Five books a top fine-dining chef couldn’t live without: Richard Ekkebus’ must-reads for a desert island
Landmark Mandarin Oriental culinary director’s picks include a book that explains how taste works, a novel about scents, an insight into the mind of Leonardo da Vinci and the story of Pixar
Richard Ekkebus, the culinary director of The Landmark Mandarin Oriental, grew up in Vlissingen, a coastal port in southwest Holland. He often visited his grandmother’s restaurant as a child and later, as an engineering student at university, he worked in restaurants, first as a kitchen porter and then as an assistant chef. Eventually his love of cooking won over and he left his engineering studies to pursue his career as a chef.
Following an apprenticeship in The Netherlands under Michelin-starred chefs Hans Snijders and Robert Kranenborg, he worked in Belgium, The Netherlands, Paris and Saint-Etienne in France, Mauritius, New York and Barbados, where 14 years ago, he was spotted by the Mandarin Group and enticed to Hong Kong. He loves reading and says his home is filled with books.
Here are the five books he’d take to a desert island, in his own words.
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
by Patrick Suskind, 1985
This was one of the most talked-about novels when it was released and was on the bestseller list for years. It’s about an orphan who discovers he has an extremely sensitive sense of smell. One day he meets a young girl whose smell he has never come across – and I won’t say any more. I first read this as a student when I was 18, about the time I began to get interested in cooking. The premise of the book has so many parallels with the kitchen – it’s about capturing smell, taste and flavour. The story begins in Paris where I worked and lived for a long time and where my daughter, Emma, later studied literature at the Sorbonne.
