Does Italy lack culinary relevance?

[Tonyfinch]

I think that's right. People may want different thjings from high end French dining but I suspect words like "simplicity," "purity", "staightforward",

"quality of ingredients" are not what is at the forefront of most people's minds. As has been said,they want the food "worked" by the chef, they want complicated food combinations etc.

This is what made The River Cafe in London such a radical restaurant when it opened. It claimed itself to be Italian and stressed a philosophy that was the antithesis of what was considered to be cutting edge dining. Pure,high quality ingredients mucked about with as little as possible. Less was more.

Italian restaurants in Italy feel much more like extensions of the family home than French restaurants do in France. You can imagine a lot of the food being cooked in the home. It's what you might cook at home yourself.

This is the total opposite of French restaurants,so once again the question of "relevance" depends totally on one's pre conceived ideas about what dining in restaurants should be about.

[peterpumkino]

This is the total opposite of French restaurants,so once again the question of "relevance" depends totally on one's pre conceived ideas about what dining in restaurants should be about.

My point exactly. However to say 'opposite of French cooking' you have to clarirify this a bit. Let's be really honest here and say that 'average' French cuisine can be unbelievably bland and boring. I mean what's so gourmet about 'moules et frites' or 'steak et frites'? So I do think that your 'average' restaurants in Italy is far, far superior to your 'average' restaurant in France. What everybody on this site is referring to is high-end cuisine and, while I agree it can be truly memorable, it's also very, very expensive.

Again I'm talking 'generally' so please do not send examples of great and very cheap French restaurants as I know they exist but there a lot of realy bad restaurants out there!

ps I went to Cap Varnet in Paris 2 weeks ago (recommended on this very site) with a friend who knows his stuff about food, and the food was really lousy. Even the 'best' oysters were not very good and yet I had had great oysters there only 2 weeks previously. Can anyone explain why? Was it just 'one of those things'. I would think that maybe it was me but my friend was disgusted as well. We went around the corner to Florian's for dessert and it was great as was the atmosphere.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Thanks everyone very much for finally coming around to my long held position on this , that it all comes down to a matter of technique and how you apply it. Haute cuisine is a language. It's a way for a chef to speak. Fried squid, regardless of how good or how perfectly prepared is not part of that language. And what we call "relevant" really boils down to the fact that French chefs speak in that language but Italian chefs do not. And to compound things, there are chefs all over the world who are speaking in, or are using a variation of that language. But depite this Italian cuisine is a language of its own as well. And just the same as haute cuisine, it is copied the world over. But the cooking techniques employed by the chefs are not as obviously complex as the routines in haute cuisine. So technique is not at the epicenter of the cuisine. Ingredients are.

So whoever said that the reason the Italians do not cook haute cuisine is that it means cooking in the French style and why would they do that, they're Italians, has asked the wrong question. The real question is why hasn't Italian cuisine evolved in a way where they have created a cooking technique that is as evolved in the same way haute cuisine is? They didn't need to copy French cooking, they could have created their own techniques. Why didn't they? To say that they didn't have to because their native cooking is so delicious is a bad answer. That's like saying there was no need to invent opera because there was great musical theater. 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. There are only two reasons it doesn't happen. Your customers don't want it or you can't do it.

We can take a portion of the best funghi in the world and we can get the best Italian chef to roast them, saute them or even grill them if they are the right type. And they can be perfect. But "relevant" means making something like a Flan de Champignons. And when we talk about food, it really is a conversation of the technique involved to make dishes like that flan. It's about a transformation of the food into a new form of communicating what is great about it. That's why places that serve a great plate of roast mushrooms are fantastic to eat at, but don't offer much fodder for our discussion aside from their being highly recommended.

[Steve Klc]

I sense alot of misunderstanding about French food when I read things like "People may want different thjings from high end French dining but I suspect words like "simplicity," "purity", "staightforward" and "quality of ingredients" are not what is at the forefront of most people's minds. As has been said, they want the food "worked" by the chef, they want complicated food combinations etc." The French food and French chefs I know assume all of this, they're a priori considerations, jumping off points, upon which to build or work or rework or layer. There's countless simple straightforward, low end Italian-like stuff like 'moules et frites' or 'steak et frites' that isn't so overtly "worked" by the chef and then there's application of technique, skill, handling, refinement and sophistication in the preparation and presentation of the food--but not necessarily so obvious or overt. As if application of technique and skill were a bad thing.

But what I'd really like to say is that Steve P. is on to something with regard to the French celebrating their chefs and pastry chefs as "craftsmen" alongside their butchers and silversmiths and cabinet makers--historically that has to have made a societal impact and helped codify and spread standards. This is the concept behind the M.O.F.--the Meilleur de ouvrier de France--and I may have gotten the spelling wrong here--but there are MOF's in all creative and trade disciplines. It's the other MOF's in yout discipline that decide to award you and let you into their little club. Jacques Torres was the youngest pastry MOF ever at the time he gained admittance at like 28 I think. This is fine when creative disciplines are in a kind of conservative stasis--or plateauing--as happened with French pastry for the past decade or two. The problem is what happens when the MOF system--which is set up to protect and preserve what is best about the achievement within the ranks--do the best work, the way it has always been done, get recognized--is challenged by the likes of an Herme or Conticini who decidely operate outside the rules of the MOF--and gain fame and fortune in a decidely non-MOF independent, truly creative, media-savvy way? The problem is that the MOF system starts to lose its relevance in the eyes of the consumer.

[Gavin Jones]

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.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Jones I think that is a bad example. No French chef would suggest that at it's core, haute cuisine, or French technique, doesn't rely on the same roasted mushrooms that Italian cuisine relies on. But the conversation is about the layer of technique they added on top of the ability to roast perfect mushrooms. That is why I always analogize haute cuisine to opera. 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. The artform has already subsumed many of the techniques used in Italian cuisine.

Steve Klc - Your point about there being Maitre' d'Ouvres is a great one. There are everything from mater carpenters to master butchers (by the way, I understand that Plotnicki in Russian means master carpenter.) This celebration of craftsmen is now being copied all over the world. Without the codification systems that the French came up with of course. Now we have branding instead .

[Jonathan Day]

I would like to urge some caution here. Sometimes the application of skill and technique is a good thing, sometimes not. There is merit in knowing when and when not to gild the lily.

A lot of "French" cuisine went too far in this direction, especially as it made its way to America and to Britain. Many of us have heard the likes of John and Karen Hess's fulminations about bad sauces covering mediocre ingredients. Elizabeth David wrote in a similar vein (see "Chez Gee-Gee" in An Omelette and a Glass of Wine), as have other thoughtful writers.

Yes, the great French chefs take fine ingredients as a jumping-off place, but I'm not sure the schools of French cuisine do. I cited Julia Child as an example: if I recall correctly her point of departure is kitchen equipment and technique. But it would be interesting to know how the CIA or Malawry's school or similar training institutions attack this. Do they begin with knife skills or with shopping? (This is not in the least a rhetorical question!).

Indeed, I think one could assemble convincing evidence that some of the most recent "progress" in fine cuisine (including the French) has been a rediscovery of the importance of impeccable ingredients. In the US people like Alice Waters played an important role here; in the UK, Rogers & Gray at the River Café. But we could also cite the Japanese influence on haute cuisine. In this sense the direction of "progress" is far less straightforward than the simple model Steve P. is setting out.

As for "relevance", I am still trying to understand what this means other than "what is relevant is what I choose to talk about". Quite a few chefs have, in the last few years, been saying a lot about simple preparations and perfect ingredients. Are we to ignore these views because they are not relevant?

I am not trying to make a case against technique -- far from that. But to me (as an eater, observer of these matters, participant in this conversation) simplicity and technique look like equal pillars, not layers in some sort of hierarchy.

[Tonyfinch]

There are only two reasons it doesn't happen. Your customers don't want it or you can't do it.

It's definitely the former. If people wanted it there would be those who could do it all right. Fashion and design are the great creative areas of Italian cultural life. Interestingly they are now making more complex and developmental wine than ever before. I had a Brunello the other day which really showed me what it was all about.

But with food they want Mama. They don't want haut cuisine. They want to be reminded of home and family and childhood . Eating together is an active expression of the unity of family and friends and this unity is represented by the perfectly cooked mushroom rather than the Flan de Champignons.

[Gavin Jones]

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.

[Wilfrid]

Not wishing to muddy the waters, but I don't see why this is a question about Italy. Okay, forget Guam - most French people most of the time aren't eating haute cuisine. H-c is a kind of gastronomic lingua franca in which a large number of upscale restaurants in France and elsewhere are conversant. God bless it and where would we be without it, but it is very different indeed from the food eaten in everyday restaurants (let alone households) in France, Italy and anywhere else.

Somehow Fat Bloke's original question got turned on its head, and we're worrying about why h-c doesn't have relevance in Italian professional cooking. I suspect it probably does, if you go to the right kinds of posh hotels catering for international travellers in Italy. It ain't like the French are eating this stuff and no-one else is.

[Gavin Jones]

The Italic nature of the question was I think down to the number of people who thought the best food was in Italy, despite the relative lack of importance of haute-cuisine there.

[macrosan]

Thanks everyone very much for finally coming around to my long held position on this , that it all comes down to a matter of technique and how you apply it.

Well congratulations for being right all along, Steve

And I too would like to thank everyone very much for finally coming around to my long held position on this , that it all comes down to a matter of what you mean by relevance and how you build it into your question.

[Wilfrid]

The Italic nature of the question was I think down to the number of people who thought the  best food was in Italy, despite the relative lack of importance of haute-cuisine there.

I think that's sort of consistent with my point Gavin. There's a lot of great food at all levels in France too, but that's surely independent of the existence of h-c in France. I just don't know what to make of this discussion.

[Gavin Jones]

So a better way of asking the question is why does French cooking lack culinary relevance to modern gastronomy or haute-cuisine.

And the answer appears to be that though h-c. emerged in France it is now deracinated and lives in the world of the connoisseuriat, rather like opera, irrelevant to the lives of most people. And as such effectively moribund.

All we have to look forward to is the increasing specialisation and fragmentation of Plotto's Academy. Already we have the split into the Gagnairistas and the Anti-Ducasser's.

Later on I will move to Avignon & live in a barrel of ChN du Pape Roussanne.

[Wilfrid]

Good move. We sometimes overlook the fact, I suspect, that there's plenty of quite dreadfully average h-c to be had in expensive hotels all over the world. H-c is not automatically good food.

Now, I think I read the original question as more to do with why Italian cuisine has had limited influence on h-c outside Italy, rather than why there's a lack of h-c in Italy. But who knows?

[Steve Plotnicki]

Now those were a bunch of good responses. But I think that they further hone the issue. The more we talk about it, the more the definition of "relevance" becomes, "conversation about the technique that we describe as haute cuisine." The inference that the technique is usually good comes from the fact that we like to talk about it. But I don't think that means that we think that every application of the technique is a good one. This board is replete with reviews of bad or mediocre haute cuisine meals. And I refer you to my recent Pierre Gagnaire thread for an example. JD also raises the issue of their being a current trend in cuisine to serve impeccable ingredients and he raises Alice Waters as an example. Craft would be a good example as well. But what they serve at Chez Panisse and Craft is derived from the Italian strategy of preparing veggies. Go to Arpege and Ducasse where they are sweating the veggies in high fat content butter on a low flame for 2 1/2 hours and they have transformed the dish from Italo-American to haute cuisine. Of course the line there isn't a bright one, but there is a difference in the approach and the philosphy and even more important, where those vegetables fit in your meal.

Gavin - It's not a matter of fuzzy lines between disciplines. It's a matter of there being a definition of opera that at some point means the music you are performing isn't singspeil and it is opera. That doesn't mean that two different disciplines can't share many of the same techniques. I'll give you an example. Andrew Lloyd Weber's most famous songs are constructed in the same technique that was used to construct the famous opera arias. But he has combined that technique with the framework of a pop song. What he did was to extract the guts of what makes an aria tick (the hummable parts) and he applied pop music techniques to the core idea. So the characters that sing songs like Memories seem to be singing something profound because our ear has been trained to react to those type of harmonic combinations as serious music. But what makes it truly ingenius (and I use that word in a commercial sense, let's leave arguments about whether it is any good or not aside) is that the character who sings the song expresses themselves like a character from the musical theater. And ultimately that is how his music gets categorized. It isn't opera, and it isn't pop music. Because ultimately what determines that something is musical theater is what the character is expressing and the mode they express it in. Does that makes sense to you?

Wilfrid - The question is about Italy for obvious reasons. First of all, the food is so delicious there. Secondly, they are so close to France. Third, the basics of each cuisine are sort of the same. So a question of why there is such a great disparity between the countries is obvious. We don't ask the same questions about say Germany because there isn't really a tradition of great cuisine there.

[hollywood]

So a better way of asking the question is why does French cooking lack culinary relevance to modern gastronomy or haute-cuisine.

And the answer appears to be that though h-c. emerged in France it is now deracinated and lives in the world of the connoisseuriat, rather like opera, irrelevant to the lives of most people. And as such effectively moribund.

All we have to look forward to is the increasing specialisation and fragmentation of Plotto's Academy. Already we have the split into the Gagnairistas and the Anti-Ducasser's.

Later on I will move to Avignon & live in a barrel of ChN du Pape Roussanne.

I'll drink to that. Of course, you could consider a rear guard action in Constantinople.

[hollywood]

Wilfrid - The question is about Italy for obvious reasons. First of all, the food is so delicious there. Secondly, they are so close to France. Third, the basics of each cuisine are sort of the same. So a question of why there is such a great disparity between the countries is obvious. We don't ask the same questions about say Germany because there isn't really a tradition of great cuisine there.

Italy must be fainting from all this damn praise.

[Wilfrid]

But which question, Steve? - I'm honestly bemused. If it's "Why did haute cuisine develop in France and not, for example, Italy?", I thought we'd absolutely hammered that one into the ground. If it's "Why hasn't Italian cuisine had more influence on international haute cuisine?" ( i.e. outside Italy), well I guess that's different.

Or maybe there's a more interesting question I can't make out.

[robert brown]

Hooooooooooray for Hollywood!!!!

[Steve Plotnicki]

And the answer appears to be that though h-c. emerged in France it is now deracinated and lives in the world of the connoisseuriat, rather like opera, irrelevant to the lives of most people. And as such effectively moribund.

Gavin - Absolutely correct and if you read the French board you will see people like Robert Brown and myself basically saying this. Then of course there is the argument about whether the Spanish chefs who make headlines these days are really offering new technique that is permanent or is it some varition of HC for the "connoisseriat?" But if you move to Avignon, try the 1991 Beaucastel Roussane Old Vines. One of the greatest wwhite wines you will ever drink. 1994 and 1999 weren't bad either.

[Gavin Jones]

Then of course there is the argument about whether the Spanish chefs who make headlines these days are really offering new technique that is permanent or is it some varition of HC for the "connoisseriat?"

I think the answer to this question is yes and it is because of the increasingly large-scale processes underpinning people's food experiences.

The reason the Italian gastronomic aesthetic is in long-term decline is that it depends on access to very localised ingredients. Now that will continue to be possible for people who can pay through the nose but it will represent less and less the lives of most city-dwellers.

It is nothing to do with deliciousness.

By contrast the new-wave techniques though obviously h-c. in a la minute preparations in fancy restaurants will soon be available to produce food in industrial processes. These will be the techniques that will inform the food of generations to come.

However it is at a price. These techniques are unlikely to be 'home-cooking' and will typically feature mostly in industrialized food.

So as you bite into the food of the future you will taste your alienation, biting into the absence of a discernible root to your life and what feeds it.

[Wilfrid]

So as you bite into the food of the future you will taste your alienation, biting into the absence of a discernible root to your life and what feeds it.

"Good."

J. Baudrillard.

[schaem]

I thought Plotnicki was Russian for "person who thinks he wins arguments by redefining terms."

[Steve Plotnicki]

Excellent response Mr. Jones. Looking at it through that lens, haute cuisine can be considered to be the last bastion of cuisine that was dependant on terroir and their introduction of modern techniques relied on it being balanced with a need to express that terroir. But the other way of looking at it is that the Spanish school has put *too much* emphasis on technique and not enough emphasis on local ingredients and ultimately the question will be whether someone will turn the technique into a popular cuisine? Do you think those are the right questions?

Like opera, I'm not sure that a higher artform will ever be created when it comes to food that is intended to be served in it's natural form. Despite the fact that one can serve pureed and smooth mushrooms instead of roasted ones, the goal is still to present mushrooms. But extracting the essence of the mushrooms for another purpose seems to be a radical change to me. If you stick with the musical analogy and look at the development of music and assume food will develop in the way music developed, serious food will become a museum piece and a popular version of cuisine like rock and roll will dominate.