Are "Challenging" Restaurants Pleasurable?

[Tiny]

Is challenging food pleasurable? Yes....yes it is...

I had one of the most amazing meals of my life at WD-50 Friday night,very pleasurable experience.

I find that people that have issues with "challenging" food are people that have misconceptions about it, have never had any, or have only had poor examples of it....

Then there are people that have had great examples and it's just not their thing. Some people also don't eat pork for the same reason, does that mean that eating pork is not a pleasurable experience? For me, eating pork is one of the MOST pleasurable experiences out there, but to each their own...

Edited May 28, 2008 by Tiny (log)

[onocoffee]

Over the last year and a half, I've had the opportunity to dine at some remarkable restaurants, including Alinea, WD-50, L'Arpege, Trotters, 11 Madison Park and per se.

While I found the experience of eating at Alinea to be wonderful and intellectually stimulating, I found myself reflecting that it was an experience. That just like the National Restaurant Association trade show, it was something to experience every two or three years to see what "the cutting edge" is like and keep my horizons fresh and open.

Before I started this tour, I thought that someday perhaps I too would like to pursue that kind of cuisine. Something thought-provoking, something amazing, something intellectual, something far out of this world.

But as time and the tour progressed, I started feeling as thought the tasting menu felt a bit hollow. In the pursuit of hospitality, I wanted guests to feel whole. To feel satiated. To feel the food touching their soul.

It was the soul that I found to be important and not the intellectual stimulation.

Then I went to per se. Honestly, I had high hopes for the Thomas Keller experience and I have to admit that I was not disappointed. It was amazing. It was beautiful. It was thought-provoking. It was sexy. But, most importantly, it satisfied my soul.

I remember sitting there, halfway through our $500 per person meal thinking: "gosh, I would happily do this again tomorrow."

Not too long after, I was dining at L'Arpege by myself to the tune of $900 (with cheap wine). It was a good experience, but it still didn't stir my soul like per se.

So, to my mind, this discussion is great. But the most important thing for me is whether or not the food touched my soul.

[TAPrice]

Risking oversimplification (and being told that I'm not the first to make this comparison), I'd argue that the "manipulation" of Achatz, Adria, Blumenthal, Dufresne, et al has parallels with the confrontations of Hugo Ball, F. T. Marinetti, André Breton, et al in dada, Futurism, and Surrealism respectively. For example, I think that a meal at Alinea is not accidentally related to a meal with F. T. Marinetti, the father of the Futurism movement and the writer of a cookbook of the same name: though there may not be direct parallels (though my chat with Will Goldfarb at the now defunct Room 4 Dessert would suggest there are), the desire to challenge the consumer of art at a Futurist event bears some resemblance to the desire to challenge the consumer of food at Alinea.

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I've never had the pleasure (or perhaps merely the "opportunity" ) to try a challenging, modern meal. My thoughts are based strictly on what I've read, so take my comments in that light.

It's hard to deny the connection to the early avant-garde movements. The Futurist embrace of technology and industry seems to have a clear parallel in molecular gastronomy's embrace of the food science more often employed for junk food and processed items. The desire to confound the diners expectations, make them focus on material (in this case ingredients) by dislodging them from their typical context, and force them to approach a traditionally sensual experience as a intellectual one all point to the influence of these 20th century art movements. The sense of play recalls how important jokes were to the surrealist, Dada and Situationist movements (among others).

If we accept this pedigree, though, how do we explain the appearance of avant-garde food at the end of the 20th century and start of the 21st? Marinetti issued his Futurist Manifesto in 1909. This is a movement that will celebrate its centennial next year.

Is cooking just a 100 years behind the times? Perhaps. Although to accept that premise, wouldn't you have to think that artist genres (and I'm assuming here that we agree that, at least in some cases, cooking can rise to level of art) follow an evolutionary path? If it's taken cooking 100 years to embrace the avant-garde and enter the 20th century, is that just because until them we were cooking like it was the 19th century?

I don't agree with that position. I believe that artist movement reflect the current culture. And given that view, I would either have to reject Chris's initial premise that avant-garde cuisine is closely connected to these early 20th century art movements or accept that these culinary movements are actually quite retro and reactionary (which also doesn't seem to be the case).

[Chris Amirault]

I think that looking at the connection between avant garde art and molecular gastronomy as an "evolutionary path" is wrong, too. (I do think that the points made above about the culinary lineage demonstrated in these dining experiences are pretty accurate.) However, I think that you can accept irregular influences and connections without accepting direct lines of pedigree. There are clear differences between the avant garde art movements and current molecular gastronomy trends, not the least of which is the lack of any political content in the latter. Whatever they are, the series of El Bulli books are not manifestos in a political sense.

I think that, in many ways, molecular gastronomy is damned to be quite conservative, in that the form must always engage with a diner's pleasure, taste, "soul," and so on. Dufresne may annoy people now and then with his pizza bites, but he can't turn into Karen Finley and grind sweet potatoes into their faces as part of a compelling performance. Unlike viewers of visual and performance-based art, event "cutting-edge" diners pretty universally reject annoying, confrontational, unpleasant meals -- or even single dishes. Spielberg can start "Saving Private Ryan" with a grueling battle scene, but can you really imagine Achatz starting your meal with a grueling dish like The NE Clam Bake, a littleneck clam and chunk of lobster in a ground shell and sand batter encased in a corn noodle dough wrapped with a few threads of corn silk?

[PassionateChefsDie]

I find the question a little strange really. Is all art pleasurable then?

Though I agree to a certain extent food isn't art per se, it does take many components that are very similar, it still takes a few to champion the cause, peers, reviews, foodies.

Now I have to admit, there is a few chefs cooking this style that I for one would love to eat at. Yet given a choice it wouldn't be my first choice. We talk as periods but perhaps I'm missing something didn't we still have artists who don't fall into the new art, is there art inferior because they haven't?

Lets use art for a sec, we can do this 2 ways we have the shocking art of Damien Hurst, yes what he did was revolutionary will some find what he does not art of course, why is either side of the argument correct? Or another way lets say I want a portrait now I could go to the best cartoonist or a more trad good artist, so what one is better than the other? Its just different, the intention is different, the market is different.

Now to champion one who I think catering history consistently forgets, Fernand Point, when we had what was called Nouvelle Cuisine(Not that little stuff on plates). Many of these chefs had worked under him or for chefs that had worked for him, to a certain extent it was his philosophies that made Nouvelle Cuisine. So why is it he gets forgotten was he too far ahead of his time, was it because he didn't like travelling much, was it lack of PR?

Much of the catering industry is PR we as chefs are selling what we think is good/best, it is there philosophies and lets be honest philosophies are funny beasts. You could take 2 of the great chefs at the moment, GR and AF give them the same ingredients and end up with 2 very different dishes, so we can determine one is better, more modern, more pleasurable? I struggle to see how they are 2 different things, with different out looks, with different markets.

So to me the answer is yes it can pleasurable to some, to others not and it doesn't make either side wrong or right, just different.

What is one mans art is another mans junk.

[Mallet]

Partly for this reason, I've always found the analogy between fashion/couture to be personally more helpful than the broader "art" link (not knowing a whole lot about either ).

Both must ultimately be functional in some sense no matter how frivolous and odd they may first appear (clothes must be worn/ food must be eaten), and this conservatism imposed by the functioning of the human body ultimately dictates what can and cannot work. I think this is partly why "challenging" restaurants must ultimately be pleasurable, not just to a select few but to a good majority, and the fact that Chris's NE clam bake dish will probably never be found in a restaurant illustrates why (although replace that sand with some sort of maltodextrin-stock powder and the shells with thinly sliced edible pearls and I wouldn't be surprised....).

I could try to develop the fashion analogy further, but I fear that would take us a bit too far OT.

[PassionateChefsDie]

I think I could agree with that but it becomes whats in this season? But fashion is still art.

I've certainly seen fashion items at the cutting edge that are from from practical, so not sure I quite agree with... clothes must be worn

The cutting edge is different from mainstream yet even at the cutting edge you'll find flamboyant unpractical outfits mixed with the clearly practical yet still cutting edge.

Art has space for both extremes be that music, fashion or even food etc...

Edited May 28, 2008 by PassionateChefsDie (log)

[Fat Guy]

Is cooking just a 100 years behind the times? Perhaps. Although to accept that premise, wouldn't you have to think that artist genres (and I'm assuming here that we agree that, at least in some cases, cooking can rise to level of art) follow an evolutionary path? If it's taken cooking 100 years to embrace the avant-garde and enter the 20th century, is that just because until them we were cooking like it was the 19th century?

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I think until about the 1960s we were indeed cooking like it was the 19th century. That was the whole point of cooking. I think the creative revolution begins around then and slowly comes on until exploding in the 1990s. So yes, there's a sense in which the culinary arts are a century behind the times.

It's not just a question of cuisine taking an extra 100 years to embrace its modernist period, but also it's only recently that the food-is-art position has become persuasive (outside of academic conferences, which were on top of this issue 20 years ago) thanks to Ferran Adria and a few others. Because now the person who says food isn't art has to be able to say "Ferran Adria is not an artist," and it's hard to take that position because Ferran Adria is so obviously an artist. Of course not all food is art, just as not all painting is art, but the clarity of the possibility of food as art changes everything.

This is all in the context of commercially viable restaurants. There is also some much more advanced (and specifically non-pleasurable, at least from a gastronomic standpoint) food art out there thanks to performance artists and others. But it has little bearing on restaurants. It's almost something that happens in a parallel universe. But in that regard food has caught up with other arts -- it just happened along a compressed timeline.

Needless to say, I do think the "evolutionary paths" model is legitimate.

[paulraphael]

I think that, in many ways, molecular gastronomy is damned to be quite conservative, in that the form must always engage with a diner's pleasure, taste, "soul," and so on. Dufresne may annoy people now and then with his pizza bites, but he can't turn into Karen Finley and grind sweet potatoes into their faces as part of a compelling performance.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Part of this is tied to Fat Guy's point that our context is almost always commercially viable restaurants. But even if you point out that people buy ugly art and pay to see confrontational futurist theatre, there's something different about food. Dining involves primal bodily functions in a way that looking at painting doesn't. You put the art in your mouth.

It makes sense that even sophisticated diners will hang on to basic conservative values (the food should taste good; it shouldn't be poisonous), even when they seek conceptual challenges.

This might change someday, but I suspect it would mean completely recontextualizing the food. Like a meal served in an experimental theatre context instead of a restaurant. One that makes no promise of satisfying your hunger, and requires a liability release. Think of the different expectations for a typical feature film vs. an esperimental video insallation running on endless loop at PS-1.

Edited May 28, 2008 by paulraphael (log)

[Fat Guy]

I think there's actually a fair bit of conceptual art being done with food, some of which doesn't even involve eating it.

And, outside of the art-world context, there's a story in today's New York Times about "flavor-tripping parties," titled "A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue." The abstract is "A small red berry called miracle fruit temporarily rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors, rendering lemons as sweet as candy."

Frank Bruni has echoed some of what has been said here. When he panned Alinea, his formulation was "Food should be artful but has responsibilities art does not. Unlike a Pollock painting or Botero sculpture, it goes into your mouth. Its worth depends on how happy a home it makes there." I've said things like that too, without giving the point much thought. But I'm wondering if this is so obvious. If indeed all tastes (beyond the most simple) are acquired, the Bruni outlook seems limited.

[Peter the eater]

This is an excellent discussion.

Are "Challenging" Restaurants Pleasurable?, And is that a good or bad thing?

I haven't been to Alinea, El Bulli nor WD-50 but I'm certain I'd take great pleasure in the challenge put to me as an enthusiastic restaurant goer. This is a good thing.

I can also imagine a scenario where one might disagree. Maybe you're just trying to make a business deal over dinner, or maybe your spouse drags you out for another adventurous anniversary meal. Some people just don't want to be challenged by the food that's in front of them - not ever - just like I don't want to be challenged by the food from the drive-through window at the burger place.

What do you think?

I think its an exciting time to be a chef at the forefront of the profession. The MG visionaries and technoemotional food artists have really stirred the pot and as far as I'm concerned that's their job.

[Kouign Aman]

While the focus of this discussion so far has been on molecular gastronomy and its output, there are other challenging meals, some of which are completely classic.

I did not grow up taking blue crabs apart. A meal of blue crabs falls firmly into the challenging meal category. Its damn hard work, I'm relatively inept, it takes forever to get enough crab meat to fill up, some of the 'bits' looked a bit off-putting the first time, and my fingers stung from the combination of cuts and crabboil. And everytime I've dined on blue crab, its been a perfectly delightful and pleasurable meal none-the-less.

The first time I had a greek dish with cinnamon in the meat - that was a new experience comparable to the unexpected combinations featured by the boys with their chemical toys. Two bites of 'what the hell?", followed by pure pleasure. Not so for my dining companion. The association of cinnamon with sweet was too strong to overcome in one meal - it rated as 'interesting, glad I had it, dont want more thankyou'. So, to riff off the title of the topic : is greek food pleasurable?

Sometimes tho, one doesnt want to be challenged. One wants to relax. I suspect that the subjective experience of the food at Moto would be improved by arriving well rested and not too hungry. It would probably be diminished by arriving stressed, starved or tired.

[TAPrice]

I think you hit the nail on the head. Part of this is tied to Fat Guy's point that our context is almost always commercially viable restaurants. But even if you point out that people buy ugly art and pay to see confrontational futurist theatre, there's something different about food. Dining involves primal bodily functions in a way that looking at painting doesn't. You put the art in your mouth.

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One difference is that you only need a single buyer for a painting, while a menu has to be sold to hundreds of people. It does seem that El Bulli has almost escaped the economic demands of a restaurant. A seat there is so scarce that they serve only the customers who truly want the full experience. Could other restaurants duplicate that? I don't know.

[Alcuin]

I don't think that painting or the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century are really the best parallels, though. Dining is more interactive than looking at a painting and as chrisamirault said its not political and consciously annoying like a lot of avant-garde early 20th century art. I think its more like literature because there is no art there without some cooperation between the artist and the reader. In some of the best literature, there's tension between what the writer wants to convey or how they want to convey it and how the reader will understand it and ultimately whether they will get annoyed or put off when something misses the mark or s/he didn't understand what was going on. Dining can be interactive in the same way. There is a lot of play going on between cook and diner that these kinds of places seem to push to the forefront. If you don't want to play though, I don't think you're going to have a good time. It might be like required reading then--not fun.

[docsconz]

While the focus of this discussion so far has been on molecular gastronomy and its output, there are other challenging meals, some of which are completely classic.

I did not grow up taking blue crabs apart. A meal of blue crabs falls firmly into the challenging meal category. Its damn hard work, I'm relatively inept, it takes forever to get enough crab meat to fill up, some of the 'bits' looked a bit off-putting the first time, and my fingers stung from the combination of cuts and crabboil. And everytime I've dined on blue crab, its been a perfectly delightful and pleasurable meal none-the-less.

The first time I had a greek dish with cinnamon in the meat - that was a new experience comparable to the unexpected combinations featured by the boys with their chemical toys. Two bites of 'what the hell?", followed by pure pleasure. Not so for my dining companion. The association of cinnamon with sweet was too strong to overcome in one meal - it rated as 'interesting, glad I had it, dont want more thankyou'. So, to riff off the title of the topic : is greek food pleasurable? 

Sometimes tho, one doesnt want to be challenged. One wants to relax. I suspect that the subjective experience of the food at Moto would be improved by arriving well rested and not too hungry. It would probably be diminished by arriving stressed, starved or tired.

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I agree, a meal does not have to be technoemotional or purely creative to be challenging. A meal of offal would challenge most Americans even if using purely traditional methods and recipes. I would say that any meal, however, is enhanced by being hungry.

[Fat Guy]

Alcuin, I think there are parallels with a lot of art-forms, but that ultimately gastronomy is its own thing. It's a visual, studio and performing art that engages all the senses. A restaurant meal is a complex mixture of experiences not quite like anything else. But I think there are pretty strong likes between today's cutting-edge culinary creativity and the modernist schools in other art-forms.

Kouign Aman, I've just finished a book on Asian restaurants, and boy did I have some challenging meals! At some Chinese places it seemed they took a whole animal -- beaks, feathers and all -- and just chopped it up. The Japanese are second to none in "dare" cuisine, not just fugu but also all sorts of stuff that freaks most people out. In a Cambodian restaurant I ate a fetal duck egg. I think all that is very relevant to the notion of what's challenging. Lots of stuff that people in one part of the world eat every day seems challenging to people in other parts of the world.

[docsconz]

I don't think that painting or the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century are really the best parallels, though. Dining is more interactive than looking at a painting and as chrisamirault said its not political and consciously annoying like a lot of avant-garde early 20th century art. I think its more like literature because there is no art there without some cooperation between the artist and the reader. In some of the best literature, there's tension between what the writer wants to convey or how they want to convey it and how the reader will understand it and ultimately whether they will get annoyed or put off when something misses the mark or s/he didn't understand what was going on. Dining can be interactive in the same way. There is a lot of play going on between cook and diner that these kinds of places seem to push to the forefront. If you don't want to play though, I don't think you're going to have a good time. It might be like required reading then--not fun.

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While most high end dining is essentially apolitical in nature, there is plenty of dining that is not, such as certain elements of veganism, locavore oriented dining and potentially others. I will grant that that is the exception and not the rule, but it can not be dismissed out of hand. Indeed, it can provide its own brand of challenging dining which may or may not be pleasurable.

[Alcuin]

Alcuin, I think there are parallels with a lot of art-forms, but that ultimately gastronomy is its own thing. It's a visual, studio and performing art that engages all the senses. A restaurant meal is a complex mixture of experiences not quite like anything else. But I think there are pretty strong likes between today's cutting-edge culinary creativity and the modernist schools in other art-forms.

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Analogy between arts is useful for pinpointing the salient features of each through comparison. Saying that gastronomy=literature is as ridiculous as saying painting=film, though they all share certain common artistic features.

It's definitely true that gastronomy is its own thing, but it seems that its difficult to determine what exactly it is right now. I'm not sure about this kind of contemporary dining being "modernist" though. I guess it depends on what you mean by that term. I think of "modernism" mostly as rooted in the social/political conditions of the early 20th century (pre-WWII). I think of this new movement in dining as rooted in its own time too. Terms like modernism, post-modernism, seem to cause more trouble than their worth sometimes. I don't think they're totally useless though they do introduce assumptions and generalizations that cause problems.

[Alcuin]

I don't think that painting or the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century are really the best parallels, though. Dining is more interactive than looking at a painting and as chrisamirault said its not political and consciously annoying like a lot of avant-garde early 20th century art. I think its more like literature because there is no art there without some cooperation between the artist and the reader. In some of the best literature, there's tension between what the writer wants to convey or how they want to convey it and how the reader will understand it and ultimately whether they will get annoyed or put off when something misses the mark or s/he didn't understand what was going on. Dining can be interactive in the same way. There is a lot of play going on between cook and diner that these kinds of places seem to push to the forefront. If you don't want to play though, I don't think you're going to have a good time. It might be like required reading then--not fun.

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While most high end dining is essentially apolitical in nature, there is plenty of dining that is not, such as certain elements of veganism, locavore oriented dining and potentially others. I will grant that that is the exception and not the rule, but it can not be dismissed out of hand. Indeed, it can provide its own brand of challenging dining which may or may not be pleasurable.

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I totally agree. I live in Madison, WI and the best restaurant in town puts the name of every single producer of produce, butter, cheese, meat, etc., right on the menu. This is a political statement and it can come off as a bit overbearing (my aesthetic leans more toward the minimalism of an Alinea menu) but I like the political project and I like supporting the farms.

Food is inherently political. I'm sure there is some progressive cuisine out there that is totally political, I just don't know about it, but I guess I was just thinking about what seems to me to be some a-political elements of a lot of progressive cuisine. I don't think there's anything wrong with that either because not all art has to have an immediate or obvious political function.

[Fat Guy]

Alcuin, I think if we define modernism as "what happened at the turn of the 19th-20th century" then by definition it doesn't include the creative revolution in gastronomy that started in the late 20th century. But if we look at the underlying assumptions of modernism -- the questioning of the way things had always been done, the break with tradition, the emphasis on progress and the search for new and better ways of doing things -- then I think it's fair to say gastronomy came to the modernist table but just a century or so late.

I think it's fair to say that for most of the 20th century gastronomy remained anchored in the 19th century in a way that the visual and studio arts did not. Chefs didn't start behaving like artists until very recently. They were more like blacksmiths or other craftsmen, carrying on the handed-down traditions with occasional minor modifications. Once the generation of the chef-artist came on the scene, gastronomy started to catch up and got pushed quickly through the evolutionary phases that the visual and studio arts went through much earlier.

Ferran Adria is compared to Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso so often that it's exhausting to read it over and over again. But I think the comparison is apt, except that Adria was born almost 60 years later than Dali and more than 80 years after Picasso.

[Alcuin]

Alcuin, I think if we define modernism as "what happened at the turn of the 19th-20th century" then by definition it doesn't include the creative revolution in gastronomy that started in the late 20th century. But if we look at the underlying assumptions of modernism -- the questioning of the way things had always been done, the break with tradition, the emphasis on progress and the search for new and better ways of doing things -- then I think it's fair to say gastronomy came to the modernist table but just a century or so late.

I think it's fair to say that for most of the 20th century gastronomy remained anchored in the 19th century in a way that the visual and studio arts did not. Chefs didn't start behaving like artists until very recently. They were more like blacksmiths or other craftsmen, carrying on the handed-down traditions with occasional minor modifications. Once the generation of the chef-artist came on the scene, gastronomy started to catch up and got pushed quickly through the evolutionary phases that the visual and studio arts went through much earlier.

Ferran Adria is compared to Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso so often that it's exhausting to read it over and over again. But I think the comparison is apt, except that Adria was born almost 60 years later than Dali and more than 80 years after Picasso.

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The way I usually understand modernism is similar to this but a bit different. The progressive spirit of modernism seems to me to have been accompanied by a deep anxiety about the utility of past cultural forms. Atonal music, cubism, the writing of Joyce, Eliot, Pound, et al., seems deeply conservative to me because the innovations of high modernist art seem reactionary. Take cubism for example: it's fractured and twisted style is a commentary on the lack of cultural currency of the medium of traditional painting in the face of the global disaster of WWI and the problem of incipient global capitalism (that problem being the Depression). Cubism is reactionary in that it points back to the failure of pre-cubist art. I don't think modernism is progressive, though I do think that contemporary gastronomy as practiced by Adria is.

I'm not sure of the value of quibbling over terms or introducing a new one, but I think post-modern might be a bit better. If we interpret the post-modern to relinquish the reactionary anxieties I think are inherent in modernism, then post-modernism isn't as concerned with the lack of currency or utility of past forms. Post-modernism is more capable of progressivism.

In any case, I think we agree on all points except for the terminology, which is probably not that important anyway.

[cathrynapple]

I've mentioned this before in a couple of other threads, but I feel strongly that the food at Alinea and similar restaurants is most directly linked to the formalism movement, which is notorious for causing people to say "that's not art!" The recontextualization of familiar and new flavors and textures is not LIKE formalism, it IS formalism. We can, in fact, liken challenging chefs to Duchamp.

[Peter the eater]

Alcuin, I think if we define modernism as "what happened at the turn of the 19th-20th century" then by definition it doesn't include the creative revolution in gastronomy that started in the late 20th century. But if we look at the underlying assumptions of modernism -- the questioning of the way things had always been done, the break with tradition, the emphasis on progress and the search for new and better ways of doing things -- then I think it's fair to say gastronomy came to the modernist table but just a century or so late.

I think it's fair to say that for most of the 20th century gastronomy remained anchored in the 19th century in a way that the visual and studio arts did not. Chefs didn't start behaving like artists until very recently. They were more like blacksmiths or other craftsmen, carrying on the handed-down traditions with occasional minor modifications. Once the generation of the chef-artist came on the scene, gastronomy started to catch up and got pushed quickly through the evolutionary phases that the visual and studio arts went through much earlier.

I’ll offer another analogy . . . it’s has been said that there is never a true revolution in architecture unless there is a new material or substantial technology. The early architectural modernists went from iron to steel, fine-tuned the recipe for concrete, discovered petroleum-based products, float glass, etc. and by the time WWII was over, modernists had transformed our built environment into something truly original.

I can see some similarities with what the new chefs are doing – using technologies and ingredients that have never seen the inside of a kitchen before.

But then came the architectural postmodernists who took great issue with the apparent lack of humanity and tradition, and quite frankly they were right. It may be good to be challenging but it’s more important to be successful – artistically, socially, financially, etc.

Buildings and food are not they same thing, but if gastronomy did come to the modernist table but just a century or so late then maybe its demise might resemble that of other art forms.

Guess I better get working on some reservations.

[Fat Guy]

I'm with Alcuin in that I don't think it's necessary to get too caught up in labels. I definitely see aspects of formalism (as used in the art context) in the challenges to and emphasis on form that molecular gastronomy presents in so many dishes, though I don't see that as the full extent of molecular gastronomy's reach (or, rather, I think a restaurant like Alinea does much more than just molecular cooking). At the same time, when I speak of a creative revolution in gastronomy I see molecular gastronomy (or whatever we're allowed to call it) as only one facet of that revolution. I think that revolution includes everything from nouvelle cuisine to fusion to whatever it is that David Chang is doing. So I think it's broader than formalism, both at the level of Alinea and at the level of the whole phenomenon.

[Chris Amirault]

We can, in fact, liken challenging chefs to Duchamp.

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I don't get it. What would the equivalents in the culinary world be for "Fountain"? No one is serving refuse as food, I think, which makes "I declare this garbage to be fine cuisine" not as workable as "I declare this urinal to be art." Ditto "Bride Stripped Bare": are there multiyear projects involving flawed, accidental elements that make their way onto the plates at WD-50, El Bulli, or Fat Duck?