Grant Achatz Wins Beard Award!

[RyneSchraw]

In my opinion, it takes a lot more skill as a chef to get diners to appreciate the use of pine as an ingredient, as opposed to say fresh caviar, foie, or truffles. The latter are all widely-accepted luxury foodstuffs, but whats to say the former is any less viable as an ingredient? Or duck blood for that matter (for blood soup)? It's fine that you may not enjoy something, but to completely dimiss it as a joke seems a bit presumptuous.

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

It's fine that you may not enjoy something, but to completely dimiss it as a joke seems a bit presumptuous.

My point is who would want to eat something that tasted like a pine cone. It's the whim of a chef who's trying to create the uncreated. Even if I liked the dish--which wouldn't be the case--I would have a difficult time appreciating it as real cuisine. It's like Walt Disney breathing down Thomas Keller's throat, being nut-kicked by a Red Bulled Adria. It's too much, it doesn't appeal to me....

[Schielke]

Are you saying that you would categorically dislike the dish without even tasting it?

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

Are you saying that you would categorically dislike the dish without even tasting it? 

ONLY if it tasted like a romp through the woods on acid. Give me some nuances of reality, maybe some meat, something besides esoteric conceptualizations. Yes, as that thing stands I'd be choking.

[Schielke]

Achatz vs. Spencer!!!

Rumble in the woods!

Who will come out on top?

Who's cuisine will reign supreme?!!!!

[Schielke]

Oh yeah, also: the dish does have meat in it.

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

Oh yeah, also: the dish does have meat in it.

Hey that's a start. I realize that there are guys out there that want to make the Mona Lisa with a tail pipe, a slice of foie and a some Antillian moose dung. And that urge to come with something new, I believe, warrants a Beard Award or two but it won't go down into the annals of good food. This forest creation will never be duplicated and duplicated until it's a classic, and I don't think that's what HE is going for--a shame I think.

We've gone through this over and over again throughout the last twenty years, the skyscraper presentation, the deconstructed mole weirdness, the tex-mex, the veggie reduction Jean-Georges thing, Vietnamese-French fusion (again), sushi. In my opinion these trends are more inspired by boredom and a need to peddle new trends within the pages of trade rags. I guess Vongrichten is a BAD example since I love the way that guy cooks but you know what I'm saying. It's starts to veer away from edible accountability sometimes...and I think that's what going on here. It's a bad time for the music industry. I think the food industry is trying to follow suit...

[Schielke]

I understand what you are going for, but I feel we cant really talk much about the dish's relevancy until we experience it.

Ben

[Holly Moore]

I've always found it is much easier to intelligently comment on a dish once one has actually experienced it.

Edit: Cross posted with Schielke's post - same time.

Edited May 16, 2003 by Holly Moore (log)

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

I understand what you are going for, but I feel we cant really talk much about the dish's relevancy until we experience it.

Ben

I agree but stand firm. Does it devalue my opnion, sure. Do I care? Not really.

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

I've always found it is much easier to intelligently comment on a dish once one has actually experienced it.

Edit:  Cross posted with Schielke's post - same time. 

I think Chefg was crackin' wise, was he not...If there is an intention of getting me to feel like I'm trapsing through a Maine wood then I can assure you that I would certainly be guffawing pine foam through my nostrils...

But it could be world class pine, you're right...

[Holly Moore]

I agree but stand firm.  Does it devalue my opnion, sure.  Do I care?  Not really.

Interesting. It sure makes one's life rosier and more simple - not caring if one's opinions have value.

[Andy Lynes]

Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck has a pine thing going on at the moment. There is some discussion of it on this thread from page 5 onwards. It was a two part pre-dessert, first a little glass of Pine Sherbert Dib Dab which you sucked off a vanilla pod, then a Mango and Douglas Fir Purree, bavarois of lycee and mango, blackberry sorbet, beetroot and green peppercorn jelly. The pine flvour was pronounced in the first part in order to acclimatise the palate I was informed and highlight the subtle pine of the "main" dish.

I know where Spencer is coming from on this, and maybe pine won't be taken up on a wide scale, but although I disliked the dib-dab, the second part was very successful.

[Elissa]

My point is who would want to eat something that tasted like a pine cone.

oh oh oh: meeeeee

love pine trees. i've noticed the shorter needles smell a bit spicier, the longer ones more sweet. you?

Edited May 16, 2003 by lissome (log)

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

I agree but stand firm.  Does it devalue my opnion, sure.  Do I care?  Not really.

Interesting. It sure makes one's life rosier and more simple - not caring if one's opinions have value.

It really does...It's liberating...Why should I really care about opinions anyhow? I already know most people here think I'm a crackpot, loud mouth, bridge burning, false prophet doofus berger. So really I've got nothing to lose, no one to schmooze into a free meal, very few who'd stick their publishing tied necks out to take me on (thanks to those who've been brave enough to help me out).

Pine, like in Pinesol, like in Christmas trees, like in car fresheners? Why do that to food? I don't get it. You want to have a walk down memory lane, go for a walk in the forest, clean your floors maybe. I could probably take some pine essence, trick it out in some beurre monte, spread it on a piece of nice brioche and call the fuckin' thing brioche avec beurre du pine, and it may actually be edible, but I hope someone like me would slap me back to reality with a meat mallet. You can make anything edible, just dunk the shit in some butter. It's stupid, and an immature world view of cooking. It may be a valid art form to some, and it probably is, but that ain't food. Food is not art. Food is flavor, comfort, memory, experience. It's not just experience. Some people on here have a hard time assimilating that.

[Schielke]

I rather like you, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself.

As for the pine: In theory I can easily see how it can be flippantly dismissed, but (again without tasting the dish or even hearing the recipe) I dont think that untraditional ingredients should be written off at face value. Perhaps there really is something to pine that can enhance the enjoyment of a dish. I do like gin afterall.

Ben

[tan319]

...that's what going on here.  It's a bad time for the music industry.  I think the food industry is trying to follow suit...

As someone who not only has considerable experience in the music industry, but who is also cooking because the music industry IS so fucked up right now, I can assure you the food biz is in much better shape.

This isn't the 1st time someone used pine as a flavor element. The chef from painters row restaurant in Chicago, I believe, , I wish i could remember this from a great chefs show, was roasting shitakes over pine needles 10 or more years ago. Douglas Rodrieguez roasts goats and pigs over Eucalyptus wood.

I'm glad these guys are going for something different. And the best of them are going to be remembered, just like bands and artists.

Adria, Achatz, they've cooked all the stuff you dig. Achatz was your man Kellers right hand man, what's he going to do, copy him? He's in the process of forging a new thing, it will fall flat or roll forward.

With the Beard award, it looks like the latter to me.

Good luck to him and to you too.

Don't clench your buttocks so hard, dude!!!

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

...that's what going on here.  It's a bad time for the music industry.  I think the food industry is trying to follow suit...

Adria, Achatz, they've cooked all the stuff you dig. Achatz was your man Kellers right hand man, what's he going to do, copy him? He's in the process of forging a new thing, it will fall flat or roll forward.

With the Beard award, it looks like the latter to me.

Good luck to him and to you too.

Don't clench your buttocks so hard, dude!!!

Winning a Beard Award is no indication to me that people can sustain a movement through Martian-like cooking. Just like winning an academy award is no indication that one can act. Keller cooks brilliant takes on classics, nods to tradition, albeit tweaked into modernistic terminology. And shit, Adria is the third pillar in my shrine. I love that guy: brilliant, humble, slightly mad, and not financially motivated. To be fair to chefg, he has worked long hours with Keller, probably knows more about the guy than anyone on eGullet and has done a short stint with Adria, so he can't be totally crocked full of the shit of youth. But some of these forward thinking moves will prove to be teflon in their holding power. You watch. But until then I will take what I deal out. And I do, in PM.

[Andy Lynes]

Adria is the third pillar in my shrine.  I love that guy:  brilliant, humble, slightly mad, and  not financially motivated.

Everyone is of course financially motivated to some degree or another, but you may be interested to know, if you didn't already, that Adria has some interest in the NH Group of hotels. The website says that he has "joined them" and also that he is consultant to the group. I had heard that he actually has some financial stake in the company. Perhaps others could confirm one way of another. This is in no way intended as a criticism of Adria, but mentioned just to contextualise Spencers comment.

[tan319]

...that's what going on here.  It's a bad time for the music industry.  I think the food industry is trying to follow suit...

Adria, Achatz, they've cooked all the stuff you dig. Achatz was your man Kellers right hand man, what's he going to do, copy him? He's in the process of forging a new thing, it will fall flat or roll forward.

With the Beard award, it looks like the latter to me.

Good luck to him and to you too.

Don't clench your buttocks so hard, dude!!!

Winning a Beard Award is no indication to me that people can sustain a movement through Martian-like cooking. Just like winning an academy award is no indication that one can act. Keller cooks brilliant takes on classics, nods to tradition, albeit tweaked into modernistic terminology. And shit, Adria is the third pillar in my shrine. I love that guy: brilliant, humble, slightly mad, and not financially motivated. To be fair to chefg, he has worked long hours with Keller, probably knows more about the guy than anyone on eGullet and has done a short stint with Adria, so he can't be totally crocked full of the shit of youth. But some of these forward thinking moves will prove to be teflon in their holding power. You watch. But until then I will take what I deal out. And I do, in PM.

yeah, you're right, awards don't really amount to much. I didn't really mean to imply that they did. They're a nice nod, that's about it. But any of us would be a bit stoked to get one.

But, perhaps it illustrates a point that Achatz isn't serving up crap, that his cooking and ideas taste good, that he's solid.

[Steve Klc]

Spence--what you've revealed to me on this thread is that 1) you have a somewhat closed mind when it comes to food and 2) you're too willing to criticize something without experiencing it. That's too bad.

"I hope someone like me would slap me back to reality with a meat mallet. You can make anything edible, just dunk the shit in some butter. It's stupid, and an immature world view of cooking. It may be a valid art form to some, and it probably is, but that ain't food. Food is not art. Food is flavor, comfort, memory, experience. It's not just experience. Some people on here have a hard time assimilating that."

Here's what you might not be assimilating--when you--or any chef or diner--defines "what food is" for another chef you are closing yourself off inherently (and un-necessarily) to the experience and to learning or appreciating something in a different way. Taste it first and then decide for yourself whether it constitutes your definition of food.

Like Tony Bourdain you've embraced Keller, which is of course an easy, predictable hug, now open yourself up to the rest of the Tony experience of the past few years, as he got out and discovered high end cooking and the talent and differences at the high end that had managed to elude him during his career.

You say on this thread you love Adria, but you haven't revealed to me you have any actual appreciation for what Adria is about--just what you perceive him to be from media reports--because based on my exposure to Albert and Ferran and cooking from their books and recipes and embracing their techniques and thought process--Grant with this pine dish is doing exactly what they might do or what a Michel Bras might do with pine. End of story. It's self-defeating and self-contradictory to work yourself up into an extended public lather about Grant and this pine dish--especially since you've never tried it nor Grant's cooking. And conceptually, it's something at least one of your other pillars--Adria--would try in a heartbeat. So hero worship is all well and good, but if that worship is as blind as you seem pre-emptively judgemental and dismissive, I'm sad for you because you'll be denying yourself all sorts of new pleasures and experiences at the hands of others.

Try the dish, say whether it was good or not, and then say it's not food.

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

The Beard Awards mean very little to me. It says, "Hey I can network my way on to a stage." Maybe that's because I haven't won one, right? There are only enough slots for a few chefs, pastry chefs, sommeliers, restaurateurs, writers, busboys?, etc. A lot of great talent gets over-looked. Like who's fishing for the next Alfred Einstein Keller in Memphis? No one. When Drew Nierporent (a guy I have the utmost respect for as a man who cares about morsels and the cooks who prepare them) thinks about Memphis, what does he think about, what do most of you think about? Now, this isn't necessarily about me but I know as sure as I'm sitting here with a quiver full of venom that I could outcook alot of these punks but will never make it to the Beard Awards. The more cosmo cities always get the nods. To think the Beard Awards are a true guage of who's doing the forging out there is naive...

[Elissa]

For me, pine evokes walks in woods and forrests; the protection and intimacy trees afford; freedom midst nature's vastness and adventures in unpaved terrain. Pine smells new and old, warm and cold, unbridled, bold, evergreen and of comfort.

Newsflash: Pinesol ™ did not create pine. Some pine trees are 5000 years old. Of the roughly 120 species and subspecies known world-wide, almost all are found in the northern hemisphere; only one species (P. merkusii) extends about one degree south of the equator, in Sumatra. Pine grows from desert edge to rain forests, from sea level to treeline.

He may not have created pine either, even within culinary contexts, but it would seem that Achatz- with Louis Sullivan, FL Wright and Mies - makes Illinois a curious tourist's destination.

Edited May 18, 2003 by lissome (log)

[Chef/Writer Spencer]

For me, pine evokes walks in woods and forrests; the protection and intimacy trees afford; freedom midst nature's vastness and adventures in unpaved terrain. Pine smells new and old, warm and cold, unbridled, bold, evergreen and of comfort.

Newsflash: Pinesol ™ did not create pine. Some pine trees are 5000 years old. Of the roughly 120 species and subspecies known world-wide, almost all are found in the northern hemisphere; only one species (P. merkusii) extends about one degree south of the equator, in Sumatra. Pine grows from desert edge to rain forests, from sea level to treeline.

He may not have created pine either, even within culinary contexts, but it would seem that Achatz- with Louis Sullivan, FL Wright and Mies - makes Chicago a curious tourist's destination.

That's so cool...How did you get that tm in the there...That's really neat...

[bourdain]

Adria proudly demonstrated his spray-can scent- mister on a recent visit to his lab--an accompaniment to a wild mushroom dish he serves at the restaurant: It smells of "wet forest floor". I detected pine.