating as if he were defusing a bomb, it just seems so apt. When asked about his pet peeve, he says: "I very much dislike when people rip into the plastic wrap covering something-when they make a hole and dig in. It takes seconds to just unwrap something properly. I can’t tell you why, but it has always bothered me. Improper use of plastic wrap, that’s what I call it."