Andoni Luis Aduriz by Per-Anders Jörgensen

The Eating with the Chefs photographer talks about how the Mugaritz head inspired his new book

In the week of the 50 Best Restaurant Awards we've been bringing you some of the great photographs of the award-winning chefs from our new book, Eating with the Chefs by Per-Anders Jörgensen. Eating with the Chefs documents the daily meal shared by chefs and front of house staff at eighteen of the world's most creative restaurants.

Today it's the turn of Andoni Luis Aduriz from Mugaritz. There's an interesting story behind Mugaritz because it turns out that it was the restaurant that provided Per-Anders with the original idea for Eating with the Chefs, as the photographer told us when we caught up with him earlier in the week.

"Mugaritz is where it all started for me and the book," he told us. "It's where I had the idea for it all. I ate upstairs in the attic before it was a lab. I was there maybe 1999, very early on, and I saw these people eating this very honest, really delicious food and I thought: this is really interesting we should tell the world about this. It just took a bit of a while! The wait was worth it as the photographs of Mugaritz and Andoni in the book really capture the spirit I was after.

"Andoni, like René Redzepi, is another guy who's very hard to shoot - mostly because I have the deepest respect for this man. I love him and what he and the team does at the restaurant so much and I've also been with them since the early days and all the difficulties they've been through. He doesn't speak English very well and my Spanish is poor and my Basque even worse! So we tend to communicate in a very strange way but I think it works in the photos we make together." 

In Eating with the Chefs exquisite photography, coupled with over fifty, easy to follow recipes, provide a unique insight into the ordinary food behind the immaculate kitchen walls. Buy it here and while you're browsing the store, do also take a look at our standalone book Mugaritz, featuring Louis Aduriz Andoni in which Per-Anders's work also appears alongside other great photographers.