André Chiang's American Hustle
The chef celebrates his rise up the 50 Best Restaurants list, inspires local chefs and delights NYC tastemakers!
André Chiang, the world-beating Taiwanese chef and author of Octaphilosophy, may have timed his trip to New York to coincide with The World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards, yet he managed to pack much more than a simple trophy acceptance speech into his few days in NYC.
On Sunday 12 June André gave a presentation for the World's 50 Best Restaurants on his innovative use of fermented juices, which you can also read about in the new book, Octaphilosophy. This was followed by a private dinner at Aska, the soon-to-be-opened Brooklyn restaurant from the hot Swedish chef, Fredrik Berselius.
The following Monday morning André dressed his chef’s table display at Barneys in Manhattan. This in-store display has become something of a tradition for Phaidon’s culinary authors; both Massimo Bottura and Food & Beer authors Daniel Burns and Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergso have set similar tables in the past.
That evening André followed in Massimo’s footsteps more literally, at the World’s 50 Best Awards event. The Octaphilosophy chef congratulated Bottura on topping the list, celebrated his own Restaurant Andre’s huge rise of 14 places from number 46 in 2015 to 32 in 2016, and explained the list’s significance to a New York Times reporter. “I always say that this list is not about rank or who’s on top of the other,” André told the Times. “But it is an indication of trend and direction, because these 50 chefs who choose to step out from their comfort zone are pushing the boundaries and leading the culinary scene of tomorrow.”
As if to demonstrate his point, André and innovative NY chef Jeremiah Stone collaborated on a remarkable seven-dish tasting menu at Stone’s Orchard Street restaurant, Contra. A little over 60 guests enjoyed this book-as-ticket engagement, delighting in the menu, and the chance to meet Andre, who came out of the kitchen to hand-garnish a dish or two and chat with diners.
On Thursday André ventured a little way upstate, to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, to address an audience of 250 food industry professionals in the CIA Menus of Change conference, as well as a group of CIA students, before flying on to Europe. To discover why gastronomes around the world love André's culinary abilities order a copy of Octaphilosophy here.