Good Taste

A memoir and manifesto of culinary inspiration from Michelin starred chef Alain Ducasse, with introductions by internationally renowned author and food writer Jay McInerney and chef Clare Smyth.

“Through this book Alain Ducasse, always looking for new things, passes on everything he knows about cooking.” —Le Chef

At 12 years old, Alain Ducasse had never been to a restaurant. Less than 20 years later, he received his first Michelin star. Today he is 1 of just 2 chefs to have been awarded 21 stars, and the first chef to own 3 restaurants with 3 Michelin stars each.

Now, for the very first time, Ducasse shares a lifetime of culinary inspirations and passions in a book that is part memoir and part manifesto. Good Taste takes us 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 and a traumatic plane crash in which he was the only survivor, to setting up ground-breaking schools and restaurants across the world. He is now taking off his chef whites and passing on what he knows to the next generation.

Ducasse weaves a poignant ode to the humble ingredients that have inspired his entire cuisine and to the masters that guided him along the way, from Paris to New York to Tokyo. As he looks to the future, and to training the next generation, he reflects on just what ‘good taste’ means.