Gallic Books scoops 'manifesto and memoir' from world’s most Michelin-starred chef

Gallic Books has landed the first manifesto and memoir by renowned chef Alain Ducasse.

Editor Polly Mackintosh acquired world English rights to Good Taste: A Life of Food and Passion from Lily Salter at French publisher J C Lattes.

Supported by a “stand-out” publicity campaign co-ordinated by Fiona Smith of Smith & Baxter, the book will be published in hardback in the UK in September 2023. It will also feature introductions from food writer and novelist Jay McInerney, and Clare Smyth, the Chef Patron of the three Michelin-starred Core by Clare Smyth.

Ducasse pioneered a sustainable, vegetable-based style of cuisine and is currently the most Michelin-starred chef in the world, holding 20 across his restaurants, including at the three-starred Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester.

Good Taste sets out Ducasse’s vision for his future and for the future of food, the publisher says, continuing: “Along the way, he takes the reader on a journey from his childhood, where he picked mushrooms with his grandfather on a farm in Les Landes, via work experience making crepes at a roadside café, several apprenticeships with some of the most famous chefs in France, to setting up ground-breaking schools and restaurants across the world, and more recently hand-crafted chocolates."

Mackintosh said: “We are so excited to be publishing this book from one of the most influential chefs in the world. With our focus on all things francophone, Gallic Books is perfectly placed to bring Ducasse’s reflections on his philosophy and his trailblazing culinary life to English-speaking readers.”

Ducasse said: “For me, this is not a memoir, but rather a way of sharing the experience of being around a table, of a dish or a flavour, of looking at the intangible, of writing about ephemeral pleasures so that they can become permanent. I want to pass on what knowledge I have gained to a new generation, and I am very pleased that this book will be published for English readers.”