Learn to Cook Fancy Like Nick Elmi With the ‘Top Chef’ Winner’s First Cookbook

Looking for the perfect nine-course tasting menu to prepare at your next dinner party? Nick Elmi has got you. The chef, who worked at Philly icon Le Bec-Fin before opening his own restaurant and winning Bravo’s hit culinary competition Top Chef, just dropped his first cookbook. Laurel: Modern American Flavors in Philadelphia ($35) is based off recipes from his excellent East Passyunk Avenue eatery and available starting Tuesday, September 17.

The chef wrote the cookbook with Philly-based food and travel writer Adam Erace (Erace also wrote a Palizzi Social Club cookbook with chef Joey Baldino; that one is out next month). Photographer Neal Santos, who co-owns Filipino stand Lalo in the Bourse food hall, took the photos.

Elmi opened Laurel in late 2013, right after his New Orleans-set Top Chef season premiered. The elegant 22-seat restaurant serves what he describes as modern, French-influenced American cuisine, available only via tasting menu. It’s a splurge for a weeknight meal, at $85 for six courses or $125 for nine, but the oft-changing menus are so inventive you’ll be talking about the dishes for days afterward.

Neal Santos

Like the menus at the restaurant, the recipes in the cookbook are seasonal, with bourbon-glazed grilled lobster with crunchy grains and apple blossom for winter, black sea bass with peas and rhubarb for spring, and a summery marigold-compressed kohlrabi. Each chapter makes up a nine-course tasting menu, complete with cocktail pairings.

The dishes may be too intricate for most to execute at home, but it’s a pretty book.

Next door to Laurel, Elmi has cocktail bar ITV. In November 2017 he added Royal Boucherie, a lively French brasserie in Old City.

Provided

• How Nick Elmi Won Top Chef and Philly Critics in Laurel’s First Year
• Everything You Need to Know About Nick Elmi’s New Bar on East Passyunk Avenue
• 10 Philly Restaurants Worth Splurging On
• Take a Look Inside ‘Top Chef’ Nick Elmi’s Royal Boucherie