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They are the 'artistes' in the cuisine, with chocolate and sugar...

Of course they adored having their portraits on their own business cards. They really got my food art biz going.

When I received an invite to a screening of KINGS OF PASTRY I was thrilled.
It's about the 3-day competition of carefully selected French pastry chefs, sixteen in fact, all vieing for the much coveted M.O.F. or Meilleur Ouvriers De France award in Lyon. As luck would have it, I went to Maine to paint and missed the screening, but they sent me the video and BOY OH BOY is it fun!
The Guardian said,
"I never saw so many men sobbing at once"
"A culinary HURT LOCKER"
You get to see top pastry artistes pushed to the limit, racing against time and each other to make their super, fragiles creations. You see top pastry judges of France (PH included!) tasting and grading the contender's art works (16 desserts) and their responses. Full of suspense...catastrophes beaucoup...even the judges are in tears.
If you love French pastry, you MUST see KINGS OF PASTRY
Pastry chefs of the highest order are required to make many confectionary sculptures...
Usually made of sugar. These chocolate masterpieces were at the Salon du Chocolat last October. Now I have a better idea of the enormous effort that went into making them.
Oh the torture, oh the sleepless nights.
I attended the Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie in Lyon in '94 - words can not describe the fabulousness of it all. If only I'd had my Canon back then. Last June I returned to Lyon for a macaron class. Instead I ate lunch at Paul Bocuse's Brasserie Le Nord.
Very chaleureuse/warm indeed..
Very much in the old French tradition of quality and simplicity.
Bien sur you know I had une salade...
And then the very traditional cote d'agneau for my main.
Miam-miam
When I asked for the l'addition they said I was an invitee/guest!?
How I wished I had ordered dessert...something on the order of this elaborate chocolate chapeau...
HATS OFF TO THE M.O.F. WINNERS

Yesterday K & S said...you've had the coolest jobs! You ain't seen nothin' Sweetie Darling :)
Paul Bocuse, Champagne Mumm's spokes person,
suggested I do some artwork for them and made introductions.
They gave me a test assignment: Come up with a big group drawing of tons of celebrities drinking Mumm that they could gift to all their employees.
Can you spot Kate Moss? And there's one of the Seagrams brothers embracing the big bottle. Please note everyone is holding their glass by the STEM. Never hold a champagne glass by the "bowl". You must not warm up the bubbles.
That group drawing led to a portrait promotion program. They thought I should paint the portraits directly onto the Mumm bottles?
I foresaw a sea of Mumm jeroboams in my living room. The last minute I dreamed up the idea to print their label design on my watercolor paper and I ended up with just stacks of nice neatly printed Champagne labels.

One of the perks of this career was I got to stay at the Mumm mansion in Reims...
The countryside in Champagne is magnificent and there's a new fast train

from Paris that gets you there in an hour. Don't miss it!
I got to stay a week in Verzy at Veuve Clicquot's country estate.
It was just me and a refrigerator full of jeroboams.
They said, "Help yourself" Right! :)
Someone did pop in to deliver petit dejeuner in the morning and the rest of the time I communed with the grapevines. They still use straw baskets to pick the grapes in Champagne.
There's a lot of partying in the Champagne Biz. These pourers are dressed up as old fashioned "cellar men". They used to turn the resting bottles.
They're fun to sketch...
This is not me embracing the big bottle, that's my French boss at Mumm...
This is me partying at the Chelsea Arts Club Belle Epoche Ball held at London's Albert Hall... Well there is a Champagne bottle in the picture. We had to come as characters from Degas and Lautrec paintings. I chose a Degas dancer. I remember Roger Terry, the club concierge, telling me,
"If you add one more satin bow to that outfit, you'll look like a dog's dinner."
Don't you just love the Brits!

Pass the Bolly Sweetie Darling!

The next chapter of my varied career path...Butcher, baker, candlestick maker...

As I mentioned before I had nothing to wear to the ball...I mean the chef portrait exhibit opening at the James Beard House.. So I painted a chef's jacket to wear covered with portraits of said chefs!

Here's a back view with my favorite back views of the chefs...
I mentioned also that I wore 4 different jackets to Paul Bocuse award luncheon... Not all at once silly! I rotated them in the ladies room. A tall, dark, thin man came over and said he'd like to order a painted jacket.
asked for his business card. He said he had none. I asked could he write his name on a piece of paper.. And he wrote -

At the same Bocuse event another chef invited me for lunch at his Lyon hotel restaurant.There he served me my first and last whole black Perigord truffle en croute. After I finished his dish and assured him it was wonderful.. (what do I know of truffles, chocolate or otherwise) He informed me, Now you will paint me a chef's jacket. You have just eaten your payment!
Pas de choise / I had no choice..
C'est la vie
Sometimes you just have to pay the piper for your dinner..

I got to know famed French chef, Roger Verge at that luncheon too. He asked me to paint him a special jacket for his upcoming vegetable cookbook tour. Payment would be a stay at his fabulous French Riviera inn, Le Moulin de Mougins. I never got around to tasting that "truffle" and now he's no longer there :(

Wendy Brandes at the Wall Street Journal did a little story on the jackets...
"Michelangelo liked ceilings. Diego Rivera preferred murals. Carol Gillott goes for...chefs jackets."

I never had to worry again what to wear to the ball or any foodie events I was shooting. And I was a walking sandwich board for the jackets. Moms liked the jackets for their graduating culinary school kids. Chefs liked them too for special events. And the chefs were just entering the celebrity arena at that time...

I threw in this back view of the "pasta jacket" of a hilltown for all you returning sojourners from Italy, Merisi and Brit!