Dalí Museum unveils new Café Gala Cookbook

In a fusion of art and gastronomy, The Dalí Museum in downtown St. Petersburg has announced the release of its first-ever cookbook, The Dalí Museum Café Gala Cookbook.

The 200-page culinary opus shares Spanish-inspired cuisine from the kitchen at the Dalí Museum’s Café Gala. Located in the museum lobby, the cafe is named in honor of Salvador Dalí’s wife and muse, Gala. The cookbook, a collaborative effort between Café Gala’s Chef Chuck Bandel and Museum Director Hank Hine, features 55 recipes that fuse Dalí artistic vision and Catalan and Spanish cuisine.

“Cooking is, in itself, a process of transformation,” notes Hine in the cookbook’s introduction. “Just as Salvador Dalí saw the world as fluid and ever-changing, cooking transforms raw elements into something entirely new, inviting the same sense of wonder and metamorphosis we find in art.”

Chef Chuck Bandel created the watercolor “tomato mustache,” inspired by Salvador Dalí’s famous facial hair, that appears on the cover of the Café Gala cookbook. Photo provided.

The cookbook includes signature recipes from Café Gala, including La Tortilla, Roasted Carrot Hummus, Spanish Almond Cake and more, each paired with a unique backstory. The recipes span from classic tapas and hearty soups to savory meats and desserts.

“The flavors are bright and refreshing,” Bandel told the Catalyst. “You can get all the ingredients from a typical Spanish garden. Even the seafood, it’s just slightly prepared and really fresh. In the Catalan area where Dalí lived, he’d just pluck sea urchins out of the water and eat them.”

Bandel makes a point to travel to Spain every year, refining his recipes and learning new skills to bring back to Café Gala – and now, The Dalí Museum Café Gala Cookbook.

“The gazpacho recipe in this book is many, many years in the making,” Bandel said. “I’ve had at least nine different versions of the gazpacho. It’s forever changing, every time I go to Spain and I beg and beg to learn their version. So this is like a hybrid of different versions I learned, and I’m really, really happy with this one.”

The Dalí Museum Café Gala Cookbook also features Bandel’s own photography and watercolor illustrations, and select works from Salvador Dalí himself. Bandel said the goal was to create a truly immersive experience for food enthusiasts and art lovers alike.

“That’s one of my favorite things about cookbooks, looking at the photographs and the art that’s associated with it. I wanted to make sure this book has plenty of that,” Bandel explained.

“The watercolors are something relatively new in my life. My uncle gave me my great, great grandfather’s handwritten notebook from the kitchen. It was done in the most beautiful cursive and it had little doodles, so that’s the inspiration. I didn’t know how to do watercolor, and then the [Covid] lockdown happened, and that was the perfect time to learn.”

While creating the cookbook in collaboration with Hine, he said, it was important to bring Café Gala’s recipes down-to-size and make them approachable for the average home cook. 

A recipe for Jambón Croquetas (Spanish Ham Croquettes), featured inside “The Dalí Museum Café Gala Cookbook.”

“I picked recipes that could be executed in the home, kind of like how they are in a Spanish household,” Bandel added. “We don’t have anything too complicated. It’s just a lot of your traditional recipes that can be done all in one blender.”

To commemorate the cookbook’s launch, The Dalí will host an event series titled “Regions of Spain,” kicking off Dec. 11 with a tapas tasting, sangria flights and live Spanish guitar music at Café Gala. Chef Bandel will also be on hand, signing copies of the new cookbook. Tickets to the event can be purchased online here.

The Dalí Museum Café Gala Cookbook is available for purchase for $39.95 in person at The Dalí Museum store and online here.

.

.