I agree with Chris that the techniques and ingredients associated with modernist cuisine are tools that can be used well or not. What ultimately matters is how the food is conceptualized. When there is no conceptual work going on, just the use of a technique, the results will be pedestrian. But modernist cuisine and more generally molecular gastronomy are not merely tools. They represent an analytical style of cooking that focuses not just on the ingredients but on the chemical substrate of the ingredients and the interactions at that level. Thus it greatly expands the “palette” of the chef and the modifications of form that are possible. The analogy with modernist painting (i.e. abstraction) is apt. The question is whether the eating public will continue to enjoy it. Just as modernist painting exhausted itself when it lost its connection to meaningful objects, modernist cuisine will go through periods of exhaustion as well when it struggles for direction. But the influence will be permanent because of the control it gives the chef. Analytical cooking is here to stay. Even when cooking traditional dishes, the hint of abstraction (a foam here, a colloidal suspension there) will give dishes a dimension they have lacked in the past.