...Exploring Salvador Dali’s Surrealist Cookbook

The dishes featured on my ideal surrealist menu, alongside many others, are given high-star ratings by Parisian institutes such as Maxim’s de Paris, La Tour d’Argent and Lasserre. These fine-dining powerhouses all pitch in throughout the book to certify Dali’s recipes such as “Truffles “Cinderella” in Flaky Pasty” and “Pheasant Raphael Ravenga”. Not only is this a weirdly legitimate recognition of Dali’s surrealist culinary work by old-school centres of fine dining, but it’s also a heart-warming fulfilment of one of Dali’s childhood dreams:

“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since”

- Salvador Dali The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (1948)

While the artist’s ambition and eccentrics will never be enough to please his seven-year-old self (which is definitely for the best), Dali does become a cook in this book. I doubt Dali was ever found on the backline, chopping carrots into weird, most likely sexual shapes, or washing piles of dishes organised in the shape of melting clocks, but he blurs the lines between the art forms of his own surrealism and distinct Nouvelle Cuisine culinary creativity in Les Dîners de Gala.

All in all: This is a really strange book. I want to have a copy with me everywhere I go. Laced with weird recipes, strikingly beautiful and deeply disturbing double-page art spreads, as well as Dali’s continuously nutty comments, it’s certainly an experience I would recommend. Proceed with caution though, I haven’t even told you about the sequel yet: Wines of Gala, or as I like to call it “Dali 2: More Salvador”.