Mido

Barsoum

My best friend - R.I.P. - was a Dungeons & Dragons fan and a DM. One day he introduced me to the D&D Cookbook; a place where food and fantasy come together and nothing ever spoke to me more vividly than these two topics. Fantasy was always a part of my life and everything I do. It was a main source of inspiration.

This Bouillabaisse was inspired from the cookbook and one of the most interesting parts of creating this was that I had to go to my grandmother's house in order to find some authentically old looking props, to match the scene I was building. The sourdough bread was provided by Diver Baker.

This was actually a homage to Nikki Astwood and my entry into an Instagram challenge hosted by her and Food Art Project.
I wanted to try an slightly break the common way of laying out these kinds of setups. Instead of a square, heart or circle with a defined edge, I thought of creating a more dynamic shape that would lead us to the hero dish.
This photo also won first place. Thank you Nikki and Mridul.

I had this vision of a monochromatic blue set and the most prominent thing on that set would be the orange yolk of a soft boiled egg.

I proceeded to collect all the blue props I could find and started building. An additional touch that helped me enhance the storytelling, was the collaboration with Queen Of Embroidery - Neveen Wassef. She hand embroidered my favorite quote as well as an unfinished dove on a circular canvas in Sashiko stitching to match the little blue bread basket. It was a great delight and an honor to have her contribute to this project.

Two years after I took this photo, I went back and rebuilt the entire set once again in order to create a matching video for the story and enter an online challenge. That video also won the Best Video award.
The Blue Breakfast is still one of my proudest pieces and I believe that it holds symbolic value that reflects the sadness that goes on in the world, while we still manage to enjoy our lavish breakfasts.