After making his mark on the culinary world with restaurants and best-selling cookbooks, Yotam Ottolenghi was looking for his next challenge. He found it when the Metropolitan Museum of Art called. The London-based Israeli chef was enlisted to organize a food gala inspired by the NYC institution’s “Visitors to Versailles” exhibit. “Going back a couple of centuries and learning how it all evolved — this is for me,” he says in a new trailer for “Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles.” Laura Gabbert’s doc offers a behind-the-scenes look at how he — and the star-studded pastry team he assembled — managed to bring the French Monarchy’s iconic decadence stateside.
Ottolenghi and co. aspire to tell a story through cake, and the pressure is on to “bring something new to the realm of food and drink,” one character explains. “Some of the pastry chefs are making things where you can’t even believe it’s food,” we’re told.
The team “positions the Met event as both an expression and critique of excess,” the doc’s synopsis details. “Several centuries ago in Versailles, the royal family lived in public to help broadcast the country’s splendor and wealth. Ottolenghi fast-forwards to the advent of social media and finds a new aristocracy streaming their riches, food, and prosperity. In both eras, we see deep exclusion, longing for community, a patriarchal structure – and the same potential for revolution.”
“I hope people come away with an appreciation for the artistry, dedication, and rigor it takes to be an internationally renowned pastry chef,” Gabbert told us. “Yotam selected five chefs who are all so different from each other, but each one brings something extremely unique and personal to their craft.” She emphasized, “I also hope people think about the cyclical nature of history, and see some of the parallels between the end of Louis XI’s reign and society today.”
Gabbert’s other credits include “No Impact Man,” “Sunset Story,” and “City of Gold.”
“Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles” drops in select theaters and on digital and cable VOD September 25.
