Jay Rayner’s My Last Supper, September 2019

You are about to die. What do you choose as your final meal?

Follow Jay Rayner as he embarks on a journey through his life in food and attempts to construct his perfect last supper.

In My Last Supper, Jay Rayner sets out to answer the one question he is most frequently asked: ‘What would your death row dinner be?’. The result is a truly global journey through food and our relationship with what we eat.

Jay’s search for the perfect ingredients for his last supper will take him from oysters on the Essex coast to sourdough in San Francisco, and from his love affair with a particular Swiss vinegar to the bacon sarnies of his student days in Leeds. There will be rhapsodies about spare ribs, butter epiphanies aplenty and tales of a secret childhood addiction to Revels. Jay will also share his own home recipes, including many ways to transform a pig into a godly thing – from porchetta to pork belly teriyaki. He will discuss the life-changing effect of a great Bordeaux and confess to student mayhem fuelled by Thunderbird grape wine. He will admit to everything.

My Last Supper is a journey through the landscape of food and memory. It is both memoir and an investigation of the ingredients that fill our table. It is the story of one hungry man, in eight courses.

Fred Baty says: ‘My Last Supper really feels like the book we’ve all been waiting for Jay to write; it is simultaneously his most personal yet, and his most immediately relatable. We’re thrilled to be publishing him, and look forward to celebrating not only his 20th anniversary with the Observer, but also his homecoming to Guardian Faber.’

Jay Rayner says: ‘I’m delighted that Guardian Faber will be publishing My Last Supper. The book would not exist without my years at the Guardian which makes being published by this list at Faber feel like a homecoming.’

Spring 2019 marks Jay Rayner’s 20th year as restaurant critic for the Observer. In that time he has been named critic of the year in both the Glenfiddich Food and Drink Awards and the British Press Awards. He is the host of BBC Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet and is a regular on Masterchef UK. He is a judge on Netflix’s The Final Table (out from November 2018). His one man shows, My Dining Hell and The Ten (Food) Commandments, both based on books, have played to sell out audiences across Britain, Europe, the US, New Zealand and Australia. My Last Supper, his tenth book, will be launched in conjunction with a major national theatre tour.