Sneakeater

Brooklyn Held Hostage. Day 6.

I think both paragraphs are completely right.

Who knows? Maybe they made it up.

No no no. That would be too easy. It's some word you've never seen before, but have to act as if you had in order to maintain your cool.

They're fantastically good.

So you're saying that now they'll provide you with a beautiful companion?

(Actually, maybe all those things are illegal, too. Or maybe the mistake would be announcing your intention -- as Maccioni apparently hasn't done here [if this is even real].)

I apologize. I didn't mean that as a smartass answer. I meant to convey that anything would be acceptable there.

I agree it would be offensive. But illegal? Is it illegal that all the JGV places have these beautiful female front-desk people (one hesitates to call them maitresses d'hotel)? Or, for that matter, that so many art galleries do? And how many male coatcheck people have you seen?

There's a reason.

It's the same at Bistro du Vent (the theater district place) except they have some French word for Quartino. Actually, I thought it was the same as well at Casa Mono, except possibly for the use of some Spanish word. Agree. Let's give a shout-out to the ricotta gnudi at the Spotted Pig, though.

I would say you definitely have to wear clothes. But they're so accomodating there that they'd probably come up with some kind of coverall for you if they decided it was important.

Years and years ago, when I first went to Lupa (OK, probably it was "years ago" but not "years and years"), they had a glossary at the end of the menu. Do they not anymore?

Hey, and we did it with SHORT posts!

That was kind of the point I was making. Generally, restaurant investors are just that: investors. They expect a return. They aren't funding somebody's vision. They're seeking a profit. I can imagine a different model. I can imagine a chef with a significant cult following -- like, say, Paul Liebrandt -- attracting a bunch of rich followers to bankroll him irrespective of investment return. But I don't know that it's happened yet. ← Maybe Grant Achatz at Alinea? What about S. Starr's little bevy of chefs - Morimoto? Alfred Portale at Striped Bass in Philadelphia? Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of these. u.e. ← I think Starr expects ENOURMOUS returns on his restaurants. I think, if anything, he's in the business of exploiting famous names. I don't think he's bankrolling creativity with no conern for profit. I think he's the LAST guy who'd do that.

FWIW, I think we pretty much agree with each other. I guess if we both write things that are long enough, we end up in the same place.

That was kind of the point I was making. Generally, restaurant investors are just that: investors. They expect a return. They aren't funding somebody's vision. They're seeking a profit. I can imagine a different model. I can imagine a chef with a significant cult following -- like, say, Paul Liebrandt -- attracting a bunch of rich followers to bankroll him irrespective of investment return. But I don't know that it's happened yet.

While I'm being tiresome, there's one more thing I want to say. Until the mid-19th Century, visual and musical artists viewed themselves as craftsmen for hire. It never would have occurred to them to follow a vision that they didn't think (or more to the point, care) that an audience could follow. That changed with the Romantic movement in the 19th Century. Artists' self-image changed. They created for themselves, to express theirselves. (This is obviously somewhat simplified.) But along with the invention of the artist creating for himeslf came the invention of something else: the day job. Before desktops wiped away the job category, my law firms' wordprocessing departments were filled with young men and women financing their art or dance or music work. Restaurant chefs aren't like that. Restaurants are businesses opened to make money. They're not primarily there for self-expression. It may that self-expression can coincide with something the market will want, but in a way that's a happy coincidnece. (Maybe pop music is a good analogy here.) In any event, unlike painters, restaurant chefs can't just follow their muse and ignore what a substantial number of people will want to eat. Not if they want to stay open. I guess I'm trying to say that restaurant food will be able to be truly avant garde, in the current sense, only when chefs cook in restaurants for love and do something else to support themselves. Maybe wait tables.

Not to be tiresome, but another analogy might be Sichuan food. At first, many people think it's just too spicy -- the hot part is all they can see (or I guess I mean, taste). But with time, you can get beyond that and see the balance of flavors (the "ma" and the "la" and the other stuff that people who know more than me impressively talk about). You see how it all fits together. Now, I'd argue that this appreciation is more like coming to appreciate that de Kooning's work can function the same way Ingres's can. Not like getting Duchamp. I also think this is what happened to me with Wylie DuFresne's cooking. But I think it's different from realizing that there's a whole other set of criteria that can be applied to food (which is what's involved in getting Duchamp). As I indicated above, I'm provisionally skeptical that there is a whole other set of criteria that can be applied to food. Which is not to say -- I hope I've become painfully clear by now -- that you can't come to appreciate things you just didn't like before.

I see where you're coming from, and I totally agree that the food has to be "good". Might we say, however, that the diner can grow to like something, even if at first he does not like it? Like you, I wouldn't support a chef who made interesting but, ultimately, bad food. I would support a chef, if I could afford to do so, who made interesting food that I had to adjust to like. ← Oh, absolutely. As I've said, I've come to change my opinion and like Wylie's cooking -- and I'm still not sure if I've moved over to him or if he's moved over to people like me. It's entirely possible that it's the former -- that I've come to appreciate and enjoy what he does. The question your post leaves is, by what standard do you come to grow to like something? In this case, specifically, so-called "avant garde" food. Do you like this food in a different way than you like other food, or is it that with time you come to be able to like it the same way you like other food? Let me try to be concrete. Say that, at one point in your life, you don't like sardines, or tapioca, or caviar, or olives. Say that, over time, you come to like them. It isn't the case, in those instances, that you've changed your criteria for what constitutes "good food". It's more that you've come to see how those foods fit into your criteria. In your big post, you seemed to be saying something different. You seemed to be saying that one doesn't so much develop a taste for avant garde cuisine, but rather comes to subscribe to new criteria for food. Analogies might be dada and conceptual art. You could argue that, with time, people came to appreciate cubism and abstract expressionism on the same terms as they appreciated older styles. But dada and conceptual art required you to subscribe to a whole new set of assumptions about what art was and what it did. You can't enjoy them sensually, the way you can enjoy even the wildest Pollack or de Kooning. You enjoy them intellectually, and pretty much only intellectually: it's a whole other thing. So I guess I'm asking you, which way you're saying one can come to like avant garde food? At least provisionally, I can agree with you on the first way, but tentatively disagree on the second.

This comment is interesting in light of something Michael Kimmelman (I think) wrote in the Times on Friday (I think). He quoted a visual artist to the effect that painting has changed significantly owing to the fact that artists frequently paint now with the expectation that their work will end up in a museum rather than a private collection. Accordingly, the visual artist said, they frequently go for a quick effect rather than something deeper or more subtle; they don't paint as if the work will be lived with. I'm not even trying to make a point here. I just thought it was notworthy that these ideas are in the air.

Well I'm glad to see that even you have limits.

Where I disagree with that is that I think food is different from, say, music. Music doesn't have to "sound" good, but food has to taste good. Which maybe means that I don't think that cooking can be a high art the way music or painting or sculpture is. At best, it can be an applied art, like architecture (which still gives you a lot of room for artistry, obviously). So with architecture, on the one hand, you can have a style people aren't yet prepared to appreciate (and it can be their fault if they don't). But on the other hand, your buildings have to work, they have to function. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm prepared to say there are certain tastes and textures I'm not prepared for, which I have to grow into. But I'm not prepared to say I can support the notion of food that abandons all notions of sensual pleasure -- of tasting good. Which is quite unlike my view of music.

Well, this answers one question I've always had: Who's old enough to get into a place like Iridium that would order a drink like that?

This is a true tragedy.