Food Writer Francis Lam And Christine Gaspar Marry
Food writer and Clarkson Potter editor-at-large Francis Lam married Christine Gaspar over the weekend in New York City. The wedding was attended — and catered — by a star-studded lineup of chefs, including Grant Achatz, Andrew Carmellini, and Eric Rivera.
Ruth Reichl, renowned critic and former editor at Gourmet, was also in attendance, and in a write-up of the wedding on her blog, she called it "the most moving wedding ceremony" she had ever attended. Luckily for all of us who weren't invited to the wedding, she also wrote about and posted photos of the dishes served at the reception.
The menu (posted on Twitter by pastry chef and wedding guest Michael Laiskonis) featured courses that paid homage to the bride and groom's backgrounds (Portuguese and Chinese, respectively), and was printed in three languages. Among the dishes — served "Chinese take-out style" in little white boxes — were grilled octopus with cauliflower, braised seaweed with tofu and pumpkin, and quinoa with mushrooms and chickpeas.
Instead of a wedding cake, the meal ended with salted chocolate buckwheat cookies "nestled beneath the perfect marriage of China and Portugal: rich, flaky, utterly classic egg custard tarts, the dim sum that arrived in China via Macau, courtesy of the Portuguese," wrote Reichl. Guests were also given a parting gift of a tiny jar of pimento cheese from chef Ashley Christensen.
Reichl praised the menu, calling it "a remarkable snapshot of the way America is eating at the moment" as a "menu that was ethnically diverse, primarily plant-based, borrowed from many cultures — and utterly original."