Hi All, I hope it’s ok if I drop in on your conversation and clarify a few small points, and maybe add one or two of my own. Editorial decisions, such as headlines and artwork, were made by the Times. They also injected the mention of my new restaurant into the text, as well as the fact that I’m a cook who lives in SF, correctly pointing out that most people outside the foodie world have no idea who I am. This was a reported piece. I talked with about 20 people for the record, and at least that many informally, and there were only two people who disagreed with the basic premise that CP style of simple, traditional (ie culturally authentic), ingredient based cooking, dominates local food culture. The piece contains many of these supporting quotes. So when you dismiss my point of view out of hand, bear in mind that you are also dismissing the point of view of a wide range of chefs, food writers and editors, both locally and nationally. I stated this explicitly in the article, but it’s worth repeating: I like, admire and respect Alice and Chez Panisse – I would eat there every week if I lived nearby and I could afford it. Zuni, Delfina, Oliveto, et al are some of my favorite places in the world. In no way was I or am I critical of those places. I am not saying “instead of”, I am saying “in addition to” – there’s a significant difference. I also am not in any way denigrating the importance of organic/sustainable ingredients. I have walked that walk since my first restaurant in ’94, in terms of what I use myself, both in restaurants and at home. I know all about the prices for organics at the Ferry building because I shop there several times a week. Both of those issues are red herrings. I am also not saying one thing is better than another. I am not going to proselytize for a certain style of cooking. I know I won’t win this one – some people think I injected myself too much into the argument, some not enough. I wrote an analysis of a cultural phenomenon, not a food review, and what I personally like or don’t like is beside the point. I love all delicious food, both simple/traditional and modern/complex. Not all simple food, after all, is delicious, nor is all delicious food simple. As to what does and what does not qualify as delicious food, that’s an entirely different discussion. I only advocated for diversity, which I think would strengthen our food culture here. The phenomenon itself did raise more complex issues, ones that extend beyond the kitchen. I wish that I had another 1000 words so I could have elaborated, but I had to settle for asking some open-ended questions. Some questions I could only hint at, like why is it that Alice’s mission has succeeded almost exclusively in liberal areas? Here’s a quick-ish 2 cents: Before Alice there was Julia Child, and before Julia Child was JFK and Jackie O., who brought in Renee Verdon to be the first French chef at the White House. The Kennedys wed 60’s liberalism to an imported vision of a beautiful, glamorous and French-centric life. When CP opened in ‘71 it fused the 60’s Berkeley ideology, one that it shared with the JFK era, of making the world a kinder, better place, to a beautiful and seductive agrarian fantasy of an idealized lifestyle that Alice plucked directly from France and planted in her back yard, where it flourished. Part of that agrarian fantasy was a way of cooking, shopping and eating that she tried – and largely succeeded – to replicate here, and over time the politics, the fantasy of a beautiful life, and a specific way of cooking and eating, fused together into a catechism, irreducible into its separate parts, to be accepted in full or rejected outright. It has become in a sense our secular religion, the heirloom tomato becoming not just an heirloom tomato, but a symbol of a way of looking at the world and ourselves. By buying that organic tomato, and more importantly by cooking it only in certain prescribed ways, and by supporting restaurants that do the same (because there is little difference between CP-style cooking and good home cooking) we connect ourselves to that beautiful life while confirming our basic moral goodness as people. To reject that specific way of looking at food is to reject the liberal ideology and world view it represents. The reflexive way in which the article has been immediately dismissed by some, or its true points obscured by tangentially related arguments, might be seen as bearing this out to some degree. But all world views are not created equal, and I live here because I happen to agree with Alice and most everyone else here, about both ingredients and politics. The fact that we San Franciscans can go years without having an in-person conversation (argument?) with a died-in-the-wool blue state type is not necessarily a good thing, and I think that it shrinks our understanding of the world outside our own area. As one food editor I talked with pointed out, “Like-minded people are increasing moving into like-minded societies, and it’s polarizing us as a nation.” I worry about the possibility of devolving into a collection of ideological city-states – the SF city-state, the NY city-state, the Houston city-state – each full of moral certitude, constantly waging intellectual and political battles with one another. The fantasy of an entirely self-sustaining regional culture is an infinitely appealing one, but this isn’t 15th century Italy. We are a massive, sprawling country, with the well-proven ability to inflict huge amounts of suffering on both ourselves and the rest of the world, and if we cannot learn how to communicate with each other in a human way, and find commonalities amongst the differences, it doesn’t bode well for anyone. I think that sooner or later we’re going to have to throw down the drawbridges and all wander out to talk to each other as people. For what it’s worth, I think that the online communities, as valuable and interesting as they are, have exacerbated the drift towards impersonality and polarized identities, and that the relative anonymity of the internet emboldens some to express themselves in ways that they never would in person. In that sense I wonder if it has become too easy, even here in such a civilized forum, to wander off the clean, well-lit path of intelligent and sensitive discourse, into the primordial swamp where baser emotions – fear, hatred, intolerance – thrive. I learned from my grandmother when I was very young that cooking is not merely a collection of ingredients processed in a certain way, but a transfer of emotional energy between one person and another. It is at its most basic level an act of giving, an act of generosity, and above all something indelibly human, linked to our heads, but also to our hearts. Accepting divergent points of view in food is really about accepting a society in which there is a place for everyone. Is that really such a bad thing? daniel
