Carrot Top

Adria is a chef. But he has successfully neutered several of the limitations of the definition of "chef". He has done this in an individualistic way that others may try, but that he (as an individual) has succeeded in exceptionally well, so in this sense he is an artist (if the definition of an artist is that of someone who produces works that would not be mistaken for anyone else's works, at least until the techniques become widespread and copied by others). If you look at Adria from the eyes of the art world, certainly he could be considered a performance artist, taking his "work" (which includes his manifesto or writings, his food and his concepts including the way he operates his restaurant) as a whole - if one wanted to. And I think that in this case the art world wanted to. Part of the reason why they wanted to is the artistic sense that he has created around his work (besides the fact that it is there, there has also been a sense created about it), another part is the aura of exclusivity that his body of work holds, the aura of exclusivity which creates a certain sort of buzz, a particular spark, that must exist for anything contending itself to be "art" to enter into the higher echelon of support system of museums. Did Adria bring people in to the Documenta art show by being there? I bet he did. Did his being there stimulate them in the ways that the other artists' works did? I bet it did. And I bet it stimulated them in other ways, too - in the ways that the idea of food only can. So my take on this is that he is a cook who became a chef. And then that he is a chef who danced right over into art in this moment of time. To envision the idea of a cook dancing in the halls of the museum as intelligent visitors gawk, muse, hunger, and think - and think of what he cooks as "art" - well. As far as I'm concerned, he can call himself whatever he wants. That's a pretty neat little dance he's done.

I love the comments but have a sense that the writer was more interested in the romantic flow of the words than finally pinning down any exact "truth". How I sense this is that I do it myself, often. To this comment, my answer is of course, "yes and no". Was there ever such a thing as a gourmet that was not "noble" in these old books? What would he (or she? no no I can not wrap my mind around it) be then? It does surprise me to hear of a British book speaking of sauces in this way, Janet. It sounds almost French. "Sauces to food/action to oratory". I'm going to assume that the action spoken of is gestures and movement, the theatrical part of oratory. So that the meaning is that a sauce sparks factual things into vibrant life. Can't agree with that, unless the food paired with the sauce is dull or flavorless and the sauce more vital than the paired food - and that is not how it should be to my mind. It should be a pas de deux. Oops there goes that other language again. *But* that may have been the style of cooking at the time - strong sauces paired with duller tasting foods. Nice line though. I could just read this sort of writing and not think a single thought and be quite happy afterwards. Sounds like the author is in love. .................................................. My favorite sauce is charcutiere, with pork chops. And yes, elephant will be fine with that if you're fresh out of piggies at the moment. Just don't forget the mashed potatoes, please.

Yes, chile-peppa, I know that area in Virginia. I wonder how the trajectory of your "food life" ( ) would have been different if your family had remained there and not moved to Chicago . . . ............................................. The answers to these questions *are* really interesting. I'm glad to hear these stories.

I guess that b*tch (excuse the french) not only has limited taste buds and would like everyone else to hang right there along with her, but also has no fear of showing her terribly bad manners. You made a fresh home-made dessert and she prances in with a tub of fluffed lard and says, "Put this on it?" Meh. I am having fantasies of dumping a vat of Cool-Whip on her head. Sigh. .............................. I really don't know why I bother to leave home to travel anywhere unless it would be to a major city, as far as finding something to eat that does not suck goes. After yesterday morning's styroeggs I went on to have lunch at the most promising non-chain independent restaurant in the area, a Mexican place, and was served a burrito the size of a WWII tanker which tasted like one too and had the same effect of literally trying to kill me, I do believe. If I had eaten more than an tenth of it, I would have been lying on the floor unable to move from the heavy denseness of it. Dinner, again at "the finest place in town" (another independent restaurant) was better. It was amusing, though, that the place advertises itself as having a wine list. This is how it differentiates itself and touts sophistication. The wine list had two producers listed on the top: Woodbridge and Beringer. Then underneath that it listed three varieties from each producer. *That* was the wine list. Geez. I'm tellin' ya. It's either laugh or cry. Honestly, I might head for fast food for lunch and just plain appreciate the fact that, expecting not-too-much except consistency, I might not be disappointed.

I had a very spooky food-sucking experience this morning. I went down to the buffet breakfast at this hotel (Hampton Inn, first time I've stayed at one - maybe should have chosen the other one that has commercials that say they make you smart, instead) and went to look at what they were offering for hot food. Sliding back the silver cover, I viewed something that looked like dog turds on the left that actually were sausages. How they could have been more dried out is awesome to consider, for probably they would just turn into a poof of black smoke if they had been heated one more second. But that was not the suckiest thing. The suckiest thing I really do not even want to call eggs, but they were. Or that's what they were supposed to be anyway, but really I can not believe that they were not made out of styrofoam for that was the exact texture. They were these little round egg frisbees, all stacked up like so much cut wood on top of each other in three big piles. They were white with a tiny spot of buttercup yellow in the center. They looked like flying saucers. They were actually scary. I've seen the hard little frisbee-shaped scrambled eggs before but never whatever this thing was supposed to be. I went back to look several times to be sure that I wasn't hallucinating from the watery coffee or from the fumes that must have approached my nose from the yellow and orange cut up chunks that they called "fresh fruit" but which looked like sewage actually. Not that I've seen sewage but that would be the closest earthly thing they resembled, for they did not look as if they came from this planet, anywhere. A man came up and looked at the eggs, standing beside me. "Have you ever seen anything like that before?" I asked him. "Noooooo. No." he said. "I have *no* idea what that is." he said mournfully and walked away, stumbling a bit in his shock. Why? Why didn't they just make *hardboiled* eggs if nothing more difficult could be managed? What is the point of these hockey pucks and dog turds being offered to people for breakfast? I wanted to ask the woman in attendance at the buffet but didn't want to depress her. Or alternately, if she was one of the aliens that actually think this stuff is the right stuff to serve, I didn't want to get beamed up onto her space ship and kidnapped.

Kasha for breakfast, too, for that matter, Rebecca.

I'm all for egg salad, as either Fat Guy or The Old Foodie described it at the very start of this important discussion. Hard to improve on either of those ideas. But there is yet a remaining vital question attached to the idea of egg salad sandwich, though, and that is how thick should it be layered onto the sandwich? This can make or break an egg salad sandwich, leaving one greatly disappointed or even vaguely angry, if it is not engineered correctly before taking a bite. The best egg salad sandwich I ever had was in London. It was a perfect little rectangle of Best British wheat bread filled with egg salad that approached a puree in texture, with only tiny little bites of hard white here and there to be found. The bread was very soft and thin and a bit nutty from wheat kernels that also seemed tiny and precise, self-deprecatory wheat kernels they were, rather than the usual huge lumbersome kernels that are always trying to get stuck in your teeth. It was topped with the loveliest little alfalfa sprouts, darling alfalfa sprouts, and just enough of them. They were not even peeking over the edge of the sandwich in a rude fashion but rather honored their inner selves as sprouts by retiring gently between the slices of bread to cuddle up next to the finesse of the egg salad, knowing that soon they would be eaten but ready and willing for the eventuality to occur. For of course, they were sprouts and they knew their place. One might say they closed their eyes and thought of England but I doubt those sprouts were even that pushy. There was also a shimmer, the merest shimmer if that is possible, of Branston pickle on one side of the sandwich. Which added the merest savory bite to the whole otherwise gently receding yet delightfully tasty experience. But the core question here is the thickness of egg salad. You can not layer on egg salad with a trowel as if it were roast beef, or turkey. No no no. It is a crime against the tastebuds of humanity to attempt that. It must be a rather thin, perfectly measured layer throughout the sandwich with not the least bit of deviation in height, otherwise the perfection will be quite off, to the point of ruination.

I have, in a past career. And I agree with you, that really isn't the point. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Write, make money, be a plumber, take naps . . . whatever fits best.

Thanks. I still believe I could have made more money if I'd decided to train as a plumber, but there's still time for that if this doesn't work out.

Going through the drive-through several times? What do you call that, the slow-fooding of fast food? I feel ridiculous enough going through the drive-through *once*. There might be some actual adults in the places outside of town that have joined the ranks of fast food workers in our "rural economy" (though I can't remember seeing any for ages now around here) but right here in town we just have the future MBA's, engineers, scientists, and Ph.D candidates of our great country smiling through the drive-through windows. I know this because inbetween messing up my orders they complain to me that they are not getting their homework done or they explain at endlessly mind-blowingly boring length the contents of the oral presentation they have to give "soon". Maybe it's something in the air in the places - brains might get clogged up somehow with all those burger fumes and grease aromas?

It was close to two years ago that I wrote this, above. Several weeks ago in a nutty moment the idea of writing "for real" seemed more appealing than a nap for some bizarre reason. I submitted a proposal (with a sample, if that's what it's called) for a short series to a real publisher, a newspaper. Today my proposal was accepted, and I have to go there sometime soon to sign a "freelancer's contract". Now all I have to do is actually write the things and have them work right. I do hope it does not interfere with my nap time.

Had me wondering there for a moment how long you'd spent at sea. Beef in cans and hardtack, you know. Wow. For a moment I thought Hyacinth was a boat. Love those ideas, but yo ho ho and a bottle of rum you know, the open sea has no zipcodes.

Linda, A lot depends on the size of the boat, how many people will be on-board, how long you'll be off-shore, how big the fridge actually is, whether there is an alternate place to chill beverages, and whether $ is not to be considered for the moment. I lived on a sailboat for two years. Learned to make puff pastry in a thirty-eight foot wooden boat. Your friendly galley slave, Karen

There might be statistics on that here (National Restaurant Association's research tool).

So, Rogov - would it be the food or the people that are most important in your fantasy?

You've basically got my fantasy except I'm avoiding the Maine winters and have added the elements of a children's book and some hot oil.

I often get the three of them (God, Steve, and somebody) confused also, Peter. Very good question about adding local flavorings when cooking from other cuisines, maher. I mean culture *or* ethnicity, Rona. Both are equal as bearers of gifts of personal meaning, in my book. There is a trend in the world of "cooking" today to expand, to go beyond traditional borders, which is fantastic. Though there are places that *do* hold onto their traditional "cuisines" and these cuisines are strong and vital, these cuisines are the ones that people from other cultures are drawn to, to learn from and to cook, for themselves and for others. There is also a trend which seems to be growing, to make cooking into something that can be worn as a badge of some sort of gained sophistication that raises the bearer of such sophistication to higher levels than the normal man or women who just cooks the "usual" things. It all starts with the line from a naive and willing (and usually hungry) mouth: "Oh, you can cook *that*?" and the saga begins, a trail that leads to cooking taking on a professional and credentialized aura so very far from the cooking that many mothers did in the kitchen at home. Worlds apart. One type offers a small world, a private world, a world of tradition, of threads of time going back with the so-personal stories attached to it - the stories of "who we are" that the mother in the kitchen will tell - either with words that tell of the foods she cooks as her mother cooked it or (if one had a quiet mother) simply in the foods themselves that come from that sort of kitchen. A small world of love offered in a very personal way. This thing offers meaning to life, this small personalized thing. In a different way than learning from magazines, TV, etc. does, learning the wonderful foods of others that have no direct personal connection to one's own life except in a way that is further apart from the heart (but which of course should bring those foods and people closer to the heart if approached in the right way). I admit, it sort of spooks me to think of a world where people learn to cook from TV rather than from someone that has meaning in their lives. It seems to me that this alters what food is to the soul in a very basic sort of fashion. I fear this loss, for I know the sense of "nothingness" that the foods held that my own mother who had no traditions of cooking put on the table - as opposed to the very intense sense of "somethingness" (and a good somethingness) that the foods held which my MIL (who had strong traditions of cooking, threads going back in time with cogent meaning) put on the table. So I poke at this thing and try to figure it out. Because I'd like to be sure to offer my children the small private world of love and meaning, of narrative force, attached to the foods. The other world of learning to cook from TV or magazines they can find for themselves, as anyone really can that seeks it. The challenge that exists (for me) is to actually find a culture or ethnicity that is cogent, as all these have been discarded in past generations for the appeal of the "American" generic culture. I don't think I'm alone in this situation, either.

My guess was either that carrying coffeepots around was simply just wearing out everyone (what do you expect at a place named "Applebees" after all? I would get tired working there just thinking of my image as attached to the name which sounds like a pretend orchard where children go on field trips - it would not take long for me to become pale, thin, unable to do very much, and worried about my nails too) or else maybe they just were worried about lawsuits due to happy servers (again, the name Applebee's taken in a different direction, eliciting intense joy, leading to dancing in the aisles) who had been spilling coffee from the pots onto the customer's laps. Could be either one, SB. Either one.

Oh gosh. I read it wrong. You own the rental and want to fix it up as inexpensively as is possible. My answer then differs. Make the world a better place and invest in fixing it right.

Extending out a bit from the tradition of dabbawallas, food sent daily from Mom's kitchen, now there is food sent daily from Dad's kitchen. To the dogs. Home-Cooked Dinner Delivery for Dogs in Bhopal Lucky dogs.

My fantasy restaurant would be outside. It would be in Maine on the shore in the summer and the west coast of Florida on the shore in the winter. It would be the same in either place. There would be about three acres of land abutting the water. It would be nice and grassy with picnic tables spaced not too close, not too far apart. The restaurant itself would consist of one large grill thing, one large deep-fryer thing, and two large beds of shaved ice things. It would be cook-it-yourself. One large bed of ice would be filled with seafood, the other with meat, ready to grill. There would be a table also, with lots of herbs and spices and seasonings that the food could be seasoned with before grilling. There would be individual little grill-things to stick the food in to grill by the people, who would choose what they wanted then season and cook it themselves. Obviously someone would have to stand by the grill to shout at them when they forgot to get their food on time. That (staff) person could have a lounge chair next the grill under an umbrella and they would be in charge of the boom box. Over by the deep-fryer would be a big container of thin-sliced potatoes ready to deep-fry, which the people could also do themselves. Someone would have to sit there and supervise, too, I guess. They could have another lounge chair under an umbrella and I guess they would have to peel and slice potatoes too. Not as good a job as the grill one. There would also have to be a brightly-painted cart set up with a cute little horse, or maybe a donkey, hooked up to it as if it were actually going to go somewhere. Obviously we'd have to change out the donkey several times a day so that standing there he would not get bored or overworked with all the petting and adoration that would come his way. This cart would be filled with baskets of readied salad stuff and big (disposable) bowls to put it in, with squeeze-on dressings there too. The donkey would *not* wear a hat, but he *would* have a friend who was a cat who would jump onto his back now and then and meow to him. There would also be several of those outdoor-shower thingies, one high up to climb completely under if you happened to take a swim then wanted to wash off, one down near foot-level for those whose feet got muddy or sandy or whatever. There would be three large iced tubs of drinks. One of sodas, one of waters, one of beers. One large table with paper goods and utensils. Everybody would come in, cook their own food, hopefully clean up their own mess, and pay, based on what they chose to eat. I guess whomever sat near the donkey could be the money collector, too. The packs on the back of the donkey could be the "cash register". Ahhhh. I am sighing in pleasure just thinking about it. Hours: 11:30 to 9:30, closed Mondays.

I'm guessing that it's not the script that bothered Tino but the mechanical repetition back to him. That sort of aggravates me, too, though I can see the purpose of it. Likely, the employees are trained to repeat the order to be sure that they *heard* it right to avoid errors. This is all well and fine when the employee seems to be thinking as well as parroting back. The thing is that often there is little eye contact (even when one is standing in front of them, they are dully looking at the cash register buttons without expression) and as likely as not, the parroting *still* does not avoid error. It goes as far as repeating the words then the actions that show involvement with the service process (no matter how limited the process is or how boring, there should be involvement in order to accomplish it accurately) are as full of errors often enough as not. I don't believe too much in stupid people, really. I do believe in attitudes that can become ingrained, partially from oneself, partially from one's culture - that can make situations that might otherwise be much better in many ways - much worse. These servers probably do not really have *intelligence* problems that would limit their performance in these jobs. If they are boring jobs, well . . . so be it. Boring jobs can be made less boring by doing them well and by getting involved. One way might be to actually look at the people being served and anticipate their needs. Like a drink needs a straw for example, if it is being carried around with a lid. I can't believe I'm ranting on about this. I can't believe, really, that I care.

You can get store-to-store variation because of one thing: how well management is making sure that all the required details are being followed up on each day over and over and over again. Inventory can be held too long or improperly or at the wrong temperatures, staff can be allowed to switch proportions or timing of cooking . . . same thing as in any restaurant, but the details are so well spelled out that all it really takes is a bit of attention and a good-enough attitude to manage to deliver a consistent product with the few things that go along with it, "right". Perhaps its because we are in a college town with lots of students and turnover in the places. It is irking me, though, that people who are nineteen to twenty-three years old can not seem to remember to give straws with drinks or any number of other idiotic things that they should be able to do if they managed to get into college. Aaaaaargh! It happens here at Burger King, at Wendy's, at McDonald's, at KFC. Only Taco Bell was exempt from this, and now they have started, too. The last time I went they gave me that awful shredded chicken stuff in the usually-bearable Nacho Cheese Gordita. BLECH BLECH BLECH. It's like some alien fog of latent stupidity has invaded all the fast-food places for miles around. Yeah, really. I know. Can you convince my kids of that? I'll pay you. My energy for this sort of thing with them is usually directed towards bigger battles.

Floor: An inexpensive woven carpet or two that can be put in the wash to cover it, that can be taken with you when you go. Lighting is *very* important, almost primary. Some undercounter stick-on tubes can light up a drab kitchen immensely and you can find them for about seven dollars each. Cabinets: You can take the eye off of the worst parts by new hardware that attracts the eye, and if that still is not enough, then surround the knobs with decorative painting using stencils (which can be found at Lowe's sometimes and craft stores more often). That will avoid the investment in time and labor of sanding. One of the best tricks is to make the space appear more spacious by placing a mirror on one wall that reflects or creates a window-like focus. Another is to create one focal point in the best area of the kitchen by placing something very attractive on the countertop. A beautiful big ceramic bowl of fruit, a tall candlestick, on a woven round placemat - or something of similar structure and appeal with make the eye go directly to it, thereby ignoring the rest of the mess. Good luck.

Yes, I would agree, toweringpine, in that circumstance. But what about drive-thru places where supposedly the order taker and the customer speak the same language? Even reviewing what shows up on the screen does not appear to help the orders come out correctly.