[Edit: Bryan has submitted a quite substantial response, which I've put into the comment section. Please check there for his statement.]
There are a number of differences between home and restaurant cooking. Home cooks have to, say, get food on the table for family while changing diapers and paying bills. Home cooks also don't have to turn out 250 plates a night. But, if one has the time, money, and inclination, one can grow tomatoes in the back yard, buy organic veal every night, and spend three days preparing a single dinner for two, or one.
Restaurant kitchens aren't like that. A range of dishes have to be produced every night within a few minutes of the customer's walking in the door. If the cooks are out of something, they can't stop everything and run to the supermarket. If the price isn't right, or the food isn't good, or the restaurant is backed up, the customer might just keep walking.
It's nice to go out and eat. It professionalizes the food preparation side, and puts all the worries on the restaurant.
It's also nice to cook at home, where you can make, say, tomato sorbet just to see if you like it.
Home cooking and restaurant cooking are not the same.
Which is why it's kind of sad to see a local home cook/student bad-mouthing the entire area with a few words. For instance:
- Lumping all area restaurants under the rubric "New Southern cooking," then saying they haven't changed in a decade.
- Saying that a "lot of big-name chefs in the area" are "so apprehensive to change."
- After that, admitting that you have no plans to become a chef, because the "hours are too long" and it's a "hard, sweaty job."
Then, to compound the error, the New York Times gives the guy a soapbox.
At least the article didn't appear in their Dining section.
You know what does appear there? An article on how TV chefs are "Far From Reality." The article complains about how TV chefs are too far from the "tedious, earnest hands-on work that gave them their luster in the first place," and the "skill set they are prepared to demonstrate."
It's like if I complained about the Times being just another way to kill trees, or complained about all Duke students being rich, rude assholes.
Well guess what? The NYT is just killing trees when they badmouth big media, then turn around and give someone (who, as far as I know, has never worked in a restaurant kitchen and has no intention of doing so) a platform to badmouth "a lot of big-name chefs in the area."
Who's further from "reality" here, the NYT, or the focus of their story, a home cook whose friends navigate their plates with "restrained curiosity," who give "blank stares" when told where a recipe comes from, or who get justifications like a dish is "very popular in New York”?
It's lame for the NYT to publish chum like this, and it's lame for yet another student from my alma mater to be so rude as to dismiss the entire area's chefs as "apprehensive to change." Since his parents bought him his vacuum sealer and water baths, maybe they can buy him a restaurant and let him run it? Or maybe the Times can sponsor this kid on Iron Chef America? Better yet, let's just have all the principals here shut up. No one is being served well, except perhaps the pockets of the Times and the ego of this kid. Thanks for nothing.
Woah, hang on there! You're focusing in on ONE tiny paragraph in the whole article? A paragraph that does NOT say "every chef in the Triangle is New Southern, and apprehensive to change." You're taking a single quote that is already, in my experience, an inaccurate summing-up of Bryan's feelings about local restaurants, and you're then further distorting it by claiming that it applies to all local chefs.
My impression of what Bryan was saying (and, having attended one of his parties, I've actually spoken to him in person) was that when he moved to Durham, he didn't find many of the local restaurants doing the sort of cooking that he was excited about, specifically the new wave of "molecular gastronomy," which is [part of] his focus when he cooks for people. Certainly you would agree that Ben & Karen Barker aren't really on the WD-50/Alinea experimental end of the scale. Yes, he says he was disappointed that some of the local high-end/famous restaurants (Magnolia Grill being the most obvious one, but also Crook's Corner, certainly) were in essence serving the same "New Southern" cuisine that they first made their name on years ago.
I think that's a totally legitimate criticism, not necessarily of those restaurants, but of the area as a whole, especially the area as it was a few years ago. There's nothing wrong with having New Southern restaurants in the heart of the region that spawned the genre, but it's nice to have new faces come to town & try new & different things. Keep in mind that until relatively recent arrivals such as Lantern, Jujube, Piedmont, Enoteca Vin, Jibarra, etc. opened up (all within the past half-dozen years or so, IIRC), it would have been totally fair to say that the Triangle was Magnolia Grill, Nana's, and not much else. And that *did* make us seem kinda stodgy & stuck.
I'm sure that if Bryan had had the time, or had been asked specifically about local restaurants that he *does* like (as opposed to being asked "what made you start cooking this way at home"), he would have mentioned, for example, Charlie Deal at Jujube, who *is* doing fun/innovative things, especially on his tasting menus and at his special dinners (I actually attended a wine dinner at Jujube where Bryan was one of the other guests, and I think Bryan would agree when I say that everyone, Bryan included, enjoyed the meal).
Bryan continues to write restaurant reviews for the Chronicle, as well as posting to eGullet and Chowhound, and while he certainly has high standards, he is by-and-large quite supportive of the local restaurant scene (and how many college newspapers even have a food critic, let alone one who ventures far enough off-campus to check out more than the local pizza & falafel joints?) Just this past week, Bryan was one of the first folks on Chowhound to post, positively and with enthusiasm, about the opening of Watts Grocery. He's also been HUGELY supportive of Wine Authorities, the new wine shop down near Nana's/the Q-Shack.
Was the article a good or necessary article? Probably not; it definitely seemed to buy into a lot of dull & outmoded tropes (college students are culturally illiterate; the south is a dull backwards place, blah blah blah). I can understand your frustration with the Times & the media in general, in its constant attempt to manufacture controversy via hyperbole & stereotype. But that's hardly Bryan's fault.
Just to clarify: I know Bryan only peripherally--I read about him in the Indy & was able to eat at his place once shortly after that. Since then I've seen him out & about at a couple of restaurants, and I've read his writing on Teh Internets.
Posted by: Ross Grady | 04 October 2007 at 12:36
Damn, that's the harshest post I've ever read on here!
I really don't understand the fuss about Bryan. It seems to be that his primary grudge with the area is that restaurants around here haven't embraced Alinea-style gels, foams and other 'postmodern' food deconstructions. Personally, I love what chefs around here are doing: using great local ingredients in creative ways, without the insane re-texturing and bizarre constructs of gastrochemistry.
We have some phenomenal chefs and restaurants around the Triangle, who work their asses off to provide excellent food at very reasonable prices. Maybe one day I'll go to somewhere like Alinea with their $250 (plus wine, service and tax) tasting menu. I'm sure I'll have a great time. But you know what? I'm far happier at our local neighborhood joints, where I can walk in with a t-shirt and jeans, eat great food, chat, relax and have a wonderful evening without having to put out half my salary on one meal.
There's a big difference between being a creative foodie chef and being a stuck-up food snob. Our local chefs, from the Barkers, through Andy Magowan and Drew Brown, to Charlie Deal and Amy Tornquist, are the former. I'll leave the rest unsaid.
Posted by: durhamfood | 04 October 2007 at 12:48
Let me add that I do not know Bryan and have never been to any of his dinners. I have similar feelings to Joe after from reading the article. If the article does not accurately reflect Bryan's feelings about the local food scene, I would very much like him to say so, possibly in one of the many forums he's active on.
Posted by: durhamfood | 04 October 2007 at 13:20
oops, strike the word 'from' from the second line there...
Posted by: durhamfood | 04 October 2007 at 13:21
Let me quote a portion of the article more fully:
What that sounds like to me is that he's familiar with the local food scene, but either didn't like it or got tired of it. He further talked to "big-name chefs in the area" and found them "apprehensive to change." There's nothing about any good restaurants in the area, nothing about anyone doing anything innovative. If Zupon has indeed infiltrated the "area’s emerging food scene" in the (I'm guessing) three years he's been here, then there's nothing about it in the article. I certainly don't hear anything positive about any of the restaurants Ross mentions, and most of those have in fact been open while Zupon was here. But anyone can read the article by following the link above, and everyone is free to draw their own conclusions about whether I did any cherry-picking.It's of course possible that Zupon's comments were cherry-picked by the NYT, and that he didn't intend to take such a broad brush to "big-name chefs in the area." It's also just as possible that he really feels even more strongly than he does in the other direction. All I can go on is what I read in the article. I don't know whether Zupon or the NYT is responsible. I can see the possibility that neither thinks anything is wrong, or each holds the other responsible. That's why I complained about both of them. :)
What seems true to me personally is that yes, Durham went from a culinary joke 25 years ago to a really neat place for food today that's still moving forward. That's all skipped over, and one is left with a bad taste in one's mouth about the area's restaurants. I imagine Zupon may very well be a good guy too, but again, it doesn't come across either way in the article. Sure, not everyplace local is great. In particular, I think Crook's Corner is overrated, but Bill Neal has been dead for what, 16 years? But again, he doesn't specifically mention Crook's Corner or any area restaurant. (I've only been to Crook's Corner once, and pick on them just because they've now been brought up. Maybe I went there on a bad day or something.)
I haven't read any of Zupon's writing elsewhere. When I was a student, the Chronicle also had a restaurant reviewer. They sucked. If Zupon's doing a better job now, that's great. And if his views truly were distorted, he's got a web site he can issue corrections on. I do know that at least one area chef in a new restaurant did take issue with what Zupon said. But they don't really have a voice, certainly not one so big as the NYT.
I actually think what Zupon has been doing is cool. I think doing all the neat things he's been experimenting with is great. I think running an underground restaurant is really neat. If he'd been quieter about it, he could probably still be doing it instead of feeding his friends. Hell, I would have gone. And I'd love to do something like it myself. Zupon didn't seem like a bad guy at the Ruhlman signing at the Regulator a couple weeks ago. But he doesn't have to serve 100 people or turn 50 tables in a night for, say, $25 a person, while he's being implicitly compared with such. And yes, I don't like that.
Posted by: Joe | 04 October 2007 at 14:19
I thought the article came off as pretty self-pious, but I've been around enough news stories to know you don't always get real deal. I fault the Times for either skewing his comments or taking them at face value. Either way, there's too many sources of bad vibes to get worked up over this one. The only thing to do is to go out and patronize the really good restaurants in town.
Posted by: miles | 04 October 2007 at 15:00
The experimentation is nice, but really a bit gimmicky.
As for running an underground restaurant: I don't really get the point. If you want to have friends over for dinner, good. If you want them to contribute to the cost of the meal, fine. Why go beyond that?
Posted by: durhamfood | 04 October 2007 at 15:02
Miles -- Yep, there's really no telling what really went on. The NYT's stake in the matter is to sell papers. They can do that better by playing up controversy and simplifying issues. I probably would have been better off not to say anything. But if I take that attitude, I'd be better off to dump this blog altogether.
Durhamfood -- I just think the idea of running an underground restaurant is cool in a sub rosa fashion, like in this story about "Gypsy." I'd love to try it. And yeah, I think some molecular gastronomy is sound and fury that will eventually signify nothing. I also think 'Well, what if [say] the Magnolia Grill or the Lantern started serving foamed liver or little agar "grapes" that taste like lobster?' They'd probably become a lot less popular pretty quickly, but I can't say for sure.
Posted by: Joe | 04 October 2007 at 15:30
Fair enough. If someone has a passion for something that isn't harmful, as Bryan clearly does, I have no problem with it. I guess I pretty much agree with you that what's offensive here isn't at all what he's doing in his own apartment, but the dismissal of local creative food that comes across in the article.
Still, it would be nice if he distanced himself from what was written. His Chronicle restaurant reviews aren't bad (even though I disagree with quite a few of them), and ZKitchen isn't really my thing, but isn't in any way offensive. I just want to know if the opinions expressed in the NYT article are actually his own or are exaggerations and twists on his real views.
Posted by: durhamfood | 04 October 2007 at 16:02
As has been pointed out, it could very well be the writer trying to make something out of nothing. They did, after all, only put in one sentence from him about the local restaurant scene. But I did stand behind the dude in line at Whole Foods one day, as he was explaining his whole ZKitchen thing to the clerk. Hearing him talk about it, he sounded well meaning enough, but, well, 21. As in, while he's clearly an accomplished cook, he sounded a bit overly sure of himself and incredulous that others didn't think like him. I, of course, was NEVER like that... (Nor am I now, for that matter...)
On the other hand, the names "gastrochemistry" and "molecular gastronomy" creep me out. It sounds too close to molecular biology, which I hate. The next thing you know, we're going to have genomics cuisine, or some other damn thing...
Posted by: Michael Bacon | 04 October 2007 at 17:01
I guess my point is that the article isn't *about* "hey Bryan, give us a rundown of your opinions about all the restaurants in North Carolina." It's fairly clear to me that this sentence: "I was like, this is frustrating, so I’m just going to do my own thing and see where it takes me." was in response to a question about why he'd decided to start a mini-restaurant in his own house, focusing on the styles of food that he wasn't finding locally. In other words, "I couldn't find a local chef who was cooking eggs for 2 hours in a temperature-controlled water bath, so I decided to do it myself."
That's what the article is about, after all: 20-year-old kid starts underground avant-cuisine restaurant in his student apartment. Of course they're only going to use the quotes that further that narrative. It's not 10,000 words about Bryan Zupon (or about restaurants in Durham, NC) it's 1200 words about his kitchen, basically.
In the paragraph you quote, he *doesn't* say "there are only New Southern restaurants and nothing else in the Triangle." He says "I don’t think that New Southern cooking has changed since the mid-’90s." I'd have to agree with him on that. I've eaten at a variety of New Southern restaurants in the Triangle, in Washington DC, in Atlanta, in Asheville, in Charlottesville, etc, and while many of them are turning out consistently tasty food, many with fresh local ingredients and plenty of love and respect for tradition, they're also all pretty interchangeable. And c'mon, how many times over the past 5 years have you read a restaurant menu & seen "shrimp and grits" and thought "oh boy, here we go again"?
When it gets down to it, the core of y'all's objections seems to be to the line "I’d talked to a lot of big-name chefs in the area — for personal reasons and also for the newspaper — and they were so apprehensive to change." I don't know how to define "a lot," and in fact I'd be hard-pressed to figure out how the handful of big-name chefs in the Triangle could even be considered "a lot." So I will certainly agree that the ambiguity there is unfortunate, and unhelpful.
On the other hand, if Bryan is defining "change" as cooking sous vide, or using modified food starch to turn peanut butter into powder, or using consomme's of unexpected ingredients, then maybe it's perfectly reasonable to characterize some of the region's "big-name" chefs as at least disinterested in that kind of change, for better or worse. Does that mean they're "apprehensive to change" overall? I dunno. Certainly I think Scott Howell didn't exactly wave the red banner of change when he expanded Nana's into the Raleigh market via a glorified steakhouse.
As to Bryan's cooking, honestly, the great thing about it is that if he weren't standing there to tell you how it was prepared, in most cases you wouldn't have any idea that there was anything weird/special about the preparation. With the obvious exception of the carbonated fruit, and some of the powders, most of what he does involves manipulating the time/temp of cooking to yield extraordinary tastes/textures (the slow-cooked egg is still very much an egg, it's just smooth and custardy and amazing, because he cooks it low and slow). And/or utilizing unexpected flavor combinations, such as the candied olives in the article.
I've eaten at one of the other molecular-gastro outposts in the US, Minibar at Cafe Atlantico in DC, and the food there *was* experimental and gimmicky. It was also hugely fun and [most of it was] quite tasty, as well. But it would make Bryan's stuff look downright conservative by comparison.
Bottom line: I kinda think you have to go a little bit out of your way to read this short article as an inflammatory dis of the Triangle food scene.
Posted by: Ross Grady | 04 October 2007 at 17:06
Ross -- I understand. Different people will have differing opinions about exactly what the words mean. And there's both Bryan and the NYT to consider here. I just think the article comes off poorly. Whether that's the fault of me, Bryan, or the NYT -- well, I have to leave that for y'all to decide. You apparently have more knowledge of what Bryan does and is like, and that probably helps a lot. All I've got to go on is the article. If I knew him, I might just be bitching about the NYT now. If I've offended anyone, I'm sorry. If I've misconstrued Bryan's position based on the article, I apologize.
BTW, the closest I've come to eating at any sort of molecular gastronomy place was at Charlie Trotter's: not exactly a redoubt of molecular gastronomy, but they did a couple of odd things with some of the dishes. Some were good, and some had no impact on me. But I spent over $300, and I'd have rather spent that money on 6 or 8 or 10 meals at, say, Vin Rouge, Rue Cler, or the Mag Grill, or even 50 meals at Harold's Chicken right there in Chicago. :) But I digress. Wait, that's the point of this blog....
Michael -- I have to say this: mmmm... molecular gastronomy... mmmm....
Posted by: Joe | 04 October 2007 at 17:49
I'll join Joe's apology if Bryan's views were indeed misconstrued, but he does have many a public forum to say so. If he does not view local food in the way the article seems to imply he does, then _he_ should be offended by it...no?
Posted by: durhamfood | 04 October 2007 at 17:53
I find this discussion genuinely fascinating. While I feel that the original post was perhaps unduly harsh, the ensuing commentary brings up some great points. I'm traveling right now and have a good deal of work to get through over the next couple days, but I will certainly do my best to post a complete and thoughtful response. I'll do my best to clarify what exactly Z Kitchen is, my motivation for doing it, and my general feelings about the Triangle food scene. The food culture in Durham is a big driver behind Z Kitchen's success and to think that I'm at odds with it is genuinely upsetting. Perhaps this isn't made clear in the article but is quite obvious when meeting me, I love food more than pretty much anyone I know. All types, all cuisines, everything (except raw apples, the ONLY food I've tried that I don't enjoy).
I encourage ANYONE who posts here, or really anyone passionate about food in Durham to email me (contact[at]zkitchen[dot]net). Let's go out for a beer. I'm totally serious. I can talk about food, both modern and not, until any and all of your questions are answered.
Posted by: BryanZ | 04 October 2007 at 18:02
Joe, I feel your frustration. And I think I agree with Grady about your frustrated brush being a bit wide or quick-wielded.
Like Grady, I've been lucky to enjoy a Z-Kitchen meal (same menu as described in the Times). From my exposure to Bryan, I suspect that the few quotes quoted by the Times were incomplete. While Bryan at 21 might not yet have the experience to know (a) the limits of his knowledge and (b) how to give sound-bites that aren't dangerous to print, it's also the case that Nobody (and I mean Nobody) could give an authoritative summary of Durham eating, no matter how many pages you gave them. Any smart person's thoughts are still going to be debatable.
I'm happy that Bryan is cooking, experimenting, eating, writing, and getting interviewed. I'm happy that others are, too. If we find the folks from New York to be annoyingly prominent and erroneous, so it goes. Let's complain (briefly) and then move on to more cooking, more experimenting, eating, writing, and getting interviewed. The body of what gets created and expressed will grow better and wider -- faster, I believe, than any one publisher can annoy us with the fractional mistakes they do make while covering something that's worth covering.
Posted by: Phil | 04 October 2007 at 18:45
p.s. I just realized that I've accidentally put words into Grady's mouth. I should have said. "And I think I agree with Grady's commentary -- my impression is that your frustrated brush being a bit wide or quick-wielded."
That said, my feelings about your post are in many ways the same as my feelings about the Times' article: I'd rather have people writing, sharing, and occasionally saying stuff that doesn't make sense to me while also sharing things that I find useful/interesting/informative, than not writing at all.
Posted by: Phil | 04 October 2007 at 18:48
BryanZ: While I'm not really interested in post-modern cuisine (as I've said over and over again), and while I disagree with some of your reviews, and while I entirely disagree about raw apples (which are yummy!), I'm really glad you posted here. I look forward to reading your thoughts about the triangle food scene and about the NYT article. Perhaps to having a beer some time, too.
As phil said, let's get on with the cooking. I made a yummy risotto tonight!
Posted by: durhamfood | 04 October 2007 at 19:49
Bryan -- Thanks for stopping by. While I was vacuuming the house just now, I realized that the thing to do was to look you up and e-mail you, asking for your comments and any clarification. So I log in, and there you are. Cool.
Please do feel free to post whatever you like in the comments when you feel like it. Alternatively, if you want to publish something elsewhere and send me the link, I'll put the link up. When you say "to think that I'm at odds with it is genuinely upsetting," it sounds to me like you feel you've been misrepresented. So whatever we can do to correct that is great. To get one thing out of the way, I particularly shouldn't have called you a "kid": you're old enough to drink, smoke, vote, cook, and be quoted in the NYT. :) I'll be interested to hear what you have to say.
Phil -- Again, different people have differing opinions. Maybe I drew too much out of the Times's article. And it's certainly possible that Bryan was insufficiently or incorrectly quoted. Fortunately we can now correct that.
I agree, at least in some sense, that nobody "could give an authoritative summary of Durham eating," especially in just a few words. I think that's why I reacted as I did: I felt like we were getting an too-brief, off-hand, second-hand, negative summary. I felt the need to respond. I did that by saying something negative myself, which I think I've done like maybe five times in (let me look) 259 posts. I'd rather say something positive than negative. But I reserve the right to be negative, even if I rarely do it. In this case, the negativeness was in response to what I felt like was some other negativeness. (I'm clearly not the only person who feels the original article cast negative aspersions.) If that bothers someone (which it clearly has also), let's hear about it. Again, fortunately, that seems to be happening. Would it have happened if I hadn't complained and said something negative? Perhaps. I don't know.
Posted by: Joe | 04 October 2007 at 20:01
Anything that gets "foodies" fighting with one another is just fine by me.
*makes popcorn*
Please continue!
Posted by: El Gabacho | 04 October 2007 at 20:46
Gabacho -- Did you bring enough to share? If you didn't bring enough for everyone, you're going to have to do without until the end of class....
Posted by: Joe | 04 October 2007 at 22:56
Ok. I was afraid that I started some sort of riot when I first read Joe's post, with said blogger reading over my shoulder no less, bacause of an overly reactional email I sent to some close friends regarding Bryan's noteworthy mention in a National Media Powerhouse.
Mea culpa. And I'm glad to see quite a bit of reality-tempered commentary here.
Initially, I'll admit freely, I was really pissed when I read the article. Every ounce of spare energy I've had for the past year has been devoted to improving the dining culture of our fair city. To have it so glibly dismissed as derivative and consado was, at first, a serious affront. I am not, nor do I hope to be, a "big name" triangle chef; I only hope to maintain a relationship with a particular clientele interested in a particular brand of comforting cuisine. Still, to have the temperature of the dining Triangle measured so subjectively and succinctly made my blood boil.
I've had all-too-close experiences with national media (just google duke lacrosse and my name if you want to experience teeth-grinding empathetic embarrassment for me,) and I understand on a very personal level that what you tell even the most "down," "honest" reporter will get hacked to pieces between your mouth, their notepad/recorder, their editor, and the ink on the page. So in this light we must give Bryan our understanding.
As far as molecular gastronomy goes, Mr. Z. really deserves credit for having the huevos to tackle it. I appreciate its science academically, and I think most area chefs do, as well. Some will dismiss it completely because of some fear that they will be exposed as talentless hacks if they don't know how to cook properly sous vide (I do know many such folks.) It's completely out of their ouvre. And rightly so. There is avant-garde cuisine, and there is traditionalist cuisine, and while the boundaries betwinxt can blur in some of the nation's finest restaurants, on the whole the two worlds are entirely separate. For me to serve a veal "tapioca" with the aid of maltodextrin would be an affront to centuries of French tradition, in that I only hope to badly mimic a Parisian restaurant with the food I cook. If I could afford it on my meager salary, I think I would learn much more from a visit to Alinea than most hardcore foodies. But the whole time I'd be wishing I was eating an amazing burger, and thinking snarky thoughts about how many zealous interns they had working in the kitchen for minimum wage or less.
I have cooked for Bryan at least twice, probably without his knowledge, and have spoken to him through the veil of the internets occasionally, and totally appreciate his value as a critic (for, really, that is the position he has built in the area for himself, i.e. a learned commentator with formidable skills and knowledge,) and very nearly had the pleasure of an underground dinner at Z.Kitchen, would but for the fact that I couldn't get a day off of work at the time. I would remind him only that, as I'm sure he's realized with this recent barrage of publicity, he's a part of Triangle food culture whether he considers Jersey/Nuevo York a home or not, and that real connections, rather than abstruse criticism, are the building blocks of a budding food mecca. I've read a few snippets wherein he touts the value of the journeyman chef striving to sustain a local food culture, and I'm absolutely sure that he holds these tenets dear, whatever his molecular predilections.
I guess I'd have to say that I have a kind of tenuous faith in the guy, tempered by a tinge of jealousy that he's got so much figured out at an age that I still considered myself a photojournalist rather than a cook. I would encourage him to temper his attitude similarly, especially in relation to the media, reminding himself that he's not in a position to devote himself to this "hard, sweaty job," but rather to position himself as an ultra-talented fair-minded critic of a burgeoning food scene. The "I can do high-end New York gastronomical feats of strength in my college apartment" vibe only serves to piss the locals off. A critic who actually knows what goes on when protein meets heat would be most welcome in the area (with apologies to the local "official" critics who have never burned themselves on oven racks daily but still think they make or break a new restaurant.)
Enough. I'll be by the stove if you need me further.
-j.
http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=01262007
Posted by: Jason | 05 October 2007 at 01:19
"If I could afford it on my meager salary, I think I would learn much more from a visit to Alinea than most hardcore foodies. But the whole time I'd be wishing I was eating an amazing burger, and thinking snarky thoughts about how many zealous interns they had working in the kitchen for minimum wage or less."
I couldn't have put it better. I've been struggling to put my finger on exactly what irks me so much about the high-end foodie obsession with post-modern cuisine. It's not the food itself, nor the techniques, nor the overthrowing of traditional cooking. What really annoys me is that, at a very fundamental level, post-modern cuisine arises from the need of the very wealthy to do things that no one else can do. When all the connections are traced, those things usually come at the expense of many less fortunate folks.
It is perfectly possible to make incredible food at reasonable prices. I strongly believe that the aim of the aspiring cook should be to raise the atrocious standards of food that are commonplace in the US and elsewhere, rather than to cater to the whims and fancies of those with too much money for their own good - often including the chefs themselves.
It's the exclusivity of it all that makes me angry. This is why I'm such a big fan of places like Watts Grocery: Amy's ambition is clearly to feed a lot of people, at almost any hour, with high-quality local food at prices that aren't completely insane. I'm a graduate student on a pretty low salary, yet I can go there reasonably often.
Thanks Jason, whether intentionally or not, you very much helped clarify my thoughts on this topic. Cheers!
Posted by: durhamfood | 05 October 2007 at 09:17
I'm way OT at this point, but since it's my own blog, I'm going to break the rules. :) A big generalization I feel I can make about food is this: Good cooking is regional cooking. Good cooking isn't someone who can afford, say, liquid nitrogen; it's some starving peasant in China 1000 years ago, or some poor French farmer during WWII having to eat rutabagas that were supposed to be for his horses. Those people did what they had to with limited resources, and did it over and over again until it tasted good. Their food is reproducible by others exactly because (in its context) it was done with those limited resources.
Experimentation itself is fine. In fact, the poverty-bound regional cooking I mention above sprang from necessary experimentation. And if you want to dip a banana in liquid nitrogen and then shatter it over your dessert moments before serving, I think that's cool (as long as it tastes good!). But you have to realize: if something is only reproducible by someone with a lot of expensive equipment or in a factory, most people aren't going to be able to make it. And it isn't going to catch on. Food is also often about evocation of past comforts. Unless everyone has access to liquid nitrogen, it's unlikely that a banana frozen until it's as brittle as glass is going to evoke past comforts for a lot of people.
(BTW, I made up the nitrogen/banana thing; I'm not saying that's any sort of practiced molecular gastronomy technique.)
To be more on topic, I'm still hoping Bryan can post something more extensive when he has time. I'm more interested in seeing what he has to say about the NYT article itself than about molecular gastronomy in general, but he can post pretty much whatever he likes.
Posted by: Joe | 06 October 2007 at 11:32
My impression of what Bryan was saying (and, having attended one of his parties, I've actually spoken to him in person) was that when he moved to Durham, he didn't find many of the local restaurants doing the sort of cooking that he was excited about, specifically the new wave of "molecular gastronomy
I think it's fair to say that very few restaurants anywhere are practicing molecular gastronomy, for which I will be forever thankful. Michael Ruhlman himself said at his reading at the Regulator a few weeks ago that there are very few good practitioners of MG. I'm not saying Bryan sucks at it. I wouldn't know. I am saying that he shouldn't have been surprised to discover that chefs aren't doing it here.
I think what he's doing with his home kitchen is really cool, no matter how he's cooking. (And I have admittedly closed my mind to MG, after all the blathering I've been reading about for the last six months. I blame Marcel and his damned foams on Top Chef.) I am also quite sure that the writer of the article set the tone as much as, if not more than, Bryan did with anything he said.
I've been struggling to put my finger on exactly what irks me so much about the high-end foodie obsession with post-modern cuisine. It's not the food itself, nor the techniques, nor the overthrowing of traditional cooking. What really annoys me is that, at a very fundamental level, post-modern cuisine arises from the need of the very wealthy to do things that no one else can do. When all the connections are traced, those things usually come at the expense of many less fortunate folks...It's the exclusivity of it all that makes me angry.
Oh, good lord, yes, although I do have a visceral reaction to the suggestion that traditional cooking isn't relevant. Is it no longer acceptable to serve a great roast chicken to your guests? Food and cooking as status symbol makes me want to reach for my gun. I'm curious if Bryan has ever done any traditional cooking. He seems to love feeding his friends, so he knows the satisfaction one can get from entertaining people he cares about. Jumping into MG without any experience in regular home cooking seems to me like trying to study Kaballah when you've never been to synagogue.
Posted by: Maura | 06 October 2007 at 11:42
Food is also often about evocation of past comforts.
You're absolutely right, Joe. One of my greatest aspirations in life is to learn to make pan-fried chicken, biscuits and gravy and have it taste just half as good as when my mom makes it.
Posted by: Lenore | 07 October 2007 at 21:45
Lenore: I suggest watching her extremely closely, and attempt to ape her as much as possible. Try even to duplicate her physical motions. I kept trying to make my grandma's biscuits. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong until I aped her motions when mixing the dough. She mixed things by hand in a flat pan; I was trying to "improve" matters by using a more accepted technique like a pastry cutter or a couple of knives. The trick was in how she mashed the lard into the rest of the ingredients with her hands. I still don't do it so well as she did, but my biscuits are a lot better now.
Posted by: Joe | 08 October 2007 at 09:48
I have submitted a rather lengthy response to the comments made on this blog to Joe. Hopefully he will post it.
For now, I ask you to consider the following article:
http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2007/10/08/sex-and-the-city-and-the-small-town-bar/
I find this article to a lot more questionable, at least in the way it portrays the dining and drinking habits of college students.
Posted by: BryanZ | 09 October 2007 at 19:05
Here’s my treatise based on everything that’s been written in this blog thus far. It will be long and detailed, and I will do my best to address all the major issues raised thus far. For those interested or invested in this discussion, thank you for staying with me throughout.
There are some issues I won’t be able to discuss in this public forum. Again, I encourage anyone to email me if you’re interested in eating with me (contact[at]zkitchen[dot]net). I will leave the rest unsaid.
To begin with, I will first define what Z Kitchen is as best I can in this forum. I ask those who have dined with me to refrain from commenting on the details of the arrangements you may have made with me in the past. I hope no one here is so nihilistic as to want to get me in trouble just for the hell of it. With that said, I host private dinner parties for friends. Friends, in this context, is used rather broadly. I consider all of you passionate eaters and writers my friends. I guess I’m just a friendly guy.
Let me present the menu I cooked for the NYT writer and a group of my close friends from freshman year:
Z Kitchen
9-7-07
Menu v.2
Slow-cooked egg, Sottocenere, asparagus veloutÈ, bacon, pickled chanterelles
Seared scallop, maitake mushrooms, cauliflower, beef short rib ragout
Red snapper, braised fennel and dried sour cherries, candied olive crumble
Strip loin of beef cuit sous vide, sunchoke-chorizo puree, corn, truffle butter, smoked paprika
Idiazabal, Robiola, golden beet, heirloom tomato, Manni olive oil, Maldon salt, ginger-pear, carbonated grapes
Chai ice cream, miso-sesame chocolate, roasted and powdered peach and pineapple
I hope you’ll see that nothing here is too bizarre. I use some modern techniques, but I am not using gels, fluid gels, spherications, and foams extensively. When I do, they are usually incorporated quite subtly. I prefer to cook dishes that are well-composed, creative, playful, and sensible with the opportunity, but not requirement, for some cerebral engagement. I do not cook dishes for gimmick factor alone. While I concede that one could argue that a poached egg is better than an egg slow-cooked in a water bath, this is a subjective preference and up for lively debate. I am not foaming things or combining disparate ingredients as ends in themselves. I do not consider my cooking particularly avant-garde.
While I absolutely adore the culinary stylings of the truly talented culinary avant-garde, I do not and ethically cannot directly compare myself to them. Sure, I turn to their work for inspiration but my cooking is far simpler, far less technical, and far less intimidating (to both cook and diner). And, of course, my skills and creativity are not within the same galaxy of my culinary heroes.
Before I engage specifically with some of the comments left on this blog, I’d like to spend some time clarifying some myths surrounding modern cooking. The bizarre examples of modern cookery off-handedly proposed in the comments of this blog are clear evidence that the entire modern cookery movement is widely misunderstood. I will speak to this in more detail as I respond to comments, but I encourage people, as passionate cooks and eaters, not to propagate ill-informed stereotypes. Please do not dismiss something that you have not tried or experienced and please do not caricaturize it into something that it is clearly not. Of course, the media is partially to blame for this, but I really beg that people not lump all modern cooking into foam-centric tomfoolery. Molecular gastronomy, in the pure sense of the word, is understanding what happens to food during various cooking processes. When MG is applied toward creative ends, we arrive at modern cookery.
I wish that the writers I’ve talked to over the past year would mention the blog Ideasinfood.com that I always allude to in their stories about Z Kitchen. The chefs here are, in my mind, visionary both culinarily and philosophically. Their work is, to me, what modern cooking is all about. I also encourage you to visit the following links to read about some of my favorite meals that show the diversity of modern cuisine across the world. At least by seeing what modern restaurants are actually serving one can form more complete judgments, even if an actual meal is out of the question. Of course, for some readers here this type of cooking will not be unfamiliar.
Hopefully I’m not leading these sacred cows to the slaughter:
Alinea
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=66997&view=findpost&p=1441776
Pierre Gagnaire
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=100743&view=findpost&p=1385747
El Celler de Can Roca
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=100743&view=findpost&p=1388745
I don’t see how one can universally consider modern cookery at odds with a devotion to seasonal ingredients and terroir. These meals clearly represent their respective chefs in a meaningful way. The gimmickry that so many people associate with modern cooking is largely absent.
Now, with that context in mind I’ll respond to some of the comments here.
After that, admitting that you have no plans to become a chef because the “hours are long” and “it’s a hard, sweaty job.”
I have nothing but respect for BOH industry folks, it’s just nothing something I see myself doing. The hours are so long and it’s murder on your body. I know I’m wrecked after spending the 12+ hours it takes to put out one of my meals.
Who's further from "reality" here, the NYT, or the focus of their story, a home cook whose friends navigate their plates with "restrained curiosity," who give "blank stares" when told where a recipe comes from, or who get justifications like a dish is "very popular in New York”?
I’m not sure why you take issue with those snippets from the article. My food is somewhat intellectually stimulating, and I don’t expect many people to know what wd~50 is if you’re not relatively into food. Hence, the restrained curiosity and blank stares when I explained the egg dish. The “very popular in New York” justification was predicated by the fact that I had to submit a recipe for that dish and DID NOT want to take credit for the scallop and short rib combo. Hence, I hedged by saying it’s very popular in New York and not my original creation.
Since his parent bought him his vacuum sealer and water baths, maybe they can him a restaurant and let him run it?
I don’t think that’s very fair. That my parents bought me a gift that brings me enjoyment is wrong and makes me spoiled? We’re talking a few hundred dollars for that equipment. Not pocket change but not exactly life-changing either. My mother uses a water bath herself to cook sous vide at home too. It’s such a powerful cooking method, but I’ll get into that shortly.
“Lumping all area restaurants under the rubric “New Southern cooking,” then saying they haven’t changed in a decade.
This is perhaps the most fundamental misunderstanding that we’re having. I absolutely adore Piedmont—I’m practically a shill for the place—and Rue Cler and Watts and the Federal (not to mention everything Charlie Deal does as a chef and friend, the taquerias, the Korean joints, and the general influx of people and money and restaurants into Durham). One could easily argue that these new restaurants are the face of New Southern cooking. To this end, my quote is egregiously false.
What I was referring to is something like the old guard of Triangle restaurants. These restaurants put out damn tasty food with a nice mixture of elegance and honesty, but they have not changed substantially since they first started receiving significant press in the mid-1990s. That Magnolia Grill is the 11th best restaurant in nation according to Gourmet absolutely blows my mind. I have nothing but respect for the Barkers and their proteges and what they’ve all done for the Triangle’s food scene, but when I think “New Southern, ” or New anything for that matter, I think of innovation. I think of Richard Blais at Element in Atlanta, of Sean Brock at McGrady’s in Charleston. They are the true practitioners of New Southern cuisine in the literal sense of the word. If we are to understand New Southern as the work of Bill Neal and his progeny, then this type of cooking has not significantly changed. I stand by this and will continue to. Fire away.
Pretty much everything that Ross says about me is accurate. The guy has met me a couple times and is more eloquent about my ideas than I am. Am I really that easy to read? Of particular note was the way he (and another poster) was able to place my quote about New Southern cooking in the correct context. It was answered, as Ross predicts, in reference to, “What made you start cooking this way down here?” I really just wanted to take on an idea and run with it. So far, it’s been great.
Personally I love what chefs around here are doing: using great local ingredients in creative ways, without the insane re-texturing and bizarre constructs of gastrochemistry.
I love it too, but usage of words like insane and bizarre are unfair if you’ve not experienced them in person. The best practitioners of modern cooking make food that is so delicious it hurts but also do so in new ways.
I’m far happier at our local neighborhood joints where I can walk in with a t-shirt and jeans, eat great, food chat, relax, and have a wonderful evening without having to put out half my salary on one meal.
That’s fundamentally what Z Kitchen is all about. I’d really love for you to come. If anything, despite the somewhat formal nature of the food, it’s a place where conversation almost takes center stage. I do think it’s somewhat unfair, however, that you’re basing this preference toward the casual based on a single meal at Charlie Trotter’s (which many would even argue is passÈ, but we won’t go there).
But he doesn't have to serve 100 people or turn 50 tables in a night for, say, $25 a person, while he’s being implicitly compared with such.
I have never claimed to be a chef. I am a cook. Specifically, one that works alone in a tiny home kitchen and hosts small, multi-course dinner parties. I don’t think the article ever compares me to any restaurant in any meaningful capacity. I know I never have. I provide a TOTALLY different experience, but one that hits the same basic tenets of hospitality just in an unconventional way.
The experimentation is nice, but really a bit gimmicky
What do you base this claim off of? I’m serious. There are gimmicky chefs out there, and if you’ve eaten a meal by them you’re more than welcome to that opinion. But other than that, I don’t think that’s a fair claim given the negative implication of the statement. It’s also important to note that gimmickry can be fun if it’s not the entire point of a meal or dish. Alginate spherications are gimmicky and fun, and I’ve yet to meet someone who hasn’t reacted with a visceral, “Whoa?!” and a huge smile. There is some value in gimmickry like that, but there are also modern cooking techniques also have very, very real value.
And yeah, I think some molecular gastronomy is sound and fury that will eventually signify nothing.
I agree, some of it will fade into oblivion. With that said, sous vide will revolutionize home cooking. It is so powerful, so easy, so compelling that it’s just a matter of time. Thomas Keller and Michael Ruhlman’s sous vide cookbook comes out in 2008. Keller is marketing a home-use immersion circulator with Polysciene through Williams-Sonoma this holiday season. We are on the tipping point, and I think it will change the way America cooks.
Well, what if [say] the Magnolia Grill or the Lantern started serving foamed liver or little agar “grapes” that taste like lobster.
Have you ever had a foie gras mousse? What’s the line between a light mousse and a foam? These are serious questions I ask you to consider. Viewed in the right context many modern cooking “nightmares” are in fact totally feasible dishes not far removed from traditional cooking. I don’t think any restaurant has ever served lobster agar grapes, but do consider a lobster gelee. Lobster aspic sits atop many a chilled seafood terinne. Agar is just a heat stable hydrocolloid that acts like gelatin. Agar has also been used for literally hundreds of years in Japanese pastry. What then?
His Chronicle restaurant reviews aren’t bad (even though I disagree with quite a few of them), and Z Kitchen isn’t really my thing…
The hardest thing about the Chron is writing in a vacuum. I get no feedback from my reviews. I would love the criticism. While I certainly don’t want everyone to agree with me, I think the NYT restaurant reviewer, Frank Bruni, has grown immensely through all the internet chatter on his writing. While this probably does not affect his ultimate decisions, it makes him a better reviewer. And if you’re at all curious about Z Kitchen please do consider coming in. Think of it as like an introduction into the evil world of modern cooking. It’s just a taste.
On the other hand, the names “gastrochemistry” and “molecular gastronomy” creep me out. It sounds too close to molecular biology, which I hate.
I realize this was probably a tongue-in-cheek comment, but it kind of represents some of the gross misrepresentations people hold concerning modern cooking. Is it bad to understand the way food reacts to cooking processes, why sauces and emulsifications come together? Yes, it’s science, but not “mad science” as the media so frequently portrays.
I’ve eaten at a variety of New Southern restaurants in the Triangle, in Washington DC, in Atlanta, in Asheville, in Charlottesville, etc., and while many of them are turning out consistently tasty food, many are with fresh local ingredients and plenty of love and respect for tradition, they’re also all pretty interchangeable.
YES! My sentiments exactly. It’s tasty food, but somewhat boring for me. If that’s all there was in Durham, I’d be much more unhappy than I am now.
Every ounce of spare energy I’ve had for the past year has been devoted to improving the dining culture of our fair city. [. . .] I only hope to maintain a relationship with a particular clientele interested in a particular brand of comforting cuisine.
I’m of the exactly same mind. Since my sophomore year in the fall of 2005, I’ve taken it on as a personal mission to do whatever I can for Triangle food. During these months I joined the Duke Dining Adviosry Committee—I am now serving my second year as committee chair—relaunched the food section in The Chronicle—I now have passionate writers under me who are interested in getting students to care about local, sustainable dining and nutrition. I have worked to build relationships with chefs, with Duke administrators, with local residents to promote food in the area. Yes, I’ve tried to make Z Kitchen a success, but I sincerely believe it to be just a part of the local dining culture along with the ethnic food, the New Southern food, the new local joints. It hurts me to see the dining habits of my peers, their insistence to eat at chain restaurants, their resistance to explore and try new foods and cuisines.
Last spring I had a dinner where an editor from Food & Wine came over for a couple courses after eating at many of the area’s new guard restaurants (many of those mentioned here) as part of an upcoming feature on the revitalization of lesser-known cities with burgeoning food cultures. Of course, I was proud that she came to chat with my guests and me, but I was more proud of Durham as a whole. I’m a shill for Durham when out of town visitors come by—I send more prospective Duke students and their families to Piedmont during spring visitation weekend than I serve at Z Kitchen in an entire semester—so my criticisms are primarily motivated by a sincere desire to want to make things better. I know I’m not alone in sharing these sentiments.
I’ve been struggling to put my finger on exactly what irks me about the high-end foodie obsession with post-modern cuisine. [. . .[ What really annoys me is that, at a very fundamental level, post-modern cuisine arises from the need of the very wealthy to do things that no one else can do. When all the connection are traced, those things usually come at the expense of many less fortunate folks. It is perfectly possible to make incredible food at reasonable prices. [. . .] It’s the exclusivity of it all that makes me angry.
Good cooking is regional cooking. Good cooking isn’t someone can afford, say, liquid nitrogen.
Oh, good lord, yes, although I do have a visceral reaction to the suggestion that traditional cooking isn’t relecant. It is no longer acceptable to serve a great roast chicken to your guests. Food and cooking as status symbol makes me want to reach for my gun.
These quotes are some of the most dangerous in this entire discussion. Good cooking is good cooking. Period. End of discussion. The age-old debate between the haves and have-nots is not relevant to discussing whether food is good or not. I am philosophically opposed to those people who believe that just because food is cheap and ethnic/regional it has more culinary merit than something that’s made from the world’s best ingredients and is laboriously crafted. This type of anti-snobbery really, really irks me. Just as I think it’s completely blasphemous to suggest that food can only be good if it’s expensive and showered with truffles, foie, caviar, and shark fin, it’s just as blasphemous to deny the merits of luxurious cuisine. While I certainly believe that one can make delicious food for cheap, I was recently talking to a manager who worked under Thomas Keller at Per Se and he said labor costs run 55%, food costs at 40%. That restaurant, New York’s second most expensive, stays open only because of its subsidized rents. At a certain level of cooking, I firmly believe that a meal simply cannot be had for $25 or whatever arbitrary number one chooses to apply. For some people spending more than $15 on dinner is absurd, for others $150 is a typical night out.
Modern cooking is not the result of affluent conspiracy theory. The most innovative chefs innovate out of a desire to create and to explore uncharted culinary territory. If we’re to stop this type of high-end experimentation should we also stop experimental art and music? These things, too, are exclusive and largely the domain of the wealthy. When Masa first opened it shook the American dining world with its expense. Anthony Bourdain, a HUGE proponent of honest, local cuisine, urged everyone passionate about food, from dishwashers to investment bankers, via eGullet to visit the restaurant no matter the personal sacrifice. To paraphrase his words, “If you go, you will know that there is no one in the world eating better than you are at that moment.” This to me, this feeling is the ultimate pinnacle of dining, regardless of cost. In that particular instance, it is eating raw fish at a wooden bar for several hundred dollars per person. In others instances, however, it can mean having your mind opened to a style of cooking that is entirely new and unfamiliar but totally, life-changingly delicious.
Finally, keep in mind that modern cooking is just one of many styles of cooking that I love. I grew up eating Japanese homestyle cooking and, like many others, wish my versions of the simple recipes my mother threw together for me as a child (and even now) were as good as hers. With that said, I do think I’m a very good cook, especially for my age. Would I get crushed on a line now? Absolutely, I have no experience, but I think I could be a decent restaurant cook, too. And when I’m entertaining casually, I frequently serve friends of mine roasted chicken (Thomas Keller’s first recipe in the Bouchon Cookbook is my go-to). I think it’s quite delicious.
For those of you who have read this far, I commend you. I wrote more here than I do in most of my college papers. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope you’ll email me with any other questions, Z Kitchen or otherwise.
Just as I’ve finished writing this, I received an email from Charlie Deal telling me about 20-course menus he’s doing with his CdC. The guy is a baller. If an on-the-fly, extended tasting menu, served at the pass doesn’t get the food lover in you excited, then maybe we won’t ever see eye-to-eye. Stuff like this makes me sad that I’ll be leaving Durham next year.
Posted by: BryanZ | 09 October 2007 at 20:13
Bryan: thank you for the extended replies. They provide an interesting insight into the reasons you cook and your thoughts on food. I don't have time to do a complete analysis at the moment, but I'd like to take issue with a couple of things:
"The age-old debate between the haves and have-nots is not relevant to discussing whether food is good or not. "
"For some people spending more than $15 on dinner is absurd, for others $150 is a typical night out."
No discussion of a fundamental human need, such as food, can be divorced from a discussion of the most basic of human conditions, namely poverty. The proportion of people for whom $150 is a typical night out is incredibly minuscule, while the vast majority of people on the planet would think that spending $15 on dinner is absurd.
As Joe has said, the vast majority of creative cooking has come from necessity - from the basic need of poor people to make good nutritious food from scarce resources. Innovation in food has historically rarely arisen from the so-called experts, but rather has come from working people, and has been tweaked into perfection over time. It is only in our modern age of instant gratification that we have come to expect that only those versed in the great secrets of their chosen field can be innovators. This is true not only in the field of food, but in just about every area of human endeavor, including music and the arts.
If you ask me, it is a far greater achievement to feed a mass of people cheaply and nutritiously than to cater to the super-rich, then listen to them oooh'ing and aah'ing over your food.
"If we’re to stop this type of high-end experimentation should we also stop experimental art and music?"
No, and this is almost entirely different. Both music and the arts are massively subsidized by taxpayers. In many countries, museums are free or close to free. The internet has spread cutting-edge music like nothing else in history. The same cannot be said for what you term experimental food. The exclusivity of MG is far greater than that of either. Hence, as I said, the so-called pinnacle of gastronomy is merely a method for the rich to do what only they can afford to.
On a side note: it is a fascinating intellectual challenge to debate this topic with you, and I hope this discussion will continue. Thanks again.
Posted by: durhamfood | 09 October 2007 at 22:14
durhamfood: You make a very interesting point with the greater access that the public has to innovative art and music than it has to food. I admit I did not think of it from that angle. I don't necessarily see this as a problem per se--some people will always have access to more than others and this doesn't bother me--but it is a fair distinction between music/art and food as art. I was thinking more along the individualized lines of affluent guy X who has a lot of money to spend. He may be just as likely to blow $10,000 for a painting by some experimental artist he patronizes as he is to spend $1000 on a plane ticket and meal in Spain. I think that most people would find spending the $10,000 on the painting more acceptable than spending the $1000 on the meal. I would like to challenge that assertion in that the consumption of the meal is not motivated by snobbery but by a sincere desire to learn just as one would learn from a piece of thought-provoking art.
I also ask you read some of Homaro Cantu's musings. Chef Cantu runs Moto, arguably the most envelope-pushing restaurant in the country. Chef Cantu, is visionary not necessarily in the same way that Grant Achatz is redefining the pursuit of dining perfection but in his aim of extending the reach of a chef far beyond the kitchen. Chef Cantu's driving goal in life is to end world hunger. He also uses class IV lasers to burn vanilla beans and uses the smoke to coat the inside of wine glasses. The guy, with whom I've corresponded and briefly met, is probably a little bit crazy, but he fundamentally believes that modern cooking will change the way we all (as privileged global citizens) feed the world. The edible papers he prints his menus on can be infused with nearly flavor and can be printed with graphic and texts. He cites the confusion and inefficiency that plague aid packages and food drops from the industrialized world. Local recipients often do not know what to do with this food and find much of it alien by their standards. By using edible paper, printed with the local language, flavored to taste like familiar foods, Chef Cantu believes more efficiency can be achieved. Chef Cantu believes that everything that he does, and he is WAY out there, is working toward similar ends. How that fits in with his $165 GTM meal is up to the individual to decide.
Posted by: Bryan Zupon | 09 October 2007 at 23:10
No discussion of a fundamental human need, such as food, can be divorced from a discussion of the most basic of human conditions, namely poverty. The proportion of people for whom $150 is a typical night out is incredibly minuscule, while the vast majority of people on the planet would think that spending $15 on dinner is absurd.
While true, wouldn't continuing on this line render nearly any discussion of the local dining scene moot? Piedmont/Federal/Alivia's/etc. don't exist to feed masses of people "cheaply and nutritiously"; rather, they cater to people with disposable income. That you might leave the Piedmont having spend $75 on your meal instead of $500 is only a difference in the degree of the luxury.
Maybe I'm misreading your point, but I don't think I've seen people here up in arms that another local chef is innovating in such a way that couldn't be replicated by a person living at poverty level -- surely, some of them are, and these chefs' innovations likely are not driven by necessity or lack of resources.
I had never heard of Bryan or his restuarant prior to this blog entry, but I respect the eloquence with which he explained and defended himself in a difficult situation (that is, a situation where people were speaking negtively about him before he was even aware of the conversation). I'm not sure I understand the need to hold him to a higher standard than other local chefs -- chefs who are also innovating out of a desire to be creative with good food, and whose meals are out of reach to a large segment of the population.
Posted by: LBR | 10 October 2007 at 08:50
LBR: you make a reasonable point. However, I think there is a difference of scale. Restaurants like Alinea ($250/person/meal, excl wine, service and tax) cater to a far smaller segment of the population than places like Watts ($30/person/meal, excl wine, service and tax). I'm well-aware that there is a partial gap in my reasoning here, in that neither are within everyone's everyday range, but I think the difference lies in the target audience. Alinea is aimed at the rich and super-rich (plus the occasional foodie), whereas Watts is aimed at those with a little disposable income who enjoy good food. It would not be a stretch to say that many in Durham could at the very least go to somewhere like Watts for a special occasion, whereas it would be a huge stretch to say that about Alinea in regard to Chicago's population.
Bryan: I will respond to your comments in the evening, I'm really pressed for time today. Sorry.
Posted by: durhamfood | 10 October 2007 at 11:14
As a a very minor point of contention, Alinea's Tour runs $195, not including wine, tax or gratuity. Standard wine pairings run $150. Per Se is the restaurants that runs $250, but that includes 20% gratuity but not 8.375ish% NYC sales tax. Wine pairings at Per Se generally run $150 (again, with service included), but there is some flexibility with that.
These are expensive meals to be sure, but I just want to make sure everyone has the correct information.
I would also argue that while a meal that could easily surpass $300 at the end of the day is difficult to partake in regularly for almost anyone, a restaurant like Alinea caters primarily to people who are EXTREMELY interested in food. One does not simply walk off the street and into Alinea, wealthy or not.
Posted by: BryanZ | 10 October 2007 at 11:35
not much comment on this actual debate, other than a grand shrug: the wealthy may amuse themselves as they wish, the avant-garde kidz can agonize over their exact relationship to power, and the world can spin merrily on into oblivion.
Good food that tastes good is indeed good, rather than bad. Much of it comes drenched in the blood of the poor, but that is how the system tends to work (let us all read "an evening at Countess Pavahoka's" by Witold Gombrowicz. no really, do; it's amazing.).
However, I find it weird that people expect a fair reading of a town like Durham from the grand New York Times. It's well known for treating most other parts of the country as if they were farthest Zanzibar. At least the article wasn't written by Judith Miller, else the town would already be rubble.
I sentence everyone on this thread to a viewing of "Pecker," by John Waters (ok, it's about Baltimore, not Durham, but we are talking about the NYT here.)
Posted by: mathpants | 10 October 2007 at 13:10
"I would also argue that while a meal that could easily surpass $300 at the end of the day is difficult to partake in regularly for almost anyone, a restaurant like Alinea caters primarily to people who are EXTREMELY interested in food. One does not simply walk off the street and into Alinea, wealthy or not."
No, but if one is wealthy, one wants to show off that wealth by:
a. being able to get reservations there in the first place (or, even more so, somewhere like El Bulli. Any idea how much that would cost?)
b. by inviting your friends to go with you.
Yes, the really expensive places cater to high-end foodies giving themselves a very rare treat, but much more so to the rich and famous wanting to do something others can't.
Anyway, back to the art vs food idea: I don't think these can be considered as one at all. Art has a lasting quality, whereas food is necessarily temporary and ephemeral, and thus cannot be 'owned' in any traditional sense of the word. Having said that, I am just as much opposed to the private ownership of art as I am to the excesses of MG restaurants.
To sum up all that in a rather snobby way: That which is held in the highest esteem must be publicly accessible or it is entirely worthless.
I partially agree regarding food aid, but with the exception that it is meant to provide accessible nutrition, not delicacies. Having said that, dropping peanut butter on remote areas of Afghanistan was one of the stupidest WFP decisions in history. Almost none were consumed, if I remember correctly.
While printed menus may be easily consumed by everybody, how much real nutritional value do they have? If your aim is to make everyone dying of starvation taste the most amazing food in the world one last time before they pass away then sure, dropping those makes perfect sense...
OK, I'm being rather cynical here. I'm not asking or expecting every top chef to go out and cook millions of tons of food to feed the world's starving. What I started off doing was questioning the notion that innovation in food comes chiefly from those who cater primarily to the ultra-wealthy, so let me go back to that for a minute.
I don't subscribe to the Great Man theory of gastronomy, any more than I subscribe to the corresponding historical theory. Great food, as I've written before, comes far more often from years of slow evolution, not from the near-instantaneous timescales on which dishes at the top MG restaurants are created and destroyed. That is why I consider locally-focused food, served at reasonable prices, to be far more significant than MG. Note that I am viewing both of these as collectives, not individuals.
MG as an idea is probably a fad, which will leave behind traces of itself over time. It's too expensive, too time-consuming and too exclusive to take real root. The tradition of local food, cooked with access and nutrition in mind, has had a far greater impact on the culinary traditions of every region on the planet. I have little doubt that it will continue to do so.
I will seek out Chef Cantu's writing. He sounds like an interesting guy. The crazy ones always are :)
Posted by: durhamfood | 10 October 2007 at 17:35
"To sum up all that in a rather snobby way: That which is held in the highest esteem must be publicly accessible or it is entirely worthless."
I fundamentally disagree with this, but that's fine.
"Great food, as I've written before, comes far more often from years of slow evolution, not from the near-instantaneous timescales on which dishes at the top MG restaurants are created and destroyed. That is why I consider locally-focused food, served at reasonable prices, to be far more significant than MG."
I consider locally focused food, served at reasonable prices MUCH more significant than modern cookery, too. Nevertheless, thinking about food in new ways has value all its own.
"MG as an idea is probably a fad, which will leave behind traces of itself over time. It's too expensive, too time-consuming and too exclusive to take real root. The tradition of local food, cooked with access and nutrition in mind, has had a far greater impact on the culinary traditions of every region on the planet. I have little doubt that it will continue to do so."
Similarly, I largely agree. We will not see alginate s'fers in most American home kitchens, probably, ever. We have already seen the Alice Waters effect spread across the country and increasingly into home kitchens. I do think it's somewhat unfortunate that the best products (be the organic, local, or otherwise) largely remain the domain of the upper-middle class, but I think that is changing. You are right in modern cooking, in its extreme forms, will likely not be disassociated with some form of exclusivity. With that said, it's not fundamentally motivated to be exclusive either.
Also, remember that many "high-end" modern ingredients (transglutaminase, xanthan gum, agar, carragenan, the list goes on) were originally used in "low-end" industrial food manufacturing that REALLY feed the masses. Look on the back of your next packaged snack, and I guarantee it will sound like a modern cook's pantry. Whether this makes modern cooking more or less approachable to you depends on the individual.
As an aside, I think the Chef Cantu edible paper idea, was more an example of what's possible than something that will be rolled out the next time natural disaster strikes. Practically speaking, telling someone to take a bite out of this aid leaflet that just dropped from the sky would even weird me out. So, again, this isn't a solution, just an idea of what's possible given the confluence of modern and progressive (in the social sense) schools of thinking.
Posted by: BryanZ | 10 October 2007 at 18:22
Sure there's value in it, but the amount of focus it draws from foodie circles is massively disproportionate to that value.
Those ingredients were indeed used in industrial food first, and look where that's gotten us: just about all cheap food is seriously lacking in nutrition. Modern industrial food production is chiefly responsible for the wave of obesity in the Western world. A focus on local food production is a third option, providing a far more sustainable and healthy alternative. Whether or not that can feed the world's growing population remains to be seen. It certainly has in the past, but things have changed rather radically.
Anyway, it sounds like we're agreeing on quite a lot, excluding some basic philosophies. Good!
Posted by: durhamfood | 10 October 2007 at 18:45
"Oh, good lord, yes, although I do have a visceral reaction to the suggestion that traditional cooking isn’t relecant. It is no longer acceptable to serve a great roast chicken to your guests. Food and cooking as status symbol makes me want to reach for my gun."
These quotes are some of the most dangerous in this entire discussion. Good cooking is good cooking. Period. End of discussion. The age-old debate between the haves and have-nots is not relevant to discussing whether food is good or not. I am philosophically opposed to those people who believe that just because food is cheap and ethnic/regional it has more culinary merit than something that’s made from the world’s best ingredients and is laboriously crafted. This type of anti-snobbery really, really irks me.
First off, I need to do a better job proofing my posts. Obviously, that should have been "relevant", not "relecant". The sentence after that should have been a question - "Is it no longer acceptable...."
Anyway, I've never been called dangerous before. I'm excited. But it's not the first time I've been accused of reverse snobbery. I'll accept that without argument. I'm always skeptical when I read that there's a new, hip thing everyone is engaging in, and I generally suspect that, in fact, there are three people in New York City doing it.
My problem with modern cooking, or whatever we choose to call it, came to a head when I read a quote on Ruhlman's blog by one of the main MG practitioners (I think it was Achatz, but I'll have to dig it up to be sure). The quote was "The days of putting protein in a hot pan are over". Maybe it was hyperbole, but my hackles went up. How could they not? It was more than an eye-rolling moment. It was an attack on something that's very important to me. It smacked of elitism and dismissiveness. It was insulting to home cooks, and to professional restaurant people who work their asses off to keep their customers happy. It's colored everything I think about MG, and I've been ranting about it ever since.
Bryan, you said your food is intellectually stimulating. I don't need my food to intellectually stimulate me. Nor do I need it to amuse me. It's not a theory class, it's dinner. If I want to be amused while I'm eating, I'll have dinner with Joe.
Posted by: Maura | 11 October 2007 at 11:36
Chef Achatz's full quote from 2003 was and found on eGullet:
"“As food evolves and becomes more creative the need for a better understanding of foodstuffs will become necessary for cooks to manipulate ingredients further. Trio finds this approach to food very exciting, as it opens many new doors to not only the way we cook but the way the guest eats. This movement, in combination with the highly creative movement, will redefine high level dinning in the years to come. New techinques will be born and food will become more thought provoking and entertaining. The days of putting a piece of protein in a hot pan are almost over. Observent cooks will continue to incorporate tools and techniques from other professions into the cooking arena. Some examples include the isi foamer, liquid misters, paco jet, wine press, centerfuige, bag cookery(sous-vide), nitrous freezing the list goes on. It will continue to make dinning exciting, both for the cook and the guest."
I would argue that this views have evolved since then. In an eGullet conversation in, I believe, 2006, Grant was excited about receiving a huge stone mortar and pestle. Hardly the domain what of many people think to be in the modern cook's stable of equipment. Alinea's food, despite the service piece theatrics, is actually quite accessible and completely delicious. A restaurant like wd~50 is much more challenging flavor-wise.
I would also suggest that the original quote carried the implication that just adding heat via metal to a protein without understanding why that protein cooks and browns would fall out of fashion in favor of a deeper, more complete understanding of the process. A friend of mine was recently trying to make a brown butter sauce and thought that it would reduce after it stopped foaming. A casual cook who doesn't understand what butter is actually made of could easily arrive at the same conclusion. Sauces reduce, right? After explaining that one can't simply throw butter into a pan and let it brown into oblivion, a more enriching dialog can arise by understanding what, physically, is happening. This is molecular gastronomy, understanding food.
Maura, while my food CAN be intellectually stimulating, there is not the requirement that diners cerebrally engage with it. I make this point in my original statement. Personally, I like irony, whimsy, and fun in my food. Not all the time, but sometimes it can make a good meal an even more memorable one. (Can Roca's mussel topped with distilled earth is "surf and turf"; Alinea's butter spherication totally blew my mind and is vividly burned into my memory). If we return to the egg/asparagus/bacon/sottocenere (a semi-firm cow's milk cheese with black truffles from Italy) dish I serve quite often, it's fundamentally classical flavors, just reinterpreted. A diner may choose to notice this and compare it to classical examples of similar dishes she may have had, or she may just simply enjoy a dish that most people find quite tasty.
Posted by: BryanZ | 11 October 2007 at 12:27
Achatz is wrong: a tiny number of people will play with some expensive toys and make deconstructed food for the wealthy, while the rest of us will just continue to serve good food made the traditional way, making experimental discoveries as we go along.
Knowing that butter won't reduce after its stops foaming doesn't require an understanding of the molecular composition of butter. It requires the idea that fat burns and doesn't evaporate. You don't need to know the chemistry to deduce that. Rather, you need to try it once.
You don't need to understand protein denaturation to cook a steak. South American cultures discovered ceviche without a detailed molecular understanding of proteins.
MG has little to do with understanding food. People who cook a lot understand the food they cook to the extent that they need to. If something doesn't work the way they expect it to, they go back and play again. Gastronomy is an experimental art that anyone can engage in. MG takes that experimentation to a point where only the rich can engage in it. That, to me, is fundamentally wrong.
Posted by: durhamfood | 11 October 2007 at 13:27
This is a really fascinating discussion - I've been reading it for the past couple of days. MG has never been particularly interesting to me, but I've never had much exposure to it. (but now I regret not accompanying my friend Jane Hobson, who wrote the piece on Zkitchen for the Indy last year, to Bryan's apartment for dinner - she invited us to join her, but we were out of town).
Durhamfood, I don't fundamentally disagree with most of your points so much as I think your argument re: MG and "the rich" is on a very slippery slope. You juxtaposed restaurants like Alinea and Watts Grocery a couple of times to make the point that one is for the rich and the other is for a broader range, but I'm not sure what the value of this comparison is: neither is likely to be patronized by anything but a very small percentage of the population, for a whole host or reasons, one of which is money, another of which is the perception that it's "fancy" food. For everyone who turns his nose up at Alinea but loves Watts, there are a hundred people out there who would turn their noses up at both but love Honey's. And so on.
Don't misunderstand - I'm a pretty conventional cook who is all about local food and "reasonable" prices, I just think "reasonable" is in the eye of the beholder. And, though I don't want to put words into Bryan's mouth, I think he's suggesting that that is somewhat beside the point anyway. I have spent big bucks on dinner a handful of times, with mixed results, but have never thought of it from a financial standpoint - it's the experience. You can't really be saying that you are fundamentally opposed to experiences that everyone on the planet can't afford, can you? Because Watts is one of those experiences.
There are sooooo many things that are only for the rich, and an expensive restaurant meal is way down the list, I think.
Anyway, thanks all for this great conversation - I've linked to it from my blog as well.
Posted by: scott | 11 October 2007 at 14:06
No, I'm not saying that I'm opposed to experiences that are not accessible by absolutely everyone. I'm saying that there is a huge difference between food whose primary purpose to to enable the rich to do something no one else can possibly do (ie MG) and traditional cooking methods. Even luxury foods, such as truffles and caviar, are accessible to those lucky enough to live near their sources of production. MG techniques are entirely wealth-exclusive, and are so by design. Therein lies the difference.
Posted by: durhamfood | 11 October 2007 at 14:45
Molecular gastronomy, in the sense that I use the term, has EVERYTHING to do with understanding food. Molecular is perhaps the finest level, but I speak of understanding why things happen overall. I would consider Alton Brown a big proponent of molecular gastronomy, and he cooks very simple food. What I call molecular gastronomy, other people may call "food science." Modern cookery is the confluence of molecular gastronomy, creativity, terroir, personality, and a bunch of other factors that are not uncommon influences in many other cuisines.
I also take issue with the belief that "people who cook a lot understand food at the level that they need to" on two levels. First, people don't. People should now how an emulsion forms, what salt does to proteins, the temperatures at which proteins change their physical properties. Secondly, I'm a bit fan of information. Why shouldn't we try to understand and learn as much as we can. I agree, a starving peasant in 19th century France doesn't have that luxury. Many middle-class Americans do. It's not much different than being a environmental steward and knowing where your food comes from. I'm talking about knowing what's happening to food as you cook it. They're very similar to me.
Posted by: BryanZ | 11 October 2007 at 14:48
If this is so important, then how come much marvelous food was created before anyone understood what proteins looks like on a molecular level, not even speaking of what salt does to them? All I am saying is that it's entirely unnecessary to know any of this to make good food, including emulsions and so on. Understanding it on a molecular level is an intellectual luxury: nice, but in no way essential to either home cooking or gastronomical innovation.
Why should people know the temperature at which proteins change their properties? Why is some dude with a digital meat thermometer cooking a steak to an exact internal temperature any better than someone who knows that on their stove, the steaks from the cows they raise take about the amount of time it takes them to eat make and eat a jam sandwich?
Posted by: durhamfood | 11 October 2007 at 15:07
But chefs who started doing MG said "I'm gonna play around with food and see what happens." They didn't go "Hmmmm, I think I'll start using techniques and ingredients 'whose primary purpose [is] to to enable the rich to do something no one else can possibly do.'" MG techniques may be 'wealth-exclusive" to some extent, but not by design. It just seems you are assigning motives that aren't there.
Posted by: scott | 11 October 2007 at 15:08
scott, not to take this too philisophically afield, but many things happen "not by design" and yet still certainly serve a fairly clear societal purpose.
For example, many people choose to go "for a nice night out" at a place with high prices, MG or no MG. People like them (and not other sorts of people) are found at these places. I imagine these people aren't intentionally using their night out to exclude themselves from the lumpen proles. And yet, er, there is a system at work there (did you know, durhamfood? my grandfather claims to have coined the term "the System" in its current form.)
Jesus christ, I'm sure parents don't send their children to Duke (or to be honest, my alma mater, Grinnell) for the express purpose of reproducing the social structure, do they? And yet, and yet.
All that said, I can't say I'm particularly opposed to this MG stuff for what it is; that is, interesting sounding food made with new and interesting sounding techniques. It would be nice if its exponents got off all that world-changing noise; but that's my complaint with most folks doing most kinds of art, so whatever. It would also be nice if it was more widely available to more people. Hey, why does the "cost" of something exclude most of the world's population from sampling its splendors? That's one of those "system" things again.
Posted by: mathpants | 11 October 2007 at 15:21
well, ok, I can't resist.
"The hole it is wide.
And it's there to divide.
It's no one's fault,
but it's put there by design."
-Uncle Tupelo
Posted by: mathpants | 11 October 2007 at 15:23
Based on a bit of digging, it looks like dinner at el Bulli costs a bit over $300US (at current exchange rates). Which puts it right in the same neighborhood as Masa in NYC. Clearly these are prices well outside the range of most of the world's population. And I think what accounts for the prices is scarcity, not the particular culinary approach of either. Adria spends about half the year in the lab experimenting with "weird" ingredients and techniques. Masa is paying to have the absolute best fish flown in from wherever. I'd argue that it's actually more likely that the prices at, say, Alinea will come down than those at Masa. If there were more restaurants using agar or enzymes or whatever, there'd be an economy of scale that might kick in. There are, however, only so many top grade tuna out there. If the supply declines, prices are likely to increase.
Posted by: georg | 11 October 2007 at 16:26
I think it's unlikely prices will come down at Alinea. Once the exclusivity declines, places like that become less attractive to their generally very wealthy clientèle. How many 'top' restaurants have had their prices go down significantly?
Posted by: durhamfood | 11 October 2007 at 17:21
I think El Bulli costs like E185 right now. As a random aside, the reservations war begins this weekend. You can bet I'm sending in my plea for a table. The way I see it is that after I graduate in May, I'll have a couple months off. Once I start working, I'll continue to work, effectively non-stop, for the next several years. Therefore, the 2008 season is my one chance to get to El Bulli in the foreseeable future. The demand for that restaurant is so high that they could literally charge anything they wanted.
Re: the pricing, while Masa's food cost percentages are undoubtedly among the highest in the industry, his rent, labor, and incidental costs are actually quite low. A restaurant like Alinea or Per Se has massive costs for linens, flatware, china, labor, etc. In addition, restaurants like Alinea and Per Se (more so than Masa) can charge significantly more than they do now due to their popularity. The fact that they're booked two months to the day in advance, means that demand is far outstripping supply. The market believer in me wants them to charge the maximum they can--got to love that equilibrium--but then again I would have no hope of visiting these restaurants if that was the case. So, no, prices won't be coming down anytime soon, but not of any fault of the restaurants (modern and not) themselves.
Posted by: BryanZ | 11 October 2007 at 18:02