Do you need to grow up around good food to 'get it'?

[ChrisTaylor]

I think it's in Eric Ripert's book, maybe, the Le Bernardin one, that he says he believes you can't cook well unless you grew up around good food. He's talking about a restaurant context, of course. And even so, I'm inclined to disagree with it. I only had 'good food'--went to nice restaurants, sampled stuff more interesting than Cantonese lemon chicken and spaghetti bolognese--when I was an adult, when I could pay my own way at restaurants and buy whatever ingredients I wanted, because I was the one cooking them and eating them. I think I do okay. I'm sure that there are plenty of chefs, possibly even a few good ones, who've come from much the same background. I mean, I haven't read too many biographies from chefs, but I get the impression a lot of the big names today, even, came from none-too-exciting backgrounds. I remember when Heston was doing the episode on hamburgers, how Thomas Keller said McDonald's was the pinnacle when he was a kid (and, of course, he grew out of it). No idea what his background was like otherwise, tho'. I'd argue that growing up around good food, in a family or culture where food traditions are important and passed on, certainly helps ... but it's not a requirement to cooking well.

On one level, I get it. I see chefs like Keller and Blumenthal playing with concepts like memory and working with flavours and ingredients they loved in their childhood and I know that I could never do the same thing, given the most exciting thing I ate during my childhood was spaghetti bolognese made with Vegemite and curry powder (seriously).

Of course, perhaps I'm over-simplifying Ripert's argument. I doubt he seriously denies that someone who grew up looking forward to KFC every weekend could never learn the restaurant trade ... I wonder if he means more that someone who didn't grow up surrounded by an appreciation of good food can never truly 'get' cooking or perhaps even food on a more than a purely technical/mechanical level.

Did you grow up eating good food and/or in a culture/family that appreciated nice foods? When did you have your first experience with eating at a nice restaurant? If you didn't grow up around this stuff, how long did it was it before you could fully appreciate a meal at said nice restaurant? Do you think your childhood significantly influenced what you cook/eat or your ability to cook/appreciate food? If you're raising kids (or about to), what's your take on the situation? Do you/will you put thought into what foods and culinary traditions you expose them to/pass on?

[nickrey]

I'm not sure that you need to grow up around good food to "get it" but I don't think there is a good chef on earth who doesn't know how to eat, taste, and appreciate good food. What Ripert may be talking about is knowing and understanding a style of food as easily as you understand the language. This is useful but often leads to dogmatism and a lack of creativity.

[weinoo]

Conversely, take a look at some of the "name" chefs that garner great respect and/or great money:

Robuchon - Began his apprenticeship at a hotel restaurant when he was 15.

Jacques Pepin - family restaurant business.

Daniel Boulud - family restaurant business.

Wolfgang Puck - started his apprenticeship when he was 14.

Paul Bocuse - apprenticed with Fernand Pont.

Even Batali started cooking when he was very young.

[Peter the eater]

On the contrary, growing up with monotonous and unremarkable food could send you on a path of personal culinary enlightenment.

To suggest that one can never be an expert because they don't have the right family background is absurd and offensive.

[roosterchef21]

On the contrary, growing up with monotonous and unremarkable food could send you on a path of personal culinary enlightenment.

To suggest that one can never be an expert because they don't have the right family background is absurd and offensive.

That's me in a nutshell.

[Simon_S]

My initial response was that this is typically short-sighted elitist rubbish, and I probably would stick by that view.

However, the more I think about it the more I wonder. If you look at the world's best concert pianists, for example, 99% of them started when they were very young. Indeed, there's a commonly-held belief that unless you start very early, you're highly unlikely to develop the necessary physical attributes required (muscles etc.) I don't know if this is true or not, but it certainly seems to be the case that, without that early exposure, you're pretty much never going to make it to the *very* top flight. You can practise as hard as you want in adulthood, but it's a monumental task.

Are there physical attributes (e.g more sensitive tastebuds?) that you develop if you're exposed to a greater variety of good food from a young age? Is it possible that the process of refining your palate in adulthood is a similar uphill task to taking up piano at a later stage?

[gfweb]

Ripert makes the classical mistake of assuming that his experience is representative and even definitive. I grew up around truly bad food. Overcooked starchy unseasoned horribleness. I'd like to think that I "get it". I'm not offended by ERs pronouncement, just disagree. I can cite no names, but I'm sure that there are as many fine chefs who started late as those who started early.

Now it wouldn't surprise me if the truly gifted found their calling early in life, but that doesn't mean an early start was what formed the greatness.

[gfweb]

Dont forget, this is the same guy who said that women can't make mayonnaise during certain phases of the moon.

[andiesenji]

On the contrary, growing up with monotonous and unremarkable food could send you on a path of personal culinary enlightenment.

To suggest that one can never be an expert because they don't have the right family background is absurd and offensive.

I agree with this completely. I consider Julia Child a perfect example of this.

[CFT]

Doesn't sound like Gordon Ramsay had a brilliant start either: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Ramsay

[Special K]

People who grow up around good food are lucky, but those of us who grew up eating fast food every night of the week absolutely can "get it" later.

Andiesenji is absolutely right about Julia Child, who really, really "got it!" "All my mother knew how to cook was baking powder biscuits, codfish balls and Welsh rarebit," Julia once said.

gfweb is right, too, "Ripert makes the classical mistake of assuming that his experience is representative and even definitive." That'll happen when you find yourself surrounded by people who take your every word as holy writ. You start believing it yourself, and you start thinking up profound things to say. ER is only human.

[Fat Guy]

Even in the case of learning an instrument or language, the most you can say is that it helps to start early -- not that it's an absolute necessity. John Holt started playing cello at age 50. English was Joseph Conrad's third language and he didn't start until he was in his 20s and didn't write in English until his 30s. Not that being a chef is exactly like either of those things anyway. Also, if you had to grow up around good food, there wouldn't have been an American food revolution.

[Mjx]

I think growing up around good food, and people who genuinely care about it helps, but isn't enough; inborn perceptual and character traits almost certainly have as much to do with the capacity to appreciate and create good food as environment, and can can definitely compensate for a childhood of boiled everything/fast food.

I grew up in Italy, and food is a big deal there, which contributed to the way I feel about food and prepare it, but my boyfriend grew up in Denmark with the sort of cooking that makes you hate vegetables and fruit. A few trips to Italy, and his appreciation of food expanded dramatically; evidently, his tastebuds were just waiting for something they liked. And this isn't a passing vacation, mode, either, since he's completely responsible for the professional slicer in our kitchen, and the fact that we usually have something good to use it on (he's the guy who has to sample all the available prosciutti before making his selection). It hasn't had much effect on his cooking (he makes all the pasta, but that's pretty much it), but I doubt his lack of patience with recipes can be attributed to years of boiled cauliflower and spinach in cream sauce.

[ChrisTaylor]

There's a bit of nature vs nurture to it. I mean, part of what you're doing in educating kids about nice food is trying to get to make them good choices in the future, right? Feed them crap--lots of McD's, KFC, whatever--and they grow up, in theory, with the perception that that is 'normal'. There are exceptions, of course. Me. A lot of people who've responded so far. I have no doubt a strong background in food helps. Probably a whole lot if you're doing stuff that's rooted heavily in the tradition of a given food culture. But I, too, think that it's not that big of a deal. It's possible to grow up thinking a Big Mac is the most delicious thing and then, at some point in your adulthood or even childhood, stumble on the right television show, meal, book or whatever that acts as a gateway drug.

Of course, I've seen people grow up around a very strong Chinese or Italian food culture, learning how to make dumplings and whatnot as a kid, and any more, all they'll eat is Chinese or Italian. Everything is is bad. If it's not done the way it was done by my grandma in her village, it's wrong. Won't eat it. Won't cook it. Don't even want to hear about it. So I guess if your education says that only this narrow subset of things are worth bothering with, that's potentially almost as bad.

Too, had no idea about the Ripert/mayonnaise thing. That's hilarious. I love it when that sort of 'wisdom' pops up in cookbooks. I was amused by Marco Pierre White saying, in White Heat, that this or that dish is for men so women shouldn't eat it--instead they should eat this salad or whatever because it's delicate and beautiful and not offensive to his ideas of gender. Fruitcake.

Edited January 14, 2011 by ChrisTaylor (log)

[harrysnapperorgans]

I'm not sure about food, but with any skill set, starting young is a major advantage.

Case in point: In my professional life, I'm a musician.

I didn't touch a guitar until I was 14, didn't know anything at all about production, performance or leading a band until my late teens/early twenties.

Finally, after 10 years of hard slog, music is paying the bills.

My son Joel is 3. As a baby, he loved hitting objects, so I brought him drumsticks and a decent drum kit before he turned two. He plays drums for 2-3 hours a day, just purely because he loves it, and my wife and I encourage him in it.

He's learned a love and passion for music at a young age. If he does choose to follow in my footsteps, he'll have a major leg up on me. When he's my age, he will have been playing drums for 22 years!

The same applies to food, I think. I cook with Joel, (who loves it nearly as much as drumming) and ask him questions while I do. He'll grow up a pretty good cook, and hopefully will enjoy it and surpass my skills (that wouldn't be hard)

So I don't think you need to grow up around good food, but it's gotta help, right?

[Fat Guy]

Instrumental musicians who start early gain the benefit of a lot of muscle memory. That sort of benefit might show with respect to something like knife skills, where the repetition and experience are paramount. It's hard to be a good sushi chef without years of training and practice. But even there, where repetition and experience are so important to the outcome, I've never heard it suggested that you have to start as a child or grow up around great sushi. When you look at other types of cooking, and you think about the specific skills involved, it's hard to see how growing up around good food is necessary or even all that relevant.

[nickrey]

Having read Malcolm Gladwell's recent book Outliers, he argues that you need ten thousand hours of increasingly complex practice to reach the point of exceptional performace.

The thesis is interesting but simplistic from a psychological perspective. It doesn't take into account the intersection between natural ability and practice. You can have natural ability and never practice sufficiently to be an outlier. Or you can practice as long as you want but if the intersection between motivation, ability, and perception is not there, you're just not going to crack it.

We all know people who seem to benefit more from experience than others. Show them once and they're doing it. Show others five times and they still have trouble doing it. To become an outlier, you have to have a combination of raw ability, learning ability in that particular skill, tenacity, and exposure.

For some this will come later. For some earlier.

We've long since passed the notion that the brain locks into place after puberty. New neural networks continue to be created throughout life. There is thus no hard and fast rule that you have to be exposed to something at a young age to reach a certain level of proficiency. It's just that given the same ability, motivation, etc if you start earlier, you have a leg up in terms of experience over those who started later.

Edited January 14, 2011 by nickrey (log)

[daisy17]

I can't agree with the basic premise - I didn't grow up around excellent cooking but that hasn't dimmed my enthusiasm (or my brother's) for food. My father is the kind of guy to take a bite of something, exclaim loudly, and remember it years later, and so I grew up with a model for loving food, but the cooking in my house was far from stellar.

This is an interesting topic for me personally though. I grew up in a kosher home. We ate lots of non-kosher food outside of the home, and my dad loves and would order non-kosher ingredients, but I did not grow up in a kitchen where pork or shellfish were EVER prepared. There is no doubt that this has affected my relationship with food. Pork was an entirely uncomfortable realm for me for a very long time (see, e.g. my trip to Spain in 1999), and I credit my exposure to it and love for it now to an ex-boyfriend's passion for all things traif. I would not know how to cook a lobster if my life depended on it, and shellfish has never really made me swoon. I do cook pork now all the time and have stopped expecting to be struck down by lightning while doing so (whew). I strongly believe that familiarity with ingredients and a specific food culture as a child can certainly affect your love for and comfort with them as an adult.

[David A. Goldfarb]

My father liked to cook, and cooked pretty well, as did his mother, but it wasn't exactly haute cuisine, necessarily. Mechanical skills aside, I think I benefitted from growing up around people who had a love for food and had a sense for what tastes good and when something is done and what textures are desirable. Of course one can learn a foreign language later in life, but it helps to be a native speaker.

[heidih]

I think that passion and experience are much more influential than mere early exposure. There are some things that may be more intuitive if you grow up around the actual cooking. I garden and grew up with gardeners. Often I will do something and have another gardener ask me why I knew to do it. I usually can not answer directly- "I just know"- and that is the influence I think of the early and constant exposure. I am not a better gardener; I just have a different toolbag of experiences.

[annachan]

I grew up with my grandmother who's a wonderful home cook. She could cook just about anything. On the other side of the family, my grandfather, along with other family members, owed a butcher shop, a Cantonese BBQ joint and a few large Chinese restaurants. My sister and I went to fine dining establishments as kids. I grew up with a lot of good food, even though I had no idea when I was a kid.

My husband grew up in a small town in England. His mother prefers frozen vegetables to fresh. Fast food was part of his regular diet, the only places he really "dined out" at. He grew up with food that neither one of us will even want to eat again.

Somehow, we've both grown to really love food. It's getting to a point where we sometimes break down a dish and talk about the flavors and textures as if we're food critics.

I think more than another else, it's about passion. Our passion for food has driven us to seek out good food and experiment with cooking. Obviously we grew up very differently, but I like to think that we both "get it" when it comes to food. Interestingly, my husband "get it" more so than the rest of my family members when it comes to food.

Edited January 15, 2011 by annachan (log)

[Chris Amirault]

I think that growing up around a restaurant, or apprenticing at an early age, teaches how just how brutal, unforgiving, and insane the world of restaurants is. Guys like Achatz and Pepin clearly went into the game with eyes wide open.

As for me, I grew up in a New England Yankee household where things tended to come from boxes and cans, and most previously living things were cooked well done. I learned broccoli was bright green in college. I conclude nothing from this.

I think about the kids, families, and food question a lot, though, and this topic prompted me to start another one on a related subject here.