Painting Chefs jackets

Since you asked, more stories of my fabulous adventures at Paul Bocuse's 1994 
MOF luncheon in Lyon. Enjoy!
The next chapter of my varied career path...Butcher, baker, candlestick maker...

What's next? Chefs jacket painter!

As I mentioned before I had nothing to wear to the ball...I mean the chef portrait exhibit opening at the James Beard House.. So I painted a Bragard chef's jacket to wear covered with portraits of said chefs!

Here's a back view with my favorite back views of the chefs. I mentioned that I wore 4 different jackets to Paul Bocuse MOF award luncheon. Not all at once. I rotated them in the ladies room. 

A tall, dark, thin man came over and said he'd like to order a painted jacket. 

I asked for his business card. He said he had none. I asked could he write his name on a piece of paper. He wrote -

Georges Duboeuf!
I did a special "Flower Label" jacket for a good friend of his.

At the same Bocuse lunch another chef invited me for lunch at his Lyon hotel restaurant.

There he served me my first & last whole black Perigord truffe en croute. After I finished his dish and assured him it was wonderful.. (what do I know of truffles, chocolate or otherwise) he informed me, 'Now you will paint me a chef's jacket. You have just eaten your payment!'
Pas de choise/I had no choice..C'est la vie Sometimes you have to ‘sing 🎵 for your supper 🍽️ ’

I got to know famed French chef, Roger Verge at that luncheon. He asked me to paint him a special jacket for his upcoming vegetable cookbook tour. Payment would be a stay at his fabulous French Riviera inn, Le Moulin de Mougins. I never got around to tasting that "truffle" and now he's no longer there.

 Wendy Brandes at the Wall Street Journal did a little story on the jackets,
"Michelangelo liked ceilings.
Diego Rivera preferred murals.
Carol Gillott goes for...chefs jackets."

I never ever worried what to wear to a ball or foodie event I was shooting. Plus I was a walking advertisement for the jackets. Mothers liked the jackets for their graduating culinary school kids. Chefs liked them for special events. Chefs were just entering the celebrity arena at that time. A back view of the "pasta jacket" of a Tuscan hill town for all you returning sojourners from Italy!