It may well be the most ambitious culinary event that has ever taken place. 37 chefs, most of them world class have taken the bold step to travel the world and replace one of their colleagues for an evening at the restaurant.
The chefs taking part in the Gelinaz! Shuffle have arrived over the past two days to their destination after their names were drawn in a ballot. We know for sure that one of them has missed a flight and another, travelling to Faviken, a restaurant in the middle of nowhere in Sweden, had problems with his car engine on the way to the restaurant. But the identity of the chefs remains a mystery.
Gelinaz! is a collective of international chefs. It is a group that was created by Andrea Petrini and one of Italy’s best chefs Fulvio Pierangelini. (You can read about his story here). Pierangelini is an exceptional chef who did not necessarily like the way the culinary world was heading toward in the early 2000s.
In an interview with Agrodolce.it, Petrini said that Pierangelini was totally annoyed with people calling him to take part in cooking congresses from San Sebastian to Omnivore and he couldn’t care less. At the time, Pierangelini was complaining that people were copying his dishes. Petrini came up with a proposal to invite chefs like Andoni Luis Aduriz, Massimo Bottura, Peter Nilsson and Davide Scabin to recreate a dish with him live. It would be the legendary scallops with mortadella dish.
Events of the Gelinaz! have become legendary. One of the most amazing ones was a surprise visit to Osteria Francescana when a group of chefs reserved under the name of a certain Notary Bertinotti. The front of house, Beppe Palimieri, who knew what was going on, called Massimo into the restaurant telling him that there was a group which was very difficult, with food allergies, vegetarians etc. Petrini says that Bottura nearly died of a heart attack when he discovered that instead there was a group of his friends who had come to dine at his restaurant. (See video below)
Many other events have taken place but none is as ambitious as the project taking place on 9th July 2015.
The organisers have pledged to keep the names of the chefs secret and in this day of social media, they have managed this without any hints except for teasing photos and snippets on their website, Facebook and Twitter.
Chefs we follow on Instagram or Twitter have posted photos but these are all cryptic and reveal nothing of where they are.
We will have to wait till tomorrow to know who is cooking where. In the meantime, this is the list of chefs taking part in the shuffle: Albert Adria, Danny Bowien, Blaine Wetzel, Jock Zonfrillo, Riccardo Camanini, Fulvio Pierangelini, Inaki Aizpitarte, Davide Scabin, Massimiliano Alajmo, Claude Bosi, Sean Gray, Magnus Nilsson, Colombe Saint-Pierre, Bertrand Grebaut, Rene Redzepi, Ben Shewry, Alexandre Gauthier, Paul Cunningham, Ana Ros, Kobe Desramaults, Alain Ducasse, Yannick Alleno, Yoshihiro Narisawa, Virgilio Martinez, Mauro Colagreco, Dominique Crenn, Sean Brock, Rodolfo Guzman, Daniel Patterson, Andoni Luiz Aduriz, David Thompson, Mehmet Gurs. Alex Atala, Massimo Bottura, Carlo Mirarchi, David Kinchi, Petter Nilsson.
If you cannot wait or would like to try and guess you may want to visit the Gelinaz website or follow their page of Facebook or Twitter.
In the meantime, here are some photos from the Gelinaz! shuffle Facebook page.
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