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VIDEO: Scroll to bottom of article to watch the chefs cook their last meal.
It’s one of the most common questions asked of chefs: what would you choose to eat for your final meal? We wanted to know too, so we took the idea a few steps further and rounded up seven of Boston’s most acclaimed chefs to actually cook — and eat — their hypothetical last meals.
The long wooden table is set with simple white dishes and empty wine glasses. The ambience is warm, inviting, almost regal, with wall shelves stocked with bottles of reds, whites, and Champagne. The disciples have been replaced by a veritable who’s who of Boston chefs: Todd English (Olives, Bonfire, Kingfish Hall, and others); Jamie Bissonnette (Toro); Michael Schlow (Radius, Via Matta, Great Bay); Jeremy Sewall (Lineage); Chris Douglass (Icarus, Ashmont Grill, Tavolo); Tony Susi (Sage); and Andy Husbands (Tremont 647). The table is not at Mount Zion, but instead the private dining room of Bonfire, where chef/owner English has opened up his kitchen to let some of the city’s most creative epicures prepare and share what they would create as their last meals on Earth. The food coming from the kitchen is as eclectic as the men preparing it, ranging from classic Italian (spaghetti, bruschetta, and arugula salad from Schlow; potato gnocchi with rabbit and mushroom braise from Susi) to a decadence-and-comfort combination (Southern-style fried chicken and waffles, plus caviar on petite egg sandwiches with Dom Perignon to wash it all down, courtesy of English).
Cooked with heart
“I’m late to my own funeral,” quips Chris Douglass, scurrying into Bonfire more than a half-hour after the six other chefs. “I’ve got to say it’s a little freaky thinking about your last meal. I’m probably the closest one here to [it].”
For that meal, Douglass, long a devotee of locally sourced foods, is creating an ode to Martha’s Vineyard: bay scallops with slow-roasted sungold tomatoes and fennel; spelt bread with raw-milk ricotta, cherry tomatoes, and arugula; roasted chicken with squash, onions, and mustard greens. All of the ingredients originated on the island. “I wanted to go to a meaningful place for myself and use ingredients from a place that was meaningful,” Douglass says of the spot where he was married and still visits for the produce, at places such as Mermaid Farm, Bluebird Farm, and Beetlebung Farm.
Jeremy Sewall, who’s preparing his grandmother’s fish chowder, also believes the last meal is all about a personal connection with the food. He remembers tasting the chowder for the first time as the moment he started falling in love with food. “I was 10 or 11, and I sat there for about 40 minutes; they had to talk me into trying it,” he says. When he finally did, he was hooked. “I just couldn’t believe it tasted like that,” he says of the chowder made with fish his grandfather had just caught and potatoes from his grandmother’s garden. “So [for my last meal], I wanted to eat something that makes you feel great.”
For Bissonnette, the experience of creating, cooking, and sharing a last meal is as much about who’s in the room as what’s on the plates. “If I wasn’t cooking and money was no object, I would eat caviar, truffles, foie gras, and I would just have my friends cook it for me,” he says. “It’s more about the people you’re around than it is about the food.” As he lays out slices of salami it took him about eight months to make, he quickly adds, “Actually, if all these guys were in the room, I’d have them cook whatever they want and I’d eat it.”
That’s because the best food, according to Bissonnette, is cooked with heart. “I like eating food that other people are passionate about,” he explains. “When you ask a cook to make you a grilled cheese, and he doesn’t like grilled cheese, it’s going to be good. But if you ask Jeremy [Sewall] to make you a lobster roll, it’s going to be awesome, because he loves making lobster rolls, and he loves lobster.”
Someone’s in the kitchen
Back in the kitchen, it isn’t as hectic as one might imagine, considering that there are seven chefs from different restaurants working in close proximity to one another — not to mention a couple of photographers, a small videography team, and a handful of white-coated cooks watching English arrange nuggets of hot waffles around pieces of fried chicken. Perhaps this is due in part to the fact that most of the chefs have come with their ingredients prepped and ready to go (likewise, they’d presumably have all of their vegetables chopped prior to getting to the big kitchen in the clouds).
And for guys who have some serious foodie muscle to flex, they do so with restraint and good humor. “I figured [the other chefs] would be doing all this fancy shit, like truffles and foie gras,” says Husbands, picking a Cambodian chili pepper out of his box of ingredients. “But this is comfort food for me: General Gau’s, Chinese food. I love big flavors; I’m not always crazy about hot. This one’s going to be a little spicy, just to give it to these guys,” he jokes, “so they can think about their last meal tomorrow, too.”
Breaking bread
When it comes time to taste one another’s meals, the compliments aren’t hard to come by. Though the food isn’t exactly piping hot by the time the chefs-turned-guests-of-honor sit down to eat — thanks to the time it took to shoot the photos on these pages — the reviews are better than lukewarm. “It’s cold, but it’s good,” says Bissonnette. “All of it.”
Even cold, Bissonnette’s omelet garners some rave reviews from his fellow diners. “There’s not a speck of brown on that — I don’t know if you guys noticed,” Schlow points out. “That omelet is perfectly cooked.” Schlow remembers when he learned from renowned chef Jacques Pépin how to perfect the egg dish. “I remember I got shit from [him] one day. He was like, ‘That’s not an omelet; you only rolled it once.’ ”
As for what the chefs would eat for their last meals if they weren’t preparing it themselves, some iconic classics make the list. “Who doesn’t love kick-ass shrimp cocktail?” asks Schlow. “A Fenway Frank while watching the Sox win in ’04,” says Bissonnette. For the most part, easy, tasty food — sans pretense — tops their lists. (Still, notes Schlow, “The problem with all of these things we’re throwing out is if you get an average version of any of these things, you’re disappointed. But at their best, they’re rock stars.”)
While we like to think that chefs with resumes as impressive as these — their restaurants rank among the most popular in Boston; they’ve published cookbooks; and they spent their early years in the business working under some of the world’s best chefs — spend their time outside their restaurants concocting the most perfect soufflés and finest delicacies, in fact they like to eat just like anybody else.
“I’d venture to guess that a lot of us for our last meals would get some good takeout, sitting at home,” says Sewall. “There’s nothing like a good carton of Chinese food, y’know? Sometimes I like to combine takeout food. Like, I’ll slather curry chicken on a cold piece of pizza.” On this point, the group isn’t so agreeable. “That’s gross,” says Husbands. “Why not, man?” counters Sewall. “If it’s four in the morning and you’re starving?”
And as much as they love food and have made culinary creativity their lives’ work, it’s safe to say these chefs would have more important things to tend to during their final mortal hours. “If you notice, nobody went fancy,” says Schlow, pointing out Douglass’s roast chicken, Susi’s perfect gnocchi, and English’s fried chicken. “Everybody made simple, approachable food. We want spice, we want saltiness, we want some acid.”
“If this is my last day on Earth, then why am I cooking?” adds Schlow. “When the angels come to get me, I want to be doing other things.”
What, exactly? “I’d go to Vegas,” says Susi, “for a steak and a lap dance.”
