Historic menu inspires an artful cookbook

Art inspires life inspires art. This truism is fully in effect in Esther Choi’s new cookbook titled Le Corbuffet: Edible Art and Design, out this month from Germany’s Prestel publishing house. The journey to writing a cookbook began as a series of dinner parties that Choi – an artist, architectural historian, and self-taught cook – hosted for friends after she stumbled across an elaborate menu crafted in 1937 for Walter Gropius, a German architect and Bauhaus School founder.

Combining a curiosity about art and design with a deeply felt love of cooking, Choi has assembled a playful collection of recipes that are sure to spark conversation over the dinner table. Featuring Choi’s own spectacular photography, these sixty recipes riff off famous artists or architects and the works they are known for. Try Quiche Haring with the Frida Kale-o Salad, or the Robert Rauschenburger followed by Flan Flavin.

If the descriptions of the food intrigue you, you can read more about Choi’s inspiration in an interview with The Daily Beast. As she explains in her interview, the book “began as a series of reflections on cultural valuation and privatization,” and that the menu she found prompted her to “reflect on the elite, cult-like status of certain figures and cultural artifacts in the art and design worlds.” Le Corbuffet is strikingly beautiful and provocative as it blurs the boundaries between art and everyday life.