The Chef Says | Daniel Boulud, Amanda Cohen, Gabrielle Hamilton, Lisa Mamounas, Matt Sartwell, Nach Waxman | An Art and Food Series Event

FREE - South Court Auditorium doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Great chefs are neither self-effacing nor meek. There’s no room for manners in the professional kitchen, where the slightest stumble can send an entire restaurant into the weeds. So it follows that even in quieter moments, what chefs have to say is always opinionated and always illuminating.

Join Nach Waxman and Matt Sartwell, editors of the new book The Chef Says, for an engrossing panel discussion with some of New York’s most exciting foodies, including DANIEL's Daniel Boulud, Dirt Candy’s Amanda Cohen, Prune's Gabrielle Hamilton and Culinary Insiders’ Lisa Mamounas.

The Chef Says: Quotes, Quips, and Words of Wisdom, compiled and edited by Kitchen Arts & Letters bookstore owners Nach Waxman and Matt Sartwell, is an invitation to the ultimate food lover’s dinner party, where cooks from ancient Greece rub shoulders and talk shop with today’s rising stars. Through carefully selected and organized quotes, these unruly culinarians compliment, compete, and disagree with one another, as they discuss childhood and training, taste preferences and trends, the quest for perfection, and the grueling but exhilarating business of opening a restaurant. The Chef Says captivates anyone who has ever worked in a kitchen, been inspired by a flawlessly ripe tomato, or resolved a crisis by adding more butter. This book is the fourth volume in Princeton Architectural Press’ Words of Wisdom series, following The Architect Says, The Designer Says, and The Filmmaker Says.

Copies of The Chef Says; Blood, Bones and Butter;  Dirt Candy: A Cookbook and Chef Boulud's books are available for purchase and signing at the end of the event.

Nach Waxman and Matt Sartwell are the owners of the celebrated Kitchen Arts & Letters bookstore in New York City, which offers 13,000 food- and drink-related titles.

Daniel Boulud is Chef-Owner of several award-winning restaurants and the Feast & Fêtes catering company. While he hails from Lyon, France, it is in New York that he has truly mastered the dining scene and is today considered one of America’s leading culinary authorities. Raised on his family’s farm in the village of St Pierre de Chandieu, the chef remains inspired by the rhythm of the seasons and menus driven by fine ingredients. Since arriving in the US in 1982, Boulud has become renowned for the contemporary appeal he adds to soulful cooking rooted in French tradition. Boulud’s culinary accolades include James Beard Foundation awards for “Outstanding Restaurant,” “Outstanding Restaurateur,” “Best Chef, New York City” and “Outstanding Chef of the Year.” In addition, he has been named “Chef of the Year” by the Culinary Institute of America and Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government. Restaurant DANIEL has been cited as “one of the ten best restaurants in the world” by the International Herald Tribune, has earned three Michelin stars and Wine Spectator’s “Grand Award”, and is consistently ranked among Restaurant Magazine’s “World’s 50 Best Restaurants.” The Chef’s culinary style is reflected in his eight cookbooks, including the most recent DANIEL: My French Cuisine (Grand Central Publishing, 2013).

Amanda Cohen is the chef and owner of Dirt Candy, her award-winning vegetable restaurant in New York City’s East Village. The first vegetarian restaurant in seventeen years to receive two stars from the New York Times, it has been recognized by the Michelin Guide three years in a row, and won awards from Gourmet Magazine, the Village Voice, and many others. She was the first vegetarian chef to compete on Iron Chef America and her comic book cookbook Dirt Candy: A Cookbook, now in its fourth printing, is the first graphic novel cookbook to be published in North America.

Gabrielle Hamilton is an American chef and author. She is the chef/owner of Prune, a restaurant which she opened in NYC’s East Village in October 1999. She was nominated for Best Chef NYC in 2009 and 2010 by the James Beard Foundation, and in 2011, she won the  category. Hamilton received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. She is the author of The New York Times bestseller Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, which has been published in six languages and won the James Beard Foundation’s award for Writing and Literature in 2012.

Lisa Mamounas is the founder of Culinary Insiders, which goes beind-the-scenes, offers exclusive access to restaurants before they open to the public and creates unique events, tours and trips with celebrity chefs.The Corporate Division is a branch for local and large-scale international events, creative consulting, and artist/chef collaborations, including recent collaboration between Daniel Boulud and Vik Muniz, featured in Food & Wine magazine, as well as dynamic artist/chef events with major cultural institutions, including MoMA, Lincoln Center as well as Art Chicago and Art Dubai. Culinary Insiders is supported by a prestigious board of world-renowned chefs/restaurateurs including Daniel Boulud, Drew Nieporent, Mauro Maccioni and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Lisa is also an avid contemporary art collector, sits on the Patrons Advisory Board of Art Dubai and is a member of the Associates Council of MoMA.

Conceived and organized by Arezoo Moseni, the new Art and Food series events peel back the hidden layers of taste and aesthetics across the literary and visual arts with readings and discussions by acclaimed artists, authors, chefs, critics, historians and others.