Fat Guy

One nice thing about "Cradle of Flavor" is that Jim Oseland is an eGullet Society member and could probably, his schedule permitting, be persuaded to contribute occasionally to a cooking-through-Cradle topic.

There is no typical experience at a restaurant where you can get sushi, haute cuisine, hamburgers and Italian food. My experience was typical in that no two tables in the restaurant were having remotely the same meal. I've also been back several (three?) more times and ordered in various a la carte permutations, and what I saw cemented rather than challenged my first impressions. Relevant to this topic, last summer I was doing the eG Foodblog of the week and put up an entry about a party catered by Blais during his short tenure at Barton G's in Miami. The post is here. Looking back at my comments on the event ("I kept thinking it was like Ferran Adria’s bar mitzvah"), I see hints of new-paradigm reasoning:

I don't know if that link points to a canonical recipe for the German precursor to knadlach (German-derived Yiddish for matzoh balls/dumplings) but the differences between that and a standard Ashkenazic matzoh ball soup recipe are many. Even discounting the difference between semolina and matzoh meal, the German version is based on beef bones, it has juniper in it, and the dumplings contain butter and nutmeg. Matzoh ball soup is invariably chicken soup, juniper would not be a normal addition, and the dumplings are made with schmaltz. If those aren't two different dishes, then the standard for uniqueness in cuisine is going to be really tough to meet. And over time and with migration the variations become greater. I mean, I assume there isn't a significant school in Germany that favors making those dumplings with seltzer water. So I certainly agree that the Jews didn't invent knadlach, but at some point all those adaptations shift the center of gravity enough that you have a new dish.

Incidentally, for me the epiphany came not at Momofuku but at Upstairs. It was when I saw Jim Pechous banging out Bouley-level haute cuisine (and hamburgers) with just a plancha and a bunch of those little saucepots that I sat up and took notice. It was significant for me to see that because I was able to place it against the context of dozens of meals at the other Bouley restaurants dating back to the late 1980s. I recognized the components of most of the dishes, and to see that Bouley's food can be reconstructed in a postmodern haute-cheap style made me realize the rules had changed. That combined with the ambience, approach and audience of Upstairs really defined the movement for me. Momofuku, on the surface a very different restaurant, eventually revealed itself as a kindred spirit. To pick up on what Nathan said, Momo-Ssam didn't exactly invent itself or the paradigm -- rather, it rose to the paradigm.

Just to head off some of the inevitable reductionism, it's worth pointing out that there are a couple of issues being discussed here. The main focus is the new paradigm, defining it, arguing about it, etc. But there was also a claim asserted that the New York dining scene is dull, there's nothing to write about, etc. Refuting that claim involves two main points: first, that it's fundamentally not true, in other words both numerically and substantively there are plenty of interesting restaurants opening that are eminently reviewable, so you need to be really out of it if you can't find anything to review -- not every one of the 108 (to use Zagat's number) potentially reviewable restaurants to open thus far in 2007 is a new paradigm restaurant, I hope that's clear; second, that the new paradigm and its precursor and related trends (gastropub, tapas, dessert bars, etc.) are exciting when viewed from the perspective of the new paradigm -- but when viewed from the perspective of the old paradigm (can we call this the docsconz/JosephB "Where's my spoon?" paradigm?) they're just crowded, uncomfortable, spoonless. The answer to "Where's my spoon?" by the way, is that it's in the kitchen. Pretty much all a new paradigm chef needs is a spoon (preferably a Gray Kunz Sauce Spoon), a stove and a saucepot (actually about a dozen Bourgeat 7/8 quart; 4-3/4" miniature saucepots) -- and maybe some sodium alginate. The rest comes from the mind of the chef applied to the ingredients. There's no intermediary of the church of Alto-Sham.

We recently received a review copy of "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life." I thought I'd mention that the authors have created a website devoted to the book. As they describe it: There are a few short excerpts on the website. If you're a Society member and would be interested in reviewing this book for the benefit of your fellow members, please PM me and, if you're the first to respond, we'll send you the book. Your part of the bargain will be to post a review on this topic within three weeks of receiving the book. [EDITED TO ADD: This book has been claimed, but keep an eye out for more offers like this, as we plan to make member-contributed reviews a regular feature.]

This is the tasting menu at P*Ong that you get for $59. I haven't tried it -- hope to soon -- but it certainly reads new-paradigm haute-cheap:

If you're stuck in the old paradigm, which says the only interesting, worthy, artful, reviewable haute cuisine comes from highly leveraged mega operations with Molteni island suites, Rational combi ovens, Turbochef at the souffle station and a brigade of 27 working in a Cafe Gray-style display kitchen designed by Jimi Yui, then sure, there's nothing interesting about Tailor and P*Ong, about the new gastropubs and Spanish-tapas-influenced openings, about the new Greek trend. But the new paradigm says you don't need all that form to achieve culinary artistry, you only need the substance of great ingredients and superior skill and knowledge. If you have that, and you strip away the other form elements of haute cuisine, then Jim Pechous can stand alone at a stove Upstairs with a couple of assistants and cook serious cuisine for a restaurant full of people. Richard Blais can take a small culinary SWAT team into an unremarkable cafe and turn it into a serious molecular gastronomy destination in a matter of weeks. The DNA of haute cuisine has been resequenced. It had to be, or the tyranny of multimillion dollar investment would have remained an insurmountable barrier to entry for all but the most established names -- a sure recipe for eventual stagnation, and for reinforcement of the tastes that encourage such stagnation. While a critic's job is to judge excitement, a critic's job is also not to miss foundational changes to the state of the art. And that behavior is especially puzzling when it comes from a critic who doesn't even like the traditional haute-cuisine format. But I guess in order to understand a new paradigm you have to understand the old one first.

That's because you're stuck in the old paradigm!

That's right, Smithy, Julie Powell's "Julie/Julia Project" was a great blogger success story and led to the book "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen." We actually have an eG Forums topic of this nature happening right now. Our beloved "eje" has been making every cocktail in "The Savoy Cocktail Book" in alphabetical order. He's up to the Cs. It's a huge undertaking to do something like this. I hope anybody who starts such a project in the future will keep a topic running about it and post photos. It's also possible to do this sort of thing collaboratively, if enough people are interested and can coordinate and divide.

I think if you look at most any dish anywhere you can find a lot of parallels to a lot of other dishes nearby and elsewhere. The question of how different a dish has to be to be unique is one that comes up no matter what kind of cuisine one is evaluating. If you paint with a very broad brush, all dumplings are dumplings. If you paint with a medium brush, all Asian dumplings are one thing. If you paint with narrower brushes, they break down into categories, and so on. Statements like "this Jewish dish is similar to this East European dish" can't be evaluated without criteria for determining their validity: what does "similar" mean? Are similar dishes the same, or are they different dishes? The average Jewish dish is probably more different from its East European ancestor than the average Italian regional dish is from the one the next region over, but we have no problem declaring each Italian regional cuisine to be a cuisine.

I think it's fair to say that the pace of exciting new NYC restaurant openings—which is what primarily drives a critic's life—has slackened considerably since 2-3 years ago. ..... He's clearly having trouble finding new places to write about. ← Is there any statistical support for the slowed pace claim? The "exciting" component is subjective, but the number of openings in a given market segment should be measurable. Just looking at 2007 news releases and alerts that I've received -- a ten-minute process of reviewing my email archive -- it would seem that, if nothing else, there are plenty of places to review. Perhaps not every one of these is review-worthy, but plenty are. Some are too new to review (but I've not included 2006 announcements on this list), others have indeed been reviewed. Most, of course, have not. Borough Food and Drink Tailor P*Ong Spitzer's Corner Hudson River Cafe Landmarc at TWC Wild Salmon Zipper Tavern Insieme FR.OG Resto David Coleman new chef at Tocqueville Inn at LW12 Brian Young new chef at Tavern on the Green Ben Pollinger new chef at Oceana Ed’s Lobster Bar E.U. Amalia Blue Ribbon Bar Alchemy Restaurant and Tavern Mercat Hurapan Kitchen Parigot Jawn Chasteen new chef at SeaGrill Caffé Falai Retsina Tasca Kefi Spotlight Live Broadway East Nelson Blue Perilla Sandro's Soto Harry Cipriani reopens in the Sherry-Netherland Saucy Zagat lists 108 significant-enough-for-Zagat openings thus far in 2007, a figure that doesn't include significant chef changes, the Four Seasons, Katz's, Max Brenner, etc. We're only about 22 weeks into the year. Pretty sure this link will get you there. Gayot is constantly announcing interesting new openings. This is a recent list. I'm sure I've missed plenty. If there are no restaurants to review, why does Frank Bruni need more space to publish all his opinions? Surely he's not writing more because he has fewer restaurants to write about. No, I don't think there's a lack of activity on the New York restaurant scene. This is a very exciting time. Only a critic with profound lack of imagination could be struggling to find interesting places to review.

Just a note on the Zagat statistical point: recent computations by SmartMoney magazine indicate that Zagat's average rating has gone up nearly 5 points since 1983, and that the bottom has dropped out of the ratings: "Just over a decade ago 189 out of 1,300 New York restaurants rated 15 or below; today only 23 do, despite the fact that the guide now rates more than 1,500 restaurants."

Or as in: "Man O Manischewitz!" And of course kosher chickens enjoy huge popularity outside the Jewish community. Another issue worth mentioning here: If you talk to the chefs at Michelin three-star restaurants in Europe, as well as the other top restaurants in the Western World, they will all tell you they have a substantial number of Jewish customers. At least a couple have told me they'd be out of business without Jewish tourists from the US and Israel. And certainly the institution of fine dining in the US is supported in part by large numbers of Jewish customers -- if you look at the cities with the largest Jewish populations it's basically (with the exception of Miami) the list of top fine-dining restaurant cities: New York City Miami Los Angeles Philadelphia Chicago San Francisco Boston Baltimore-Washington Now I wouldn't say that the cuisine served at Jean Georges or French Laundry is "Jewish cuisine," but the Jewish middle class has adopted contemporary fine dining cuisine and does much to support it.

Which is why it's so bizarre that Adam Platt recently penned "This Is Why New York’s Not Hot". I guess if you totally miss the point of Momofuku, it's hard to see what's going on right under your nose.

The reason we equate Jewish cuisine with Ashkenazi cuisine is that about 80% of the world's Jews are Ashkenazi. And I believe the number was over 90% prior to World War II. The only other numerically significant Jewish population is the Sephardic population, and I think there's some awareness of Sephardic dishes like hummous and the various products sold by, for example, the Sabra brand -- which of course overlaps with Middle Eastern cuisine in general. I've actually found that many of today's Ashkenazi foodies have been turning to Sephardic dishes to liven up their Jewish holiday meals. The rest, well, there's just not enough of a critical mass of people to make them much more than study items for preservationists. The best few dishes may get captured by the global Ashkenazi-dominated cuisine or be mainstreamed, but that's about the extent to which they're likely to be enjoyed outside their limited communities, to the extent those communities even exist anymore.

That's probably just your browser rendering the page wrong. Yes, I spend $60 on myself. I can't help it. If I'm going to schlep all the way down there I'm not going to eat just a sandwich. I like to get a platter with pastrami, corned beef and salami, with a stack of rye bread (the bread is lousy, by the way), a knoblewurst, a round knish, fries, two or three Dr. Brown's sodas . . . it adds up. I don't finish it all. Indeed, if I go with someone else we spend exactly the same amount of money together as I'd spend alone.

He did seem to get the Katz's review right.

Actually . . . "Los Paradigmas Gastronómicos," by Raimundo García del Moral.

I've read that, but it has been reported as rumor not as fact -- so I don't really know what to make of it. One indication that Bruni is doing something smart by reviewing Katz's is that this is the first time I can ever remember caring enough about one of his reviews to make a point of checking the Times website at 9:01pm in order to read it. It's not up yet, though.

One interesting reinterpretation of traditional Jewish food is the annual Passover seder at the restaurant Tabla in New York. Tabla is an haute-Indian fusion restaurant, and the chef there is Floyd Cardoz, a Christian from Goa. He serves, among other things, incredible matzoh-ball soup laced with fenugreek (I haven't been to the seder, but have had the chance to taste some of the items).

Speaking only for myself here, I do enjoy traditional Jewish foods, especially when (rarely) they're made well. But as much as I enjoy them, they'll never be more than an occasional pleasure for me. When I walk down the aisles of today's markets like Fairway (in New York) and Whole Foods (just about any city), and visit all the great farmers markets and specialty stores across North America, I want to cook and eat stuff that emphasizes fresh ingredients and bright flavors. So, sure, once in awhile I want a pastrami sandwich at Katz's, and I look forward to Jewish holiday foods several times a year, but the rest of the time I'm more interested in cooking and eating in the contemporary, international, product-oriented style.

To address the original question, why don't Jews eat Jewish, I think there are probably a few things going on here. First, the pattern reflects overall eating habits in North America, which have for years been trending against Russian, German, Scandinavian, classical French and other cuisines from Central, Eastern and Northern Europe. The studies on ethnic food trends refer to these cuisines as "Old-World Traditional," and they're the ones that are in decline. In the recent "Ethnic Cuisines II" study, the perceptions of these cuisines were that they're "rich, indulgent" (conflicting with the perceived desire to eat healthy), and "fairly static in terms of offerings and don't appeal to adventurous diners." By contrast, Asian and Latin cuisines are very much on the rise. Second, Jews are largely an assimilated, affluent, urban-suburban population -- with the exception of the orthodox communities (where they do eat Jewish food) -- and are therefore going to be eating whatever is trend-forward. Third, the knowledge and experience needed to make traditional Jewish food well has largely been lost in the past couple of generations (based on a lot of personal experience, this is even true in the orthodox community). So with the exception of a few restaurants that are still making good stuff, and a few appetizing stores that sell great product, there's just not much reason for people to like these foods. There are some great books from Joan Nathan, Mitchell Davis, et al., but books can only do so much. Fourth (and this is the last thing on my list, though I'm sure there are other factors), some of the best Jewish foods have gone mainstream. Bagels, for example, are consumed hand over fist in every state and province in the US and Canada. The Jewish influence is felt in every deli that serves pastrami. The Hebrew National brand is well established pretty much everywhere. You go to any Costco in North America and you can find enough products to put on a full Jewish appetizing-type spread. I even occasionally see matzoh-ball soup in the most goyishe Middle American diners. This process of mainstreaming is typical, and is also well documented in the literature. For example, some cuisines that are the subject of significant mainstreaming right now are Italian, Mexican and Chinese. According to the National Restaurant Association, "the market for ethnic food has grown to such an extent that Italian, Mexican and Chinese (Cantonese) cuisines have joined the mainstream . . . . those three cuisines have become so ingrained in American culture that they are no longer considered ethnic."

When I go to Katz's I usually spend about $60.

I suppose we'll need to wait a couple of hours to see whether Bruni's review can justify the choice to review Katz's. Call me unimaginative, but I'm having trouble seeing how Room 4 Dessert gets $25 and Under treatment while Katz's gets a full review. Perhaps one of our historians (ahem, Leonard) can point to a few examples of crossover reviews. I think it's also worth noting that $25 and Under has just been scaled back to every other week, and seems to be focused on real cheap eats under the Meehan administration, as opposed to the somewhat more middle-market orientation of Asimov.