Le Corbuffet

Le Corbuffet: Edible Art and Design Classics
Esther Choi
Prestel, October 2019



Hardcover | 8 x 11 inches | 256 pages | 60 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-3791384726 | $40.00

Publisher Description:

It started as a series of dinner parties that Esther Choi—artist, architectural historian, and self-taught cook—hosted for friends after she stumbled across an elaborate menu crafted for Walter Gropius in 1937. Combining a curiosity about art and design with a deeply felt love of cooking, Choi has assembled a playful collection of recipes that are sure to spark conversation over the dinner table. Featuring Choi’s own spectacular photography, these sixty recipes riff off famous artists or architects and the works they are known for. Try Quiche Haring with the Frida Kale-o Salad, or the Robert Rauschenburger followed by Flan Flavin. This cookbook is strikingly beautiful and provocative as it blurs the boundaries between art and everyday life and celebrates food in an engaging and imaginative way.

dDAB Commentary:

As I'm tapping these words into my phone, I'm hungry — very hungry. Depending on one's point of view, a state of hunger may be the best or worst time to read a cookbook (I fall into the latter camp, reflected in the way I try not to go to the grocery store with an empty stomach). But this is no ordinary cookbook. The recipes and creations expressed respectively in words and well-staged photos were inspired by artists and designers, something the book's title, Le Corbuffet, alludes to. The title also illustrates Esther Choi's sense of humor, which is front and center in the names of the dishes (Denise Scott Brownies, Rem Brûlée, and Kimchee Gordon are a few of my favorites) but extends to the photos and the way she words the recipes as well. Now, with my stomach growling, many of the unconventional culinary creations look unappetizing (a pile of kimchee inspired by the Sonic Youth bassist? No thanks), but just as many of them make my mouth water. I know that's not the point of this fairly esoteric cookbook, which provokes and entertains lovers of art and/or design, but food is food — and while not everything in this book looks good, it all looks fun.

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Author Bio:

Esther Choi is an artist and writer, whose photographs have appeared in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Another Magazine, and Dazed and Confused. She is the co-editor of the collected volumes Architecture is All Over and Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else.

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