[Does Italy lack culinary relevance?]

Everybody sings, but opera is a fancy technique that singers apply when singing opera. Haute cuisine is exactly the same. Everybody cooks but cooking in the haute cuisine style means applying a certain technique that was devised specifically to practice the artform.

I'm tempted to ask you to explain forms such as singspiel

(Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, say) or Sprechstimme (Pierrot Lunaire), where radical departures - and from some points of view simplification - in technique happen.

From a certain point of view (Connoisseur) these are not 'Opera', but one would be perverse (historically) to deny them relevance to Opera.

[Does Italy lack culinary relevance?]

It's called progress. A rethinking and reformulating of existing ideas into a more complex technique to be applied to your discipline and your patrons.

This is a very explicit description of historical change in society.

However if one disagrees with the teleological premise one doesn't get very far.

An example would be Euclidean geometry, as perfected by, er, Euclid.

There is essentially no further progress without starting again from scratch.

[Pierre Gagnaire: the good and the bad]

I'm wondering if Adorno ever wrote any food criticism.

You think it would help if he had?

Well he wasn't a big Stravinsky lover - if I remember rightly...

And there is the particular issue of neo-classicism which is apposite.

[Pierre Gagnaire: the good and the bad]

I'm wondering if Adorno ever wrote any food criticism.

[Does Italy lack culinary relevance?]

An alternative reading might be that the balance for 'perfect' italian food is

60%: ingredients/terroir 30%: cooking 10%: service &c

whereas for French it is something like

40%: ingredients terroir 35%: cooking 35%:service & c

Since little of the focus of 'modern gastronomy' or at least those upon this site appears to be on how to grow the perfect olive/grape/heifer,but rather the latter two components of the cuisine no wonder Italian cuisine is of marginal relevance to 'modern gastronomy'.

Actually I made up those proportions and I guess Italian is actually

70/20/10 and French is much more

40/40/20

and haute cuisine is

30/30/40.

So anyone who claims terroir as king should reject haute cuisine as a betrayal of the foundation. A step into an aesthetic abysss.

[Most Creepy and Disgusting Dive Bar]

3. When someone tries to pick you up, the line "why, you could be my cousin" is considered a good thing.

I believe this line also works for royal families.

[Does Italy lack culinary relevance?]

Especially the Antipasti Tray with up to 30 different (and wonderfully fresh) antipasti which you very rarely get outside of Italy..

So how does one apply 'relevant' 'French' technique to the antipasti.

Make a terrine?

[Does Italy lack culinary relevance?]

As an exercise take a Italian recipe and make it into a Modern recipe of the highest order. Ends up being French style with the use of Italian ingredients. Doesn't say anything about merit only about expectations of the individual.

This is the good idea.

What are the canonical dishes of Italian cooking which need to be made 'relevant'. They can then be rewritten in 'relevant' fashion and we can see how much gastronomy has advanced.

Reminding me of the British reinventions of say Lasagna in the 70's, with mashed potato substituting for pasta.

Now it has been clearly clearly demonstrated that mashed potato (esp. by JR) is better than pasta. So this is a big improvement on the dish.

[Does Italy lack culinary relevance?]

As to the pasta, well when I went to Paul Bocuse's in the early 90's they had several pasta options. Didn't seem to harm the experience.

Just shows Bocuse struggling to escape his peasant roots - and who here would suggest that he is gastronomically relevant?

[french brasserie in the city]

Thankyou, I shall go to the Don shortly.

[Does Italy lack culinary relevance?]

One could say that Italian cuisine, while simple, is a complete cuisine.

And indeed exemplifies an aesthetic.

Why then would they adopt the food of their neighbours - the peasants of the Mediterranean coast or the Savoy?

What is the histoire de la longue duree account of the Roman Empire?

[Does Italy lack culinary relevance?]

Though possibly fair to characterise the history of the south of Italy in terms of a 'peasant' economy is this an appropriate caricature of cities such as Milan, Venice, Bologna?

[Does Italy lack culinary relevance?]

So what relevance do modern gastronomes have for Italian cuisine?

The most concrete suggestion is MrP's reiteration of Marinetti's cry to lose the pasta.

[Most Creepy and Disgusting Dive Bar]

Actually these are places I'd recommend - on reflection you're wanting places that I'd avoid. Hmmm.

[Most Creepy and Disgusting Dive Bar]

Goldsmith's Tavern - New Cross

You know a place is ok if your feet stick to the floor.

Mostly punk on the jukebox, contains a variety of creatures left over from 70's popular culture and a good ska night too.

Grave Maurice - Whitechapel

The non-yuppified east end & such a lovely name.

[Italian - the true test?]

Yet it isn't stopping. And what's getting to me is that it's not a continuation, it's the exact same stuff all over again.

The joy & curse of egullet.

Analysis ends when you realise it can go on forever.

[Does Italy lack culinary relevance?]

Hence what some are experiencing is not some inherent inferiority of Italian cuisine but rather the lack of a developed language for talking about that cuisine.

A failure on the part of the Connoisseuriat? Surely not.

So Italian: The best ingredients, the most appropriately cooked.

French: The most appropriate ingredients, the best cooked.

British: The best ingredients, the most inappropriately cooked?

I'm not sure why starch should be disallowed - are we disallowing Japanese food from modern gastronomy?

[Does Italy lack culinary relevance?]

-- why is it that Italy hardly seems relevant to the world of modern gastronomy?

What is your definition of modern gastronomy?

If this depends on technical innovation & cult-of-personality then that was simultaneously created and exposed as absurd by Marinetti in the 20's.

I think some of the difficulties of establishing a 'moderne' style of Italian gastronomy were discussed

here, particularly by kikujiro

[Children and High-End London Restaurants]

Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck has just published a book on Family Food and appears to offer a range of 'child-format' food (lollipops &c.) so that might be appropriate.

(I have not dined at his establishment/s).

[Arpege: dinner and lunch; 2002-2004]

It's my own Acadamy. And quite deserving as well.

I will go and offer a cockerel to Asclepius.

[G Ramsay Connaught to Open Oct 1]

as were numerous elderly types with their young nieces. 

Was Simon amongst them?

So basically go for the drinks. Very handy to know.

[Truly original signature dishes?]

Isn't the ambiguity already in the term 'signature dishes'.

If the dish is the autograph, then it is surely implicit in the 'brand' of the author?

[Truly original signature dishes?]

Branding is just making the brand, i.e. associating something with your name.

Not unlike when I say to my Mother 'Let's go to St. john'

and she says

'Oh, Bone Marrow Salad, lovely lovely bone marrow'.

I am confused how people promote something which isn't already a brand.

[Truly original signature dishes?]

Branding has nothing to do with anything but promoting your name.

Brand: a particular product .... that identifies a particular producer.

an identifying mark esp as proof of ownership

to place indelibly in the memory

They're from Collins concise which was lying around.

[Truly original signature dishes?]

Jones you're a trouble maker. Branding has nothing to do with signature dishes. It;s a word of mouth thing. Branding has to do with advertising and self-promotion.

I noticed you subtitled this thread ' A chef's road to fame'.