Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles - Laura Gabbert Interview

A delicious new documentary is coming your way featuring Award winning Chef, Yotam Ottolenghi.

In June 2018, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art paid tribute to the court’s decadent cuisine by staging the Feast of Versailles, billed as “an edible exploration of power and privilege through pastry.” Guests paid $125 and up per ticket for the experience.

Under the curation of chef, restaurateur and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi and culinary historian Deborah Krohn, a small team of top pastry chefs created Versailles-inspired desserts as filmmaker Laura Gabbert (“City of Gold,” “No Impact Man”), documented the process. The result is “Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles,” in theaters and on demand Sept. 25.

The Jerusalem-born, London-based chef, who’d orchestrated two previous events at the Met, started preparing nearly nine months in advance, beginning with a trip to France to see Versailles firsthand.

He assembles a team—a veritable who's who of the dessert world, including Dominique Ansel, Ghaya Oliveria, Dinara Kasko, Sam Bompas, and Janice Wong—to help bring his vision to life. The pastry chefs create a true feast of Versailles complete with a cocktail whirlpool and posh jello shots, architectural mousse cakes, chocolate sculptures, swan pastries, and an edible garden. Ottolenghi acts as our guide throughout, disassembling pastries to give us the history of ingredients that we now take for granted, like sugar and chocolate.

Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles perfectly captures the heights of human achievement and the frailty of decadence, adding taste as one more sense with which to experience the Met.

The film is directed by documentary filmmaker Laura Gabbert, who’s critically acclaimed films deploy full measures of humor and drama to unflinchingly put a human face on a range of social and cultural issues. NO IMPACT MAN (Sundance ’09), which the LA Times called “terrifically entertaining,compelling and extremely funny,” played theatrically in over 30 cities. Her previous film SUNSET STORY(PBS) won prizes at Tribeca and LAFF. About it, the New York Times wrote, “Sunset Story may break your heart, but it will also make your day.” Gabbert directed the feature film CITY OF GOLD (Sundance 2015)about Pulitzer Prize winning food writer Jonathan Gold. The film played theatrically in over 50 markets. About it, the New York Times wrote “the film does as much to demystify and yet romanticize Los Angeles as any Chandler novel.”

Vogue Magazine included CITY OF GOLD in their list ofthe “the 60 best documentaries of all time.” In 2017 Gabbert was a director on the Netflix show UGLY DELICIOUS and directed the Field of Vision short film MONUMENT | MONUMENTO about a unique spot on the US-Mexico border. Most recently, she directed the feature documentary OTTOLENGHI AND THE CAKES OF VERSAILLES about a collaboration between chef Yotam Ottolenghi and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is currently co-directing the seven-part non-fiction series THE POWER OF FILM based on the lectures of legendary film scholar Howard Sube.

I spoke with Laura Gabbert about working on the film and how much she herself was allowed to indulge!