Steve Plotnicki

Well I don't think anyone is accusing Adria (generic) of not trying to make food that tastes good. Of course he is trying to make food that tastes great. But there is some sort of disconnect between trying to make the best mashed potatoes and making the best essence of potatoes. The texture of potatoes are the best part of eating them. And because that's the case, I'm still waiting for someone to tell me how seperating the potato from it's form will end up with an item that tastes better than a potato in it's natural form?

That's a good article. But she's even more abstract than I am. At least I said people would eat tablets. She's advanced to imaginary food.

"When a chef beats in garlic, butter, cream, olive oil and more butter you understand the process and the taste in one discription. I describe the process and you know how it tastes. Not so with Adria. He's breaking too much new ground and we can't understand the taste until it's in our mouth and as Fat Guy notes, there's no one around who can explain it to us, if it can be explained." Bux - The reason that we understood what a chef did when he beat in those ingredients is that the process was intended to supplement the taste and texture of a potato and bring out its best parts. And the reason nobody can explain it to us about Adria is that there is nothing to explain. His mission statement is to what, extract the essence from a potato? Extracting the essence from a potato has nothing to do with eating potatoes. It has to do with the illusion of a potato. Of course nobody can explain it us before you put it in your mouth. That's because nobody knows what it's going to taste like. Everybody knows what potatoes taste like, nobody knows what the essence of potatoes tastes like. There is no standardized culinary language for potato essence. Show me a ratte or a yellow fingerling and I know exactly how they will taste. But how will I know how Adria's potatoes are going to taste before I put them in my mouth? Of course this gets to the heart of the matter which is why people eat? I completely understand why people eat things like fingerlings, or Bresse chickens, or scallops from Taylor Bay. You eat those things once and they make an indelible impression on your palate that is quantifiable and codifiable. But I am not sure that a style of cooking that doesn't offer that aspect of dining can be anything more than a ritual practiced by only the hardest of hard core eaters. Which gets back to Fat Guys statement about whether it will or won't have an impact. It already has. it's the extent of the impact that is being questioned.

A recent meal with friends whose palate we trust, reported that a recent meal they had at Trotters was "phenomenol." So that inspired six of us to organize a Chicago road trip over a weekend in November. And I am now holding a reservation for dinner at Trotters. I haven't been since 1994. I hope the food is better than the last time I went.

Well let's be more specific. Chefs have changed how we eat even when food tasted good. For example, one could say that the nouvelle cuisine chefs needn't have changed anything because food already tasted good. I think that is what Fat Guy is getting at. But I think the distinction I'm making is that nouvelle cuisine was an attempt to make food taste better. Robuchon set out to improve mashed potatoes. Bocuse's trufle soup was a luxury expression of the Auvergnat peasant soup. But can we say the same thing about the modernists in cooking today? Is their goal to make the best of anything? So in the context of my original question, if the goal isn't to make it taste better, just different, what's the point? Of course I'm not saying that eventually they won't make food that tastes better too. But it is arguable whether this technique will lead to that conclusion.

"The next generation of critics, who can look at individual Adria-type dishes and critique them effectively (or, as Plotnicki put it, we don't yet have critics who speak the language of this new cuisine), has not yet risen. Will it ever?" Well from where I sit, and this is my issue, I don't see that it qualifies as a cuisine. And that is why nobody speaks its language. There is no coherent language to speak (yet.) Right now the cuisine seems to be (and this is from a distance, my opinion might change after I go there, although I've sampled a few of his disciples, )a series of technical flourishes. Lots of interesting dishes, and even lots of wow dishes, but somebody explain to me what the cuisine is? When the nouvelle cuisine guys came on the scene, or the cuisine minceur guys appeared, there was a coherent explanation of what they were doing. It was simple, they were making cuisine lighter somehow. Whether they were lightening sauces or taking the calories out, it was a cogent explanation that made sense to people. But what does this passage that Fat Guy wrote mean in terms of my dinner? "is extract the essence of flavor from food and present it in a stimulating form. In other words, he's trying to make food taste good by escaping the prison of form and focusing instead on flavor, texture, and temperature as pure concepts." But why would anyone need to do that when food already tastes good? What seems to be missing from this equation, and I hate to sound like a naysayer when I say this, because I am the type of person who is predisposed to liking anything to do with food, the difference between the chefs of yore and Adria (generic) is that nobody has told me that an essence of potatoes are the best potatoes they ever ate. But why the chefs of yore became famous is that they served the "best mashed potatoes," "best salmon dish," "best truffle soup" etc. And I'm having a hard time fathoming that this particular aspect of cuisine is over, having lost out to a 21 course extravaganza where no single dish is reported on as "the best ever."

"or have Adria and his school, like Charlie Parker, gone inside the music and turned it inside out?" To me what Charlie Parker did was simply to reharmonize jazz, and change the tempo it was played at which happened to perfectly accomodate the types of melodies that he wrote because of the reharmonization. But what he did is not a complete departure from jazz as people knew it at the time. In hindsite, looking at jazz on a continuum, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington. Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Miles & Trane all get absorbed into what we would all call jazz. In fact we can take it further and say that the seminal musicians in each era set the stage for the next era. But then along comes Coltrane with A Love Supreme and then Ohm, Ornette Coleman, or even the Miles Davis quintet albums of the late 60's. They were avant garde and not jazz in the form we were familiar with. Our ability to appreciate jazz on a visceral level had been greatly diminished. They eliminated tempo, and they often eliminated chord changes completely. It was the spirit of jazz, and it had all of the elements of jazz, but it was an intelectual version of jazz because but they had taken the guts of it. And in the end, it was the guts that drew us to the music. If nobody has noticed, jazz has been dead since that time. There hasn't been anything really new in jazz since the early 70's. In that instance, and I believe Marcus was making this same point about Schoeneberg and the avant garde in classical music, the intelectualization of classical music heralded its death with the paying public. The twelve tone scale was a great intelectual invention, but it eliminated the visceral reasons that drew people to classical music. Then Fat Guy comes along and says, "Chefs still have to survive by making food that tastes good, and as Robert has observed (and I agree) the culinary arts are a century or more behind the studio and performing arts in this regard. The whole point of the Adria strategy as I see it is to use the technology available to us to make food taste, feel, smell, and look its best." And as usual Fat Guy is either all or mostly correct. But what I see missing from this argument is that food is a natural thing. Yes we can manipulate it by cross-breeding and changing growing conditions, but will people ever want to eat the essence of a potato rather than a potato itself? This is the hard question and I made a joke about it by saying one day we will eat a tablet and it will offer us the sensation and flavor of having eaten a slice of Poillane bread. I mean what's the difference if cuisine is nothing more than a bunch of science? But I think what Marcus is trying to say is that we don't eat for those reasons. There is something primal that draws us to the ritual of a meal and feeling satisfied, not as in intelectually satisfied, satisfied as in feeling full. And there is some point in this "deconstruction" of food that is analagous to avant garde jazz and avant garde classical music. Not that I believe we are at that point. But I wonder if Adria (generic) isn't a harbinger of that era in food? Robert B. - Quickly as to your points because I am leaving to go back to the city. I think the issue we are all struggling with is how does what Adria has contributed impact on cuisine and the dining experience as we know it? It isn't a matter of questioning his genius, as Marcus has pointed to, Schoenenberg was a genius and we can illustrate the same point with many geniuses that didn't matter to the public at large.But everyone has heard of Beethoven and Gershwin and nobody but classical music fanatics have heard of Schoenenberg.

"Eating the denatured potato creations of an Adria is not only interesting but also bumps up your ability to appreciate every other potato dish you eat going forward." Fat Guy - I can't disagree with anything you said, except the bit about the oldtimers if you are including me . Except I think you, and Steve Klc keep straying from dealing with what both Robert and I (and Marcus) are questioning. It isn't whether the denuded potato is interesting, or whether it will have a place in our culinary culture. We concede its virtue. But the question is whether it will permeate our culinary culture (at the haute cuisine level) to the extent Robuchon's mashed potatoes, and like signature dishes have done? There is a huge difference between the foaming of potatoes catching on with one or two major chefs in every city that offers restaurants at the level we are discussing and minions traveling long distances to sample the famous foamed potatoes. Maybe the world of high end eating as we know it as over? Maybe like Roy's or Ducasse, there will be no such thing as eating from a top chef's own hand anymore and you will only get to eat their recipes and their inventions as cooked by others. That means the role of the chef will change to one that is similar to a composer or playwrite. And I guess that is what Ducasse and Roy's and now Gordon Ramsey are. And if that is the way the world is going, I guess the three of us will grin and bear it. But you will never convince me (and I think that this is true for Robert as well) that we wouldn't rather hear Coltrane plays his solos himself, rather than hear someone play what he imagined. But maybe that way of thinking when it comes to food is out of date.

Hey Fat Guy that was a good post. "The more colloquial use of deconstruction -- meaning to analyze the components of a dish and rebuild them into something that tastes good using the tools available in the kitchen -- is simply what chefs have always done. I don't acknowledge an intellectual distinction between making potato foam and turning wheat into bread." To me the issue here is why people eat. People eat potatoes not for the essence of the flavor, but because the flavor is combined with starchiness. Someone could do it, but I would have no desire for a cup of steaming liquid that tastes just like french fries. Nor do I need a cube of warm aspic that gives the sensation of eating a bite of a rare piece of prime rib. Not that it isn't interesting when someone serves something like that but, I don't think that type of innovation advances cuisine very far. Bread is bread, and taking a tablet that tastes just like pain Poillane will never replace the sensuality of the sensation one gets while eating the real thing. At least I hope it doesn't in my lifetime.

"Naysayers at the moment will realize Adria's food actually tasted soulful and satisfying all along--or as Bux says "Don't make the mistake of thinking Adria can't punch right thorough to your pleasure center." And, his creativity and vision will make more inroads at the lower end, the more popular end of food and dining as well." Steve Klc - I wouldn't say I'm a naysayer, but what I will say, and you reach the same conclusion when you speak of the third wave, that Adria's contribution might likely be to the technique of cooking, not to the ritual of serving a meal. Because for it to be for the ritual of serving a meal, one would have to make the trek to eat there. But yes, Adria can be some type of uberchef who influences other chefs and dining at large. *But that will not,* make him as famous as Bocuse and Robuchon etc, ever were. If Adria has created new techniques to be applied to food, but does not figure out how to apply those techniques to make *the most delicious restaurant in the world,* someone else will take those techniques and do it for him. That's the point I was trying to make at the beginning of this thread, and which Marcus stated in a much better way. It's what made Shakespere Shakespere and Mozart Mozart. They not only figured it out, they sold it to paying customers.

Well the issue isn't whether there won't be diners who find "satisfaction" in an El Bulli type of meal, the issue is how many of them. The fame (and fortune to a large extent) of a chef are driven by this issue. I'm not surprised that your wife can appreciate a meal at El Bull as much as a meal at Gagnaire. But how many people are like that? And the people on your luxury hiking tour and not a perfect example because, the issue isn't will people like the food if they are there, the issue is, will they travel long distances for it like people traveled to places like Illhausern or Eugenie les Bains. Steve Klc - I like your point about risotto, and in the context you have used it here it makes more sense to me then it ever did before. But one of the chefs, preferrably Adria, needs to deconstruct and reconstruct a version of paella so it becomes a household world so to speak. The paella version of salmon with sorrel sauce.

"At your level of understanding, Steve, yes it seems your "choices are coming down to having a mixed radish salad at Craft that is ultra-fresh as they got the radishes at the greenmarket that morning, or to go to some faraway place to have a dish composed of the essence, foam, dust, and sorbet of various radishes." Sorry, I couldn't resist. I hope, in time, to convince you you'll have many more rewarding options. " Steve - Gee I was making a joke based on the fact that the two concepts couldn't be farther apart. "This has been discussed elsewhere as has the fact that the tradition of gourmet driving tours has a rich tradition in France, but it is non existent in Spain." Bux - But gourmet dining tours in France happened because the restaurants built hotels for people to stay in. And the reason that they were able to build hotels is their fame spread beyond the most demanding diners to a category of diner that was as much or more traveler than diner. This gets us back to Marcus's point that the whole thing revolves around paying customers, and how many there are. The reason that the Costa Brava or San Sebastian isn't overrun with people from the U.S., or from other countries in Europe is that the reviews from people like Robert do not extol the virtues of the cooking in terms of deliciousness. Yes the creativity is extolled, and yes it is reported that if you are interested in food at this level you have to experience it, but so far I haven't met anyone who claims that the food at El Bulli is as delicious as we used to describe the food at numerous three star establishments in France during the last 30 years of the last century. This week we went to Daniel with another couple who are truly world class eaters. Their review of both El Bulli and Bertesegui is "weird." But Bras and Charlie Trotter were both phenomenol. I'm not saying they're right. But "weird" doesn't make a lot of people rush out for plane tickets to Spain. When that changes, and when the common answer to questions about the restaurants is "phenomenol," people will go in droves. But while the reviews revolve mostly around extolling the technical virtuosity of the chef to a greater extent then "deliciousness," the number of visitors will remain chefs and those like you and me who have the highest degree of interest in food. But for some reason I feel that Steve Klc doesn't agree with this. And I'm waiting for him to describe why he thinks that people are going to flock to eat this type of cuisine unless mere foodie civilians report that they had among the greatest, that is great as in delicious, not great as in most interesting, meal of their lives?

Marcus makes some excellent points about the accessability of high art and its relationship to, and how it impacts on, popular culture. I tend to think that he is generally correct. But I also know that often overintelectualizing often means that the gap between high art and popular culture is too wide and that high art is moving too fast for popular culture to keep up with it. Optomist that I am, I really believe that at some point all good ideas become influential. Look at the composer Varese. At the time he composed, one could easily have said that his ideas and concepts were disconnected from, how did Marcus put it, oh yes, "paying customers" and his works were always going to be relegated to those who appreciate the esoteric. Except a Frank Zappa comes along and incorporates elements of his music into popular music and all of a sudden he has visibility, and gains appreciation, in the land of paying customers. Who knows what future generations will reap from, and then credit to, artists once deemed too far out or too esoteric for popular culture? Does this mean that 50 years from now my grandchildren, who will be old enough to have children of their own, will serve my great-grandchildren foamed bacon and eggs? Trying to push this back towards food, there is another aspect to this that I would like Marcus, and the others if they want, to respond to. In Marcus's post, in describing Bocusse, Guerard etc. he says that, "These restaurants take the essence of what we love about satisfying home cooking and enhance it with superior ingredients perfectly prepared, and complementary flavors that we can appreciate as a unified whole, very much like a Beethoven symphony." Well can we always rely on, and expect that cuisine will be derivitive of home cooking? Is it possible that in terms of the Western palate, and European cooking strategy, we have exhausted the possibilities to enhance home cooking? And if that is the case, then what? And if that isn't enough to chew on, how does this style of cooking co-exist with the "Slow Food" movement and restaurants that feature simple but perfect cooking based on top quality market ingredients like Chez Panisse or Craft? It seems my choices are coming down to having a mixed radish salad at Craft that is ultra-fresh as they got the radishes at the greenmarket that morning, or to go to some faraway place to have a dish composed of the essence, foam, dust, and sorbet of various radishes. Hmmm.

I think you have raised a different point. To say that many people didn't find satisfaction when Matisse and Parker first showcased their artistry is a misuse of the word. You mean people didn't like them. There weren't many people who liked them but didn't find them satisfying. But I think that is different because both Robert and I like the modern chefs very much. But what we are pointing to is an aspect of cuisine that other arts and crafts don't have. The emotional factors of dining that are connected to sustenance. You can live without music, or painting. But you have to eat. There is something primal to it that isn't cerebral. I'm willing to admit that cuisine is at the point where the chefs are challanging how we view food. A way to eat that does not include the element of being sated as we have historically known it to be. And while that's fine for both you and me and Robert on the occassions we want to eat that way, I'm not sure how far that concept can go with the segment of the public that made 3 star dining in France so successful between 1970 and 1995. Because if it can't, high end cooking as practiced by modern chefs will stay as something esoteric, and you won't see a similar type of expansion on the Costa Brava, to the one they had in France due to tourists flocking there for among other things the food. Think of the French Laundry without the Napa Valley. In reality the reason the place is overrun is because it's in one of the country's great tourist regions. But would you have as hard a time getting in if it was not on a tourist route generally travelled?

Just to speak about one aspect of this discussion, the mutli-course, polyphonic meals that Adria, Gagnaire, Keller and a few others serve, there has to be a limited market for dining in that style. How many chefs can the Western World accommodate who serve you those type of blowouts? A few dozen? It can't be that the standard method of dining at the Omaha Hilton someday in the future is going to be a 20 course tasting menu. Yet, Adria's techniques, as well as the techniques of other cutting edge chefs will find a way to take hold somehow. I think that the distinction lies in the fact that while Adria has invented a new way to approach food, and new techniques to apply to food, and possibly a new way to view fine dining. what he hasn't yet invented is a cuisine. And that isn't to say that one day his creations won't be codified in a way that one can't identify it as a cuisine, it's just that it's not there yet. His cuisine is about him and his razzle dazzle, it isn't about the food. Maybe this is an important distinction that will change fine dining forever. Maybe in the future chefs will be more important than the dishes they create. In that environment there is no need for a salmon with sorrel sauce. But I really hope that isn't the case, and that the Adria's of the world aren't isoloated in a "cooking as high art" category. Because on a visceral level, eating is about saying to oneself, I'm in the mood for a nice steak or I'm in the mood for some of those Robuchon mashed potatoes etc., in reality, both ways of saying "I want to feel satisfied." And I don't yet see that any of the modern chefs offer that type of satisfaction, at least in the way I understand satisfaction in the way the chefs of yore offered it. But of course, a younger generation who hasn't been weaned on the chefs of yore might see it differently.

Steve Klc - It's a matter of fame and communicating the techniques Adria invented. Without signature dishes, or signature techniques like foaming for the media to report on, who is going to know about the guy? The notion of salmon and sorrel is understandable and accessable to everyone. But the notion of having to schlep, as Patti Marx's cartoon in the New Yorker said, for three flights and then to drive three hours to get a surprise menu is less accessable to everyone. What is it exactly we are traveling all that way for, his genius? Well there are people who would travel a long way for that but there are 100 times as many people who would travel for genius that the media can encapsulate into the words "Salmon with Sorrel Sauce." Now I believe that whether Adria reduces his cuisine to signature dishes or not, some chef who is also a good marketing guy will do it and take the credit for it. If it doesn't happen, modern cuisine as we are describing will stay esoteric and will only be practiced by a few people. Now while that might very well be the case, I've just never seen any artistic commodity work that way. It's just not the way the media communicates information about cooking. High art yes, cooking no. Of course that is a possibility. The Adrias and Gagnaires of the world are the equivelents of artists showing their works in small galleries to the elite. And that is really what you have going on. Whether it's Keller, Adria, Gagnaire, Bras, they are all scientists in their out of the way labs serving people surprise meals that challange everything we know and think about food. But I think Robert's point, and it's the answer to Fat Guy's question about "running circles," is that the chefs of yore penetrated further into our culture because they offered an experience that was more about satisfying our hunger and less about the cerebral experience. Todays chefs offer an experience that is balanced significantly in favor of it being a cerebral experience. And that is why Robert says that El Bulli isn't his first choice to eat a great meal at. And when he says that, he means a meal that is satisfying on more levels than just thinking about it.

Blue Heron - A mush steak is a rib steak, or prime rib with the bone removed. The bone holds the meat in place but once they remove the bone it gets sort of mushy.

Cakewalk - Well we can have it both ways. My bridge goes somewhere, yours goes nowhere. It's a metaphor for how we look at life. As for kosher meat and anyone who can't taste the difference, well then they can't taste anything. Sort of the same as above. Fat Guy - Veal seems to be the biggest loser in the koshering process. Not much tam to begin with and then they overprocess it. Rib steaks (or mush steak) aren't bad, they just get this funny taste from the salting process. Occassionaly you get a kosher butcher or a place that sells better tasting kosher rib steaks, with the best I've had being from Park East kosher butchers. But Mabat in Bkln makes a good kosher mush steak.

"I still posit that the notion of specific "classic" dishes is gone now, it's a quaint and irrelevant search for meaning that isn't there anymore--and when you speak of the high end--like an Adria he transcends the concept." Steve Klc - Well this is the issue that deserves our attention. Because if the concept of signature and classic dishes exist no more, it means that high end cooking is doomed to be esoteric and for only the most discriminating and cerebral audience. Like chamber music. What made haute cuisine special was the grand dining experience, of which the classic dishes and preparations were the centerpiece. People who were not necessarilly gourmands took part in the experience for all sorts of reasons, mostly celebratory. That will be less the case if modern cuisine stays on the path of asking you to think about a meal and fails to include a major component of rubbing your belly after it. This is the issue that I grope with, and I think that Robert B. gropes with. We wonder whether this type of dining will be successful beyond the core audience of chefs and foodies and will make it to a wider audience. My instincts and experience tells me that if it doesn't, it will die out. I can not believe that that this level of dining will continue to exist if the tradititional purpose for dining is totally and forever removed from the experience. This has to be a temporary state while the creators invent and codify the technique. Once the technique is fully formed, and the possibilities exhausted, the experience will be "commercialized" and marketed to a wider scale audience. Until then chefs like Adria can be reported on and marketed to the extent he is, and in the way he is, because of who his audience is. But it doesn't ring true to me that the natural outgrowth of Ferran Adria isn't a cuisine based on his technique. And what cuisine have you ever heard of that doesn't have signature dishes?

Steve Klc - You took my point the wrong way. Let me see if I can explain it better. It isn't that diners won't recognize the potato foam as potatoes eventually, it's the shock value of having it be in an unrecognizeable form the first time they taste it. Because while it has all the indicia of being a potato, it's not obvious. Without knowing that Andres has deconstructed a tortilla, many diners couldn't tell that the foam is potato. This "mistake" could not possibly happen with Robuchon's mashed potatoes as he has served it with the typical visual and textural indicia that we all recognize as a potato. This mistake happened to me when I had Fat Duck's red pepper essence lollipop. While I knew the flavor, I couldn't finger it. Taking the flavor out of the visual and textural context I understand red pepper to have is a reorientation of my palate. And ultimately that means I need to learn a whole new way to discern how food tastes. Then I am trying to take this point one step further and respond to Fat Guy's question about Adria and Gagnaire "running circles around" and Robert Brown's response about "classic" dishes in modern cuisine. I don't see how anyone is going to contribute classic dishes to the lexicon of cuisine when the technique is still at a point where the diners can't tell if something is a potato or comes from a red pepper. And to put it in the vernacular I used, until the language is fully formed. One can only write a sentence if the language used to write it is agreed by all parties. It hasn't been agreed yet, and even you would admit it's still undergoing experimentation. But I believe you have fingered the easiest way to inculcate society with the technique which is savory ice creams and sorbets. Whether it's tomato sorbet, or mustard ice cream, or avocado ice cream, the technique of pairing hot and cold will allow the chefs to train palates in detecting typical flavors in atypical contexts. It won't be until that point in time when people will create classic dishes. And it will only be when they can create classic dishes will the chefs "run circles around the chefs of yore." Because what the Adrias, Gagnaires etc. have contributed to cuisine is tremendous new technique. But what they haven't yet contributed is Salmon a l'Oiseille, Homard a Vanille, and of course the infamous Pommes Puree.

Macro - You mean you went all the way to Padstow and didn't eat at Stein's?

Yes. Kosher meat is soaked in salt water so as to remove the blood from the meat. It makes the meat taste, well, kosher. It is more noticeable in thick cuts of steaks like prime rib or things like lamb chops. But somewhat less noticeable in things like hamburger. And when it comes to meats that are stewed or braised like brisket, not noticeable at all in my experience.

I think that there is a big change in palate orientation going on with the new generation of chefs. And as part of that orientation the chefs are creating a new lexicon. Look at the deconstructed tortilla Steve Klc posted on the other day, "the flat, potato-onion omelet — into one-part potato foam, one-part onion purée and one-part sabayon, layered in a sherry glass with a topping of deep-fried potato dice." Now while deconstructing a tortilla is amazingly cerebral, and possibly delicious, it isn't natural. What I mean by that is that foam is not a logical state for a potato to end up in. The potato as we know it, starch, is gone. I don't think this is a small point. And I think the thing people should look at is why a chef (any chef) would need to dispense with all of the aspects of a potato other than pretty much its essence. That's a pretty radical departure if you ask me. I think what modern cuisine suffers from is that it is in an experimental stage. And that the task set before the chefs is more daunting then the task set before the last wave of great nouvelle cuisine chefs that Robert has identified as starting in 1968. Because when you get down to it, Robuchon's mashed potatoes were just an improvement of a recipe that existed for hundreds of years. But in the end they were still potatoes, Robuchon unlike Adria didn't have the burden of reinventing the potato. But if we are to reinvent the texture of every food, and have diners decide if they like their potatoes to be liquid, gas or solid, let alone decide if they should be hot or cold, sweet or savoury, we are nowhere near the stage where they can be creating classic dishes. We are still at the stage where they are creating the language. Hopefully one day that language will evolve to the point of chefs being able to speak in entire sentences and paragraphs. Something which the great chefs of yore were able to do with great ease. And that is why despite the fact that modern chefs possess a technique that would allow someone to describe them as "running circles around the chefs of yore," it isn't the case when you define better as someone serving you a balanced meal that contains a number of classic dishes.

Hey I just said that in my last post. Stop stealing my shtick.

What do you mean bridges don't take you anywhere? They don't do anything else but go from one place to another. The only people who they don't take somewhere are people who aren't going anywhere.