Sylvia Weinstock © Melanie Dunea I was nervous to meet the Queen, even more so to photograph her. The assignment came in nearly two decades ago, when Town & Country magazine asked me to create a portfolio of the iconic players the New York City elite party circuit relies on. Among them was Sylvia Weinstock, the notable Queen of cakes. Sylvia lived, conveniently, just a few blocks from my apartment…
PUBLISHED VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE July 2021. The bone kept sliding out of my hand. I had picked it up at Ottomanelli & Sons on Bleecker Street, overloaded and teetering at the counter, balancing my cameras, my tripod bag, while I explained to the guy what I needed. “The biggest you’ve got,” I said. He wrapped it up in paper and I was on my way. The moment I walked out of the butcher shop I realized…
A Mexican border town gets a reboot thanks to a new crop of chefs, food trucks, and hungry young locals. Story and photographs were featured in Saveur Magazine . Ever since I was 18, making the occasional trip to Mexico to do tequila shots with friends, I’ve thought of Tijuana as holding an untold story. A border town in Mexico’s Baja California, it wasn’t a safe place back in the 1990s. Yet, it…
Personal essay and photographs were originally published on Refinery 29 . Monday-night dinners are a big deal for the Australian part of my family. The tradition started with my grandmother, but these days it’s my uncle David who hosts and cooks the meal. The second anyone walks through the door, he thrusts a glass of whiskey on the rocks into their hands. It's his way of saying "welcome." As a…
Essay and photographs were originally published in Singapore Tatler . When Melanie Dunea discovered the Emilia-Romagna region, she was already in love, but not with Italy. Oh how the tables have turned. “I love you,” I blurt out after the perfect spoonful of tortellini en brodo passes between my lips. The man sitting opposite me, the third-generation owner of Trattoria da Amerigo dal 1934 in…
Originally published on Food Republic , September, 2015. “Rome?” was all the text said. My reply: “Yes.” This is how my 12-year friendship with chef Gabrielle Hamilton works. She asks, I don’t question and vice versa. We met one night when my pal Anthony Bourdain took me to her New York City restaurant Prune to explain the genealogy of the chef world. This was in the days that paper covered the…
Essay and photographs were originally published on in Saveur . Last month, I found myself strapped into the passenger seat of a Alfa Romeo Giulia next to chef Gabrielle Hamilton, zooming from Venice to Bologna in search of the ultimate bowl of tortellini en brodo . We were gunning it but there was no way we’d arrive in time for lunch, which in Italy ends at 2:30 p.m. sharp. I was getting nervous.…
Turns out there's nothing all that luxurious about a real white truffle hunt. Three hours before sunrise, I was standing on a pitch-dark street corner in a tiny village in central Italy, and I was freaking out. I'd been in Emilia-Romagna for a week, sampling cheese, drinking wine, and drooling over slices of exquisite salumi. Because it was October, always hovering on the edge of these experiences…
Our friend Kevin Young is the author of seven books of poetry and the editor of eight others, including Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels , winner of a 2012 American Book Award, and Jelly Roll: A Blues , a finalist for the National Book Award. His recent book The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2012, a…
I must have asked the question, “What is your last supper?” over a thousand times. I am fascinated by the food fantasies of chefs, and motivated by the challenge of getting each one to reveal his last meal. For more than eight years, I have flown across the globe, interviewing and photographing the most talented people in charge of the world’s best kitchens for two volumes worth of last suppers.…
Tell me about the books you gathered — how do they define you? I have very eclectic tastes and I love to lose myself in books. I love art books, reference books, mysteries, cookbooks, gardening books, and current political and historical books. Is there any book that you despise? I have no time for trashy or self-help books. Which books made you fall in love? Titles about art deco jewelry are…