Artbites

Dining Like Alexander the Great

Our little group attracted curious stares and a hanger-on or two as we made our way through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's hallowed halls. Maybe that was because at each stop, be it a frescoed fragment of an ancient palace, a Bodhisattva statue, or an ornate mummy, the discussion turned quickly to food: the rice and sour cherries served at a palace feast at Persepolis; the exotic fruits and spices of India; the culinary treats buried with those ancient foodies, the Egyptian Pharaohs. A stomach growled amid the din.

Then again, this was no conventional museum tour. This was Artbites.

The brainchild of Maite Gomez-Rejón, a trained chef and historian and our guide that evening, Artbites melds art, history and cuisine through classes that combine museum trips with hands-on cooking instruction. Gomez-Rejon's subjects range from the Aztecs to Leonardo da Vinci (who knew he was a vegetarian?) to Thomas Jefferson. Although she is based in Los Angeles and holds most of her classes at the Getty Center and other museums in the area, Gomez-Rejon frequently jets to other cities for classes, like the one I was at in New York. (See a schedule here).

This evening, we were tracing the victorious route of Alexander the Great (356–323 BC), the Macedonian king and general who, along with his army of 44,000 hungry men, traveled 22,000 miles from Greece to Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia and India in a 12-year trail of conquest and culinary discovery.

Tags: art history, Artbites, cooking classes, Metropolitan Museum of Art, museum, persepolis