DISHING IT OUT: Celebrated French chef Alain Ducasse, an avid collector of the finest porcelain tableware and antique table linens, invited some chaos into his restaurants at Maison Baccarat in Paris, collaborating on an unconventional lunch Friday with Russian architect and furniture designer Harry Nuriev, who never met an aluminum barbecue tray he didn’t like.
Famed for his DIY aesthetic and “silvering” technique, Nuriev set up a makeshift grocery store amid the main ballroom’s Rococo splendor, laying out a table that resembled a checkout conveyor belt, this one ferrying big jars of pickled vegetables, bundles of carrots, tins of olive oil, and a strawberry sponge cake too pretty to eat.
The walls were lined with grocery shelves laden with ingredients nicked from Ducasse’s kitchen, with a few bottles of Heinz ketchup thrown in to broadcast the theme, which was chaos.
The dishes were unconventional, to say the least, starting with a stalk of raw asparagus carved to resemble a pencil that one could dip into a silver petri dish of flowers floating on olive oil butter. (It tasted better than it sounds.)
Guests also tucked into blobs of purple potato topped with bonito flakes, listed as “zombie tuna” on the silvery menu; jars of vegan foie gras to smear on torn chunks of baguette, and ultimately raspberries and avocado dipped in dark chocolate.
