An Evening Chez Ducasse

Event Location
Alain Ducasse
at the Essex House
155 West 58th St., NYC

Saturday, April 27, 6:30 P.M.
Members and guests, $1,000

Limited to 50 people. For reservations or more information, please call Arlyn Blake at (212) 627-1111, ext. 307.

In New York, where chefs are stars, it can be hard for a culinarian to stand out from the ranks of foie gras-foisting, sea bass-serving, pasta-perfecting top toques. What a chef really needs to make people pay attention is a signature—a true marker of difference—what Madison Avenue calls a brand. There are a few who have attained that coveted status: first-name-only chefs whose monikers are intoned with respect, admiration, longing. And then there is the über-brander: the chef who swept in from elsewhere and fomented a feeding frenzy the likes of which New York had not seen since the days when Delmonico's imported menageries to entertain its top-hatted clients. This is a chef who has turned the business of dinner into high art—a chef whose menus bespeak Brillat-Savarin, who transforms humble ingredients into near-unfathomable gastronomic indulgence, and who closes his dinners with fistfuls of candy. We are speaking of a chef who has made luxury itself his brand. We are speaking, of course, of Alain Ducasse.

What more is there to be said about Ducasse? You know, of course, that he was the youngest chef ever to earn three stars from the Guide Michelin—this was in 1989, at Le Louis XV in Monaco's Hôtel de Paris, when he was 33. You know that great chefs have long made pilgrimages to Monaco to sit at the master's table. You might remember the desperate hunt for reservations among the culinary elite that marked the end of Alain Ducasse in Paris, and you've probably heard that he was the first to earn three-star designations for two restaurants at once. You've read about Spoon, his groundbreaking American-flavored chain. And certainly you remember this Beard Award winner's entrée onto the New York dining scene two years ago. Ever since, Ducasse has been quietly doing exactly the sort of thing that has made him, as Dominique Vallière of L'Express once put it, "uncontestably one of the greatest chefs of our time": creating the finest food imaginable from the simplest, freshest, beginnings, and serving it up in an environment so lovely, so complete, so luxurious it seems impossible.

This month, for the second time, Ducasse opens his doors to Beard House members for one shimmering evening. The extraordinary food will be matched with extraordinary wines from the private collections of trustees of the Foundation. Come see what's behind a real luxury brand.