Tradition v. Contemporary Italian Cuisine

[fortedei]

FG. How much time have you spent in Tuscany?

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Less than you. And I'm happy to defer to all your factual statements about what's going on in Tuscany, unless they're contradicted by others who've spent a lot of time there or by credible print sources.

Now I get to ask you a question: what's your point? Do you think culinary tradition should be unchanging? Or do you agree with me that culinary evolution and innovation are great things?

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Culinary tradition is always changing. Nothing is static. Evolution, however, takes a lot of time. When "evolution" happens on a time table which is speeded up, most often it ends up being a fad; fads happen very quickly and they disappear equally so. We'll see if what has happened very recently with ten restaurants in Italy is something that remains longer term, and becomes a tradition in some restaurants , or whether it is a fad. As I said in a prior post, very few Italians go to these ten restaurants and those that go to the others that are trying something different, never go back because they can’t stand different food which is poorly prepared. That is not what Italians do. I saw the nuova cucina, up close and personal in the 80s. At the time, food magazines and foodies, particularly in America and France thought it was a great break with a cuisine which was too traditional (and Italian restaurateurs readily went along, because if the French are doing it “we can do it better”) . Actually, Beppe Cantarelli and Franco Colombani had begun going back to regional cuisine just a few years before, so nuova cucina was trying to change something which hadn’t fully changed yet. It flamed out very quickly and a lot of restaurants got hurt.

Innovation, in food and other areas, is a great thing in the hands of people who know what they are doing. Unfortunately, most of the top restaurants in Italy (lets say, as rated by the Gambero Rosso, if for no other reason than that guide is a good starting point for the “top” restaurants) have no clue as to what they are doing. Lets be honest; cooking technique, as practiced in Italian restaurants, leaves a lot to be desired (and I’m a fervent Italophile), certainly as compared to that in France. Notice, I’m only speaking of technique, not taste nor combination of ingredients.

We can start with pastry and work our way from there (on the other hand it is truly pathetic when a French chef tries to make pasta or risotto… truly pathetic). France has it all over Italy in terms of technique. As far as I’m aware, only two chefs in Italy, again lets say in the top 20 of Gambero Rosso, had a great deal, if not most, of their training in France. These two, by the way, are head and shoulders above their peers as far as technique goes, and both have Italian souls, a great combination, although one of these two has certainly gone over to the other side with regard to fusion (perhaps in order to get a higher rating in the guides).

Unfortunately in Italy, those who try to innovate, in most cases, are just mucking around. For every Calandre (I haven’t been there, but I’m assuming from comments, that he knows what he is doing) and there are few of them, there are many Fulmines. When you see what Caino has become, you weep for what she was (which was special). Innovation in cooking can be great if you’ve intensively learned the basics of cooking. Most of the “top” chefs in Italy have learned the basics of a very basic (but simply wonderful in my mind) cuisine. When they try to do something more, for the most part, they are just not up to par. Innovation for innovation’s sake is just foolishness and those who are trying to innovate, and are without technical competence, and are not staying within their sphere of competence, are condemned to repeat the failures of the past. It won’t be pleasant to see.

FG. Have you looked back at the history of culinary tradition of restaurants in Italy and do you agree with me that the only lasting influence in the last 50 years, so far, has been a return to regionalism?

[Adam Balic]

My position is that they taste different, and that bread with salt tastes better. For whatever reason -- shortage, or the old story of the bakers' protest against the tax on salt -- it seems that saltless bread was the traditional bread of Tuscany, or at least large parts thereof. I don't see why we need to try to obscure that history by making excuses about there being no such thing as Tuscany, or by saying you can go to a modern Tuscan bakery and get a lot of different breads. You can eat at McDonald's in Tuscany too, but that doesn't make it traditional. It seems to me that throughout Tuscany people have simply realized that, except perhaps in a few special cases where it's paired with very salty food, bread with salt tastes better. So the tradition was set aside in favor of something better. That's what we should do with traditions when better things come along, unless we're just masochists and want to suffer with saltless bread long after salt has become cheap and abundant.

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Or you could say that it suits some of the cuisine and eating habits in a particular area leave it at that. In terms of "tasting better", it is a subjective term, I don't believe in the sort of pseudo-post-Darwinian model where changes are always for better and the best food that exists, by this definition, exists right now.

Personally, I don't like the saltless bread much - except for crostini, fetunta, bread salad, putting into soup, grilling with meat on skewers, bread crumbs, stuffings. But obviously, this doesn't count as when bread is discussed by serious foodies it should always be in context of an artisan product and how to make the "best" loaves in a middle-class oven?

Edited September 16, 2007 by Adam Balic (log)

[Adam Balic]

Broadly speaking there are a few, very few,  "Tuscan" traditions. Certainly we Americans think of "Tuscan food traditions", pretty much as we think about food in Northern Italy, when in fact food and dishes from one region, and within the region, may have little or nothing in common with other regions (and in fact often don't). "Northern Italy" as a whole, is merely a geographic notation, having very little to do with a cohesive food tradition. There are exceptions of course, but generally speaking this is the case.  In fact, the same dish (or bread since we're talking about that here), may bear little resemblance from Forte dei Marmi to Arezzo, from Cecina to Castellina in Chianti.

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Which brings up the point (again) that it is fairly pointless taking about "Italian" cuisine" as it exists only in such broad definitions as to be useless for a meaningful discussion.

[Fat Guy]

FG. Have you looked back at the history of culinary tradition of  restaurants in Italy and do you agree with me that the only lasting influence in the last 50 years, so far,  has been a return to regionalism?

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I basically agree with that premise, and I think it's a bad thing. It seems that the top echelon of Italy's restaurant culture has, for now, largely abandoned progress in favor of tradition for tradition's sake. I think this is short-sighted and will either need to be corrected or will result in Italy falling behind the rest of the world. I hope Italian chefs will keep looking for ways to advance the country's cuisines, and not be discouraged by the barriers to innovation, which at this point include a lack of public support, a lack of sufficient exposure to the latest techniques and thinking, and a global marketing effort that emphasizes traditionalism and regionalism above all else. Eventually, though, I hope a group of chefs will find a way to work comfortably within the Italian milieu while being forward-thinking and creative, just as has happened in many other culinary cultures. I don't believe there's anything specific to Italian culture that necessarily prevents culinary progress, though there are a few self-erected obstacles. Progress is not incompatible with fresh, local ingredients, or with simplicity, or with any of the other fundamental elements of Italian regional cuisines. As to whether culinary progress in Italy has to be gradual, I don't know the history well enough to say. If it's true, though, I doubt it's an inevitable state of affairs. At least, plenty of other aspects of Italian culture have changed rapidly in the 20th Century.

[markk]

I personally am not, and have never been in favor of "fusion" cuisines.  I think you are in danger of taking two perfectly wonderful cuisines, and losing at least one of them.  You get a French chef who has traveled to China and is inspired to use soy sauce, ginger, and scallions in his duck, and a Chinese chef who is fascinated with French ingredients and applies the traditional soy sauce, ginger and scallion treatment to foie gras, and the next thing you know, you're eating the same things in restaurants in France and China, whereas before, you could enjoy two distinct cuisines.

I think that people should definitely fuse (for many reasons), but that their traditional cuisines should remain distinct.  And if any of those cuisines goes off on a molecular tangent, I hope that it won't be at the expense of people who remember how to make the traditional dishes.

Or one day, no matter what restaurant we go to anywhere in the world, the only thing we'll be offered is pulverized ginger powder, soy sauce molecules, and protein foam.  Or protein beads, ginger foam, and soy sauce dust.  And like an episode of Star Trek, we'll discover ancient books with photos of Lasagne Bolognese and wonder what it even could have tasted like.

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Mark, can you point to a great cuisine that has been hurt, rather than helped, by fusion? We wouldn't even have the great cuisines of today were it not for fusion, because fusion is not a modern phenomenon: it is part and parcel of the history of cuisine. And it has historically improved cuisines. Look at Japanese cuisine. Do you think Japanese cuisine would be better off without the fusion dish of tempura, which is based on Portuguese techniques? Japan's encounter with the West has not destroyed Japanese cuisine. It has enhanced Japanese cuisine by giving Japanese chefs more ideas and ingredients to work with. Fusion doesn't mean homogenization. Fusion means everybody gets the same tools to work with.

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Perhaps not a "cuisine" in general, but I've been offered Asian-fusion dishes in France, and to be perfectly honest, when I'm in France for a limited number of meals (even for two weeks) I don't really want to be eating things with soy sauce and ginger. I felt the same way one the time I was in Italy (in the late 1980's) and had to stay over one night in Emilia-Romagna enroute to somewhere else, and picked the town of Imola so that I could eat at San Domenico (in those days, there wasn't the information we had today - you saw stars, you thought "great food") and instead of getting the best Emilian meal I ever had - I was dreaming of food perhaps even better than Ristorante Fini in Modena which I'd been to a few times - I had the total "nouvelle" experience (and simply lousy food) that had very little to do with the traditional food of the region, and made me very sorry I had gone there, when I could just as easily stopped over in Modena instead.

But I feel the same way when I go to an "American" restaurant (whatever that is) and one of the dishes is "soy-glaze salmon with ginger" and another is "pork chop with our house special bbq sauce" - I'd like to choose a Chinese restaurant when I'm in the mood for ginger, scallion, and "Chinese" flavors, and I'd like to choose a bbq joint when I'm in the mood for something with bbq sauce. Now we can have a Chinese restaurant, an American restaurant, and a BBQ restaurant on the same block, and have the same dishes at each of them if we're not careful. That severely limits my dining options.

All I've said all along is that if we lose choices, it'll be a bad thing for me, culinarily speaking. If people forget how to make the traditional foods of their regions - whether the local chefs want to incorporate flavors and ingredients that are "new" to them, or whether they want to go off in a molecular direction, I think it will be lamentable if years from now, there's no duck confit as we know it from the southwest of France, and no Bolognese sauce as we know it from Emila-Romagna.

In the 70's, I used to spend a great deal of time on the Island of Capri, and at one well known (and very fashionable) restaurant in particular, eating the most delicious and freshest seafoods from the local waters. Then I took a 10-year hiatus from Italy, and when I went back there, the owner of that same restaurant suggested I start with a "delicious salad with crab meat" - and when it came, it was a bed of arugula, with Krab (surimi) on it!

I just don't like change when it applies to cuisine - sorry FG. I would like my cuisines frozen in time at the year 2000, please.

[Fat Guy]

In terms of "tasting better", it is a subjective term, I don't believe in the sort of pseudo-post-Darwinian model where changes are always for better and the best food that exists, by this definition, exists right now. 

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Changes aren't always for the better. But anything excellent that exists now, but didn't exist since the beginning of time, was by definition the result of change. So it's illogical to say we shouldn't try to improve. That's the prison of culinary traditionalism: it refuses the possibility of change for the better.

In the case of bread with salt, sure, we can throw up our arms and say it's all subjective, in matters of taste there's no dispute, and leave it at that. But then we don't have a lot left to talk about. What, then, gives us a basis for saying that Pain Poilane is better than Wonder? We need some sort of framework of agreed-upon standards in order to make sense of basic culinary distinctions. To me, bread without salt is as hard to justify as bread without flavor. But you don't have to take my word for it. It seems that in the relevant regions of Italy people are generally adopting bread with salt, relegating saltless bread to niche status.

[Fat Guy]

All I've said all along is that if we lose choices, it'll be a bad thing for me, culinarily speaking.

I just don't like change when it applies to cuisine - sorry FG.  I would like my cuisines frozen in time at the year 2000, please.

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Eventually, you'll probably have a post-2000 dish that's so good you'll be forced to retract that claim. In any event, it sounds to me like you're the one advocating a system that deprives us of choice. Fusion increases choices: more ingredients, a wider range of techniques, and therefore more permutations. Nobody has to stop making the recipes of the past. There are so many restaurants that innovation and tradition don't have to be mutually exclusive. If a chef wants to cook the recipes of the past, and cook them well, that's just great. But when that chef starts posturing against chefs who innovate, that's destructive. That limits choice.

[markk]

I am sure that at some point I will have a post 2000 dish and lose my mind over it.

But I'd like still to be able to find the dishes of yore. And at the moment, I have trouble finding restaurants that will serve me the stuffed cabbage, boiled beef flanken, and chicken soup with kreplach that my grandmother made, and that I could get on any street corner in a traditional Jewish deli where I grew up. These restaurants are getting harder and harder to find.

Is it because people have gone with "lighter", newer foods? (It probably isn't, though I don't know why it is, actually.) And if the answer is that the people who eat these foods have moved from New York City, I can tell you that it's almost as hard to find them in Miami Beach now.

Of course, I can't blame the disappearance of traditional Jewish delis on anything in this thread.

I'm just thinking that if all the people ganging up on Italy for being resistant to change actually get what they want, we might lose easy access to another wonderful cuisine.

Of course, just today somebody really did ask me where to get Lasagne Bolognese in New York City, and I didn't have an answer. Does anybody know?

[Adam Balic]

In terms of "tasting better", it is a subjective term, I don't believe in the sort of pseudo-post-Darwinian model where changes are always for better and the best food that exists, by this definition, exists right now. 

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Changes aren't always for the better. But anything excellent that exists now, but didn't exist since the beginning of time, was by definition the result of change. So it's illogical to say we shouldn't try to improve. That's the prison of culinary traditionalism: it refuses the possibility of change for the better.

In the case of bread with salt, sure, we can throw up our arms and say it's all subjective, in matters of taste there's no dispute, and leave it at that. But then we don't have a lot left to talk about. What, then, gives us a basis for saying that Pain Poilane is better than Wonder? We need some sort of framework of agreed-upon standards in order to make sense of basic culinary distinctions. To me, bread without salt is as hard to justify as bread without flavor. But you don't have to take my word for it. It seems that in the relevant regions of Italy people are generally adopting bread with salt, relegating saltless bread to niche status.

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I didn't say that change was a bad thing, all my posts have agreed with your basic point. Food is change, even the most "traditional" cusines exhibit this basic process. Even in Italy you will not find many, if any, references (to my knowledge) of "al dente" cooked pasta pre-1900.

In terms of the saltless bread, I think that you have extapolated "There is more then just saltless bread in Tuscany", to a "Saltless bread is a dying tradition, because it tastes bad". The latter just isn't true even if it suits your view.

"[A] framework of agreed-upon standards in order to make sense of basic culinary distinctions"

It is a useful intellectual model, but that is all. Agreed upon standards would imply that it is inclusive of all opinions and that just doesn't work across time or location. So for the sake of discussion it is a valid concept, but I find that many people can't make the distiction between intellectual framework and reality - discussions on "cuisines" then end up looking like Victorian scientists dividing the human world into barbarians, savages and civalised people, depending on the shape of their skulls or wheather they have invented the umbrella yet.

In terms of food culture there is plenty to discuss, other then creating hierachies of bestness.

[SWISS_CHEF]

Mark, can you point to a great cuisine that has been hurt, rather than helped, by fusion? We wouldn't even have the great cuisines of today were it not for fusion...

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You can also argue that because of fusion and other events that have brought new ingredients into the mix, some traditional preparations and ingredients have become lost or even extinct. This is the manta of organizations like Slowfood and Species Pro Rara. So from that perspective the traditional cuisine has been diminished.

The primary reasons that food is "better" today than 50 years ago is largely due to transportation logistics and the fact that food is enjoying a lot more attention than it used to, especially by Americans. Chefs have become celebrities and top restaurants make huge profits, this was never the case in the 50's.

[Fat Guy]

I don't really think that's the mantra of Slow Food and the other traditionalist organizations, or if it is their mantra then it's misguided. Fusion is not the enemy. Fusion and new ingredients have done little to hurt traditional cuisine. There are plenty of people out there such that traditional and contemporary cuisine can coexist -- to position them as mutually exclusive is a fallacy. Rather, changes in eating habits and the decline of traditional cuisines have occurred for many reasons, ranging from the changing role of women to the rise of convenience foods to the decline of agriculture as a way of life. When people say globalization is harming traditional regional cuisines, they don't or shouldn't mean that Nobu is destroying Japanese or American regional cuisine. They are or should be talking about McDonald's and frozen TV dinners. Totally different things. And if they get those phenomena confused -- which they may sometimes do -- then they're missing the point. Then the movement just reduces to opposing change for its own sake, which is irrational, especially since those traditional recipes arose through fusion anyway (at least, all the ones that use tomatoes, corn, potatoes, peppers, etc.).

[SWISS_CHEF]

I don't really think that's the mantra of Slow Food and the other traditionalist organizations, or if it is their mantra then it's misguided.

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Misguided? Perhaps you should spend some time at the Salone del Gusto next year in Turin. I would be happy to show you around. Their projects are amazing and they are working too.

From the Slowfood, Ark of Taste Manifesto: "To protect the small purveyors of fine food from the deluge of industrial standardization; to ensure the survival of endangered animal breeds, cheeses, cold cuts, edible herbs - both spontaneous and cultivated - cereals and fruit...."

Slow Food Presidia Project: "to promote artisan products; to stabilize production techniques; to establish stringent production standards and, above all, to guarantee a viable future for traditional foods."

Also, this article by Swiss news should help sum things up.

The issue here is that countless species of animals and plants are being lost because of cheap imports and other influences. What is so bad about reviving these ingredients? Couldn't they also be considered a form of fusion...modern...cutting edge?

[Fat Guy]

But what you said was:

because of fusion and other events that have brought new ingredients into the mix, some traditional preparations and ingredients have become lost or even extinct. This is the manta of organizations like Slowfood and Species Pro Rara.

And nothing you quoted above says that. It's not a zero-sum game. There no reason why the introduction of kiwis has to mean that some traditional fruit has to be abandoned. And if that traditional fruit gets abandoned, it's not because of kiwis. It's because of a million other things, but it's not because of kiwis.

Sure, if you want to expand the definition of fusion to include everything bad, then everything bad is fusion. But if McDonald's is fusion cuisine, or contemporary cuisine, then those are totally different definitions from the ones that are commonly understood. I'd like to see where Slow Food says it's officially opposed to Ferran Adria's work, or to Nobu. I doubt there's any such claim being made. And if there is, it's nutty.

[SWISS_CHEF]

FG your comments are in italics and mine in bold

But what you said was:

"because of fusion and other events that have brought new ingredients into the mix, some traditional preparations and ingredients have become lost or even extinct. This is the mantra of organizations like Slowfood and Species Pro Rara"

And nothing you quoted above says that. It's not a zero-sum game.

Can you please explain how it does not? I believe they all stated that there is a good deal of concern about losing traditional ingredients to various modern methods.

Sure, if you want to expand the definition of fusion to include everything bad, then everything bad is fusion. But if McDonald's is fusion cuisine, or contemporary cuisine, then those are totally different definitions from the ones that are commonly understood.

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???

I'd like to see where Slow Food says it's officially opposed to Ferran Adria's work, or to Nobu. I doubt there's any such claim being made. And if there is, it's nutty.

Who said that??? Certainly not me. I said that modern methods often cause the demise of ancient ingredients and therefore ancient ingredients should be guarded and protected. If you think ancient ingredients aren't important why don't you just say so?

Until you spend some time on the ground here in Europe you will not understand the importance and uniqueness of many of the local ingredients. In Switzerland I attend the “chästeilets” in the mountains every year and I can tell you that the cheeses available there are not available anywhere else in Switzerland and certainly not anywhere else in the world. The obscurity of these cheeses makes them easy for the world to forget but if this happened it would be a disaster. Knowing this, I can very easily understand how the same situation could also be translated to an Italian salami or a French cheese. These things are delicate and deserve to be protected. Personally, I would rather see the entire demise molecular cuisine than let any of these ancient preparations or ingredients disappear.

[Fat Guy]

I've spent plenty of time "on the ground" in Europe, and have been to places in France that most French people never bother to go (Franche-Comte, etc.) to visit farms, cheesemakers, vineyards and the like. I can say with the utmost confidence that whatever is damaging French regional culinary traditions has absolutely nothing to do with Pierre Gagnaire, Olivier Roellinger, contemporary cuisine or fusion.

[tupac17616]

The more I read this thread, the more nauseous I become. Please, please, PLEASE stop exalting yourselves for either (1) currently living in Italy or (2) having spent a substantial chunk of your life in Italy. I'm certain we can all engage in a much more mature debate on this topic. If not, I'm not even sure why would Fat Guy, for example, would bother to give his two cents if you all immediately disregard his argument as invalid simply because he lives in New York. Pride in one's country/region (or confidence in one's own opinion, for that matter) is one thing, but some posts in this thread have gone too far, I think. Please get off your high horse.

With all this unnecessary self-righteousness, I think we're losing track of the basis on which hathor started this thread:

When does one cross the line from traditional regional cooking to non-traditional? How do you serve very traditional dishes and still push the flavor envelope? Is there any reason to cook totally traditional dishes, if you want to be a cut above a trattoria? Can a restaurant attain and/or maintain "stars" cooking completely traditional, regional foods?

Call me strange (or worse yet, American ), but I personally feel like traditional and contemporary can exist side by side. In harmony with one another, in fact. Without someone exploring, revising, disagreeing with rigid tradition, the very notion of what we're speaking about in the context of "contemporary" or "non-traditional" cuisine would not even exist.

Does one often need to look backwards before they look forward? Absolutely. Without an understanding of tradition and history, innovation is futile. I would also argue, though, that tradition solely for the sake of tradition is just as much of a folly. I think that whichever of these two realms a given chef decides to pursue, he should not have his blinders on toward the other.

In my view, tradition and innovation feed directly off one another. Chef A's resistance of tradition yields a new (which doesn't always mean better, or worse, for that matter) way of doing something. Out of tradition came an innovation. Likewise, Chefs B, C, and D see Chef's A's innovation, think "Hey, that's neat," and carry it back to their own kitchens. This happens enough times, and what was once innovation has become tradition.

It's a continuous loop, and one that holds true regardless of the scope on which we make this observation. Is there an "Italian" cuisine? A trip throughout the country this summer answered that with a resounding NO. The country's cuisine, like any other country's, is not some kind of homogeneous amalgamation. Regardless of the size of the microscope you employ, one can observe the differences: from region to region, town to town, neighborhood to neighborhood, even house to house. And while this is a phenomenon not unique to Italy, I would argue that Italy would be one of the world's prime examples of it, given its fairly recent unification into a country. Yet in no way does that mean that it is a cuisine whose two parties, if you will, (traditional vs. contemporary) really pose a large threat to one another. Both can (and, I would argue, currently do) thrive at once. Slow Food isn't going anywhere. Neither is innovation that goes beyond re-visiting forgotten recipes. Too call the former archaic or the latter a fad is, to me, very short-sighted.

And lastly, if a restaurant in Italy is frequented solely by Italians does that make it categorically better than one frequented by tourists? Much of the conversation in this thread would lead me to the assumption that several of you might say yes. A chef, at the most basic level, is like an artist. If he chooses to present his work in a manner that gets him noticed by the major art galleries, then so be it. If he goes a route that is less accepted (and therefore often also less expected) by the general public, but finds support among friends, family, and neighbors, that's fine, too. Maybe this fact is a tragedy in and of itself, but I would assert that many chefs considering what route they take with their own food are making a financial, and not an ethical, decision. They choose their market, and they cater to it. Who are we to judge them for it?

I'm pretty sure the chefs of Osteria La Francescana and Hosteria Giusti get along just fine. Why can't we? We should consider ourselves lucky to have such choices. Italy is a truly phenomenal place to eat and drink. Both traditional and innovative chefs are doing their part to make to make sure it stays that way.

[markk]

Eventually, you'll probably have a post-2000 dish that's so good you'll be forced to retract that claim.

Let me make clear that I'm not quibbling with foods that evolve as chefs re-visit certain dishes, and certain ingredients (that is, unless nobody also remembers how to make the classics). I'd have to admit that I eat "contemporary" French food all the time, and love it.

I'm sure that there's nothing "traditional" about the Young Garlic Soup at Jean-Georges, or the "Sweetbread, Rock Shrimp and Scallion Potato 'Gâteau' " at The Modern.

I'm happy that food like this co-exists with the more traditional foods, like those we had when D'Artagnan was open.

But...

I've wrestled for 2 seasons with how to sophisticate the classic combination of melon and prosciutto. I've tried pulverizing dried prosciutto, I've tried melon sorbetto, melon aspic...but nothing comes close to the texture and flavor contrasts of the original dish.

I'm really saying that I don't think that drying, pulverizing, beading, or foaming, are such great innovations. And perhaps the fact that you really can't improve on Prosciutto and Melon proves my point just a teeny bit.

Of course, the chefs cited above claim that they're taking their specific French roots and applying them to what they find in today's markets, and they're doing it with a great deal of intelligence and culinary skill.

Has anybody tried that with Italian food? Is there another avenue other than the dried prosciutto powder and melon foam? That's a serious question, not a sarcastic one.

I've been to France more recently than I've been to Italy, and sure, I eat a lot of contemporary French food and love it. But none of it's been freeze dried and molecularized, and I'm curious if there's a similar movement in Italy?

[Adam Balic]

  A chef, at the most basic level, is like an artist.  If he chooses to present his work in a manner that gets him noticed by the major art galleries, then so be it.  If he goes a route that is less accepted (and therefore often also less expected) by the general public, but finds support among friends, family, and neighbors, that's fine, too.  Maybe this fact is a tragedy in and of itself, but I would assert that many chefs considering what route they take with their own food are making a financial, and not an ethical, decision.  They choose their market, and they cater to it.  Who are we to judge them for it?

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Rant aside, restaurants are a business, if you can't sell your product then you go out of business.

One thing that I would note about Italy is that many of the people I had contact with (young professionals) in my experience dine out a lot or bring home pre-cooked food. If you get a good local following then you could have a stable business.

I wonder if you were doing the sums in setting up a restaurant if you would take the risk that your food, while not popular with the locals, may attract some attention from high end international diners? I'm not sure that you would in the vast majority of cases and think that this applies even in NYC.

Edited September 18, 2007 by Adam Balic (log)

[SWISS_CHEF]

The more I read this thread, the more nauseous I become.  Please, please, PLEASE stop exalting yourselves for either (1) currently living in Italy or (2) having spent a substantial chunk of your life in Italy.  I'm certain we can all engage in a much more mature debate on this topic.  If not, I'm not even sure why would Fat Guy, for example, would bother to give his two cents if you all immediately disregard his argument as invalid simply because he lives in New York.  Pride in one's country/region (or confidence in one's own opinion, for that matter) is one thing, but some posts in this thread have gone too far, I think.  Please get off your high horse.

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I think the relevance depends on how you spend your time here. I have attended countless events like Salone del Gusto, farmer's markets and food and wine fairs. I export the wines of a dozen tiny producers and spend time with them talking about rare grapes. Last month I had dinner with the Giorgio Ferrero the Piemonte president of Coldiretti and the whole dinner topic was about protecting rare ingredients. In Italy, Coldiretti is bigger than Slow food. I write articles for my blog about rare ingredients like

Ruché

andCuneo Peppers

I'm not googling this information, I am living it and therefore I feel compelled to write about it. For me it is less about "my 2 cents" than a desire to communicate what I have heard and learned from my Italian neighbors.

[SWISS_CHEF]

I've spent plenty of time "on the ground" in Europe, and have been to places in France that most French people never bother to go (Franche-Comte, etc.)

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Good, then you might enjoy this. I am also very fond of the Franche Comté.

So what's your take on Indian morel mushrooms? Rumor has it that some of the FC chefs are using them... separate thread???

[Fat Guy]

I did enjoy it, especially visiting vin jaune producers. But the best restaurant in the Jura is Jean-Paul Jeunet in Arbois, and he's a great example of a chef who couples tradition with innovation. Moreover, I don't think anybody in the Jura thinks Jean-Paul Jeunet's inventiveness is a threat to tradition. All over France, there are examples of traditional and contemporary cuisine coexisting. And there are examples of the same all over Japan, India, China and most anyplace else with a great traditional cuisine. Yet Italy seems determined not to join the club. Maybe it's in part because too many people are confusing McDonald's and fast food with the artistry of people like Adria and Gagnaire. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

[fortedei]

I did enjoy it, especially visiting vin jaune producers. But the best restaurant in the Jura is Jean-Paul Jeunet in Arbois, and he's a great example of a chef who couples tradition with innovation. Moreover, I don't think anybody in the Jura thinks Jean-Paul Jeunet's inventiveness is a threat to tradition. All over France, there are examples of traditional and contemporary cuisine coexisting. And there are examples of the same all over Japan, India, China and most anyplace else with a great traditional cuisine. Yet Italy seems determined not to join the club. Maybe it's in part because too many people are confusing McDonald's and fast food with the artistry of people like Adria and Gagnaire. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

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Or maybe Italians, in general, prefer not to eat what Adria and Gagnaire are cooking. With taste, like faith, there is no right or wrong.

[hathor]

Sorry to drop out of the conversation for a few days....

Back to bread for just a second: salt free bread is referred to as 'pane normale' in my backwater neck of the woods. It is celebrated and revered for the properties it does have: a unique crumb that absorbs but does not compete or mask flavors, a unique texture that is the perfect base for fat filled, heavily salted salumi or other strongly flavored condiments. It is not better or worse than any other bread. It fills a specific niche in central Italian cuisine. It takes time to get used to it and to appreciate it. Believe me, I was in the 'better as a doorstop' camp for the first few years; now, it's the go-to bread for specific dishes. You can find all types of salted breads in central Italy, they are eaten and enjoyed, but pane normale will always have a place in central Italian cuisine.

Tastes change over time. Pontormo, help me out here, as you are much more of an expert than I. But, take a look at Renaissance recipes, you would gag at the amount of sugar that shows up in dishes. Truly, truly revolting. I've tasted some historically correct Renaissance dishes prepared by Kenneth Albala and they were simply unpalatable; I was gagging on the sugar and spice overload.

The point being made about the contrast between evolution and fad is excellent. It takes time for evolution to happen.

Italian regional cooking is not a fad, chefs are not 'returning' to regionalism, as very, very few of them have ever left it.

Tupac, we are not on a high horse, or rubbing your nose in it, as we tell of our experiences living in Italy. What happens is that as you spend time here, hopefully, there is a growth in your knowledge and appreciation of your surroundings. A case in point would be my acceptance and appreciation of that salt free bread. Its taken me years to 'get it'.

[Pontormo]

Bread again.

Ann Cashion is a major figure in the culinary world of Washington, D.C. The fact that she "discovered" José Andres and brought him to the city might prove of interest to members of this society.

What is relevant to this discussion is an ongoing conversation at a regional food board where the chef responds to praise by referring to her training just outside of Florence:

Salt is the uber seasoning. It has to be right in order for any preparation to sing. This was something that I was taught when I worked in Tuscany. They have a special term of derision there for undersalted food...."schiocca". It's a must avoid!

The comment resonated with me since I recall how salty meals seemed during the first long period I spent in Italy,* at a time when U.S. citizens were being warned about dangers of too much sodium. In light of our exchange here, Ann Cashion's remarks appear ironic, though fortedei explains how unsalted bread serves as a foil to salty toppings or ingredients in a dish.

Since the chef also addresses differences between French and Italian seasoning, of course, it made sense to hear her impressions on pane toscana and perceptions of traditional Italian cooking:

You know, Tuscan bread is unsalted and while it takes some getting used to, I grew to love it. I also think it's one of the reasons why salting the food properly in Tuscany is such a big deal. You have to push it right to the edge in order for it to complement the bread's neutrality.

And:

As for the Italians getting stuck somewhere in the past, well, I guess you know where I stand on that...In today's world, I'd say that managing to do things in the old way is a minor miracle, a triumph of sorts.

To read the comments in full: click.

* (Hathor, thanks. However, I defer to anyone who's dined with Ken Albala.)

[Kouign Aman]

This goes back to the original example:

"molecular" prosciutto & melon vs the classic.

The quote is from tupac's report on his dinner at Manresa in Californi

Clearly indicative of this point is what turned out to be my favorite course the other night: two wedges of perfectly ripe tomato, coarse sea salt, and olive oil. You immediately see that the work a chef doesn’t do can be just as important as that which they do.

This fits in with my feeling that a restaurant can have both traditional and modern/innovative in its menu, as long as the choices are made wisely.

Experiment, and if the original still is the best (texture, flavor, scent), have the wisdom to stick to it. List it on the Classics side of the menu.

And if some kind of fabulous alginated marinara sauce made with freezer clarified tomato juice, served in a fish foam tastes better and feels better to eat than the original which inspired it, put that on the 'modern' side of the menu. Feed both sides of a person's interest - the tourist and the gastronome.