The Last Meal…

Posted by Bob Bickell

September 20, 2008

Welcome back!

When it comes to the media coverage of chefs, it never stops (and that’s a good thing). It’s one clever concept after another and of course the Food Network has so much to do with this. “Boy Meets Grill”; “Chef at Large”; “Chef at Home”; “Dinner Impossible”; “Kitchen Nightmares”; “The Iron Chef”; etc., etc. The media falls all over each other with chef concepts designed to boggle the minds of their audience.

So, I’m reading the Washington Post and here comes another one - “The Last Meal.” What would the chef want for a final meal? Not the most creative thought process, but perhaps interesting. If they asked me, I would probably say something like a jumbo shrimp cocktail; a filet-mignon (with a béarnaise sauce) and maybe an entire cheesecake.

Having said that, you have to be impressed with the answer from Chef Peter Pastan (Obelisk in Washington)…

“I’d start off with a plate of jabugo ham, super-extra fatty. Then an ovoli-mushroom salad, then some agnolotti stuffed with fonduta with fresh white truffles on top, then roast suckling pig—cooked over wood—and some small porcini mushrooms cooked in the pan drippings under the pig, and a bowl of some stewed fresh cannellini beans on the side. Then I’d have a big chunk of Parmigiano cheese—it’d have to be from a vacche rosse cow. For dessert, I’d do a bottle of dessert wine, a 1995 Recioto di Valpolicella by Romano Dal Forno. It’s made with dried grapes, so it has a lot of sweetness and a lot of alcohol.”

Now that is one serious answer and certainly a reminder that chefs know things and do things that the average person could only dream about. I would even suggest that the good chef make his “last meal” one of his nightly specials, and while undoubtedly expensive, a trip to DC would definitely be in order.

Restaurant People