Download a copy of Home Comforts: simple lockdown recipes from the world’s best chefs and bartenders for $10 (£8) and help support restaurants and bars in their hour of need. 50 Best’s first-ever e-cookbook features more than 70 easy-to-make dishes and drinks that will become staples in your home cooking repertoire
When 50 Best made the decision to cancel The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2020 list and awards to focus all its efforts on raising money for the hospitality industry through the 50 Best for Recovery project, it raised a series of questions. Underscoring all of these was an overarching focus: how could 50 Best turn its relationships with chefs, bartenders and network of over 2 million social followers into funds that could be channelled straight back into the beleaguered hospitality sector?
BUY HOME COMFORTS HERE!
In the first virtual brainstorm session, talk shifted (as it so often does among a group of dedicated food-lovers) to what team members cooked the previous night. “In fact, what I’d really like to know is what Mauro Colagreco had for dinner last night?” said our Social Media Manager. And as simply as that, the idea for Home Comforts was born. We would set out to discover what simple meals 50 Best chefs were cooking for their families during lockdown and share these recipes with the world. 
The Home Comforts book cover, available to buy now
As it turns out, the planet’s top chefs are not so different to the rest of us. Away from the world of pristine kitchens, starched whites and water baths, these elite cooks can too be found hunting through their fridge for ingredients and will proceed to prepare them in their favourite oversized T-shirt with the music cranked up to 11. As you’ll see from the book photography, everything is homespun, comfort-driven and very much #NoFilter.
If Instagram is to be believed, lockdown has also taught us that the food community is as invested in fine drinking as it is fine dining. From virtual happy hours to our own #PassTheShaker campaign, it’s been boomtime for drinks-related social content. So, to complement a selection of dishes in Home Comforts, we asked bartenders from 50 Best lists to pair matched cocktails with their chef counterparts’ dish. If you’re new to food and cocktail pairing, you’re in for a treat as you embark on a whole new journey of flavour.
The cookbook contains 50 unique recipes from an equal balance of female and male chefs who have featured on recent 50 Best lists, alongside 25 cocktail pairings from bartenders behind The World’s 50 Best Bars. The result is a collection of simple and delicious comfort food creations, from Tokyo to San Francisco, split into categories of vegetarian, fish and seafood, meat and dessert. Whether it’s Alain Passard’s inspired veg-led cookery, Daniela Soto-Innes’ versatile mole, Manu Buffara’s Sunday family favourite or Vicky Lau’s brilliant bao, Home Comforts offers something to suit any amateur cook and every palate.
Bee Satongun of Paste and Pinsuda Pongprom, previously of Bamboo Bar, both in Bangkok, combine for a delicious food and drink pairing
Each copy of Home Comforts sold will help generate money for the hospitality sector, with every dollar raised going straight into the 50 Best for Recovery fund. For more information on how this money will be dispersed to restaurants and bars, please see here.
50 Best is also launching the #50BestRateMyPlate Instagram challenge for food lovers to create, and post, dishes inspired by those in the Home Comforts recipe book. Every week for five weeks from 20th July, 50 Best will choose its favourite three #50BestRateMyPlate dishes and share these with its followers, who will then vote on their preferred dish. The plate with the most votes during that week will become a finalist and win the chance to be judged by a panel of 50 Best chefs in late August. The winner will receive two VIP tickets to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards event in Antwerp, Flanders in 2021. Stay tuned to our social channels for more information.
Dominque Crenn and Renato Giovanonni, the book's foreword authors
So, as your favourite restaurants and bars begin to reopen, do go out and support these venues as they tread the delicate path towards the new normal in a post-pandemic world. But for the days when going out just isn’t possible, a copy of Home Comforts ready to cosset you with comfort food inspiration. Because sometimes – as Thomas Keller points out in the book – only a bacon and cheese sandwich truly hits the spot.
Visit the Restaurant Recovery Hub and the Bar Recovery Hub to explore useful resources during the coronavirus pandemic and read the stories of chefs and bartenders around the world. Follow 50 Best on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for the latest news on our fundraising initiatives.
