wd-50 2004 - 2007

[ckkgourmet]

Perhaps this is an opportunity to write something about our approach to avant-garde food. I have been thinking about this topic lately, since I ate at Gilt last week, and I have begun to spin out a few ideas on these matters. I’m wondering—and perhaps this is common sense to everyone besides me—whether or not we need to approach avant-garde food in a different way than we have been. I certain think I need to do so, given what I am learning in this discussion! I wonder whether the problem isn’t just a matter of inconsistency of preparation or invention (which is indeed frequently the problem at Gilt and WD-50—you can see what I say about both in that strand). Indeed, I wonder if the real problem isn’t our approach and sensibilities as intelligent and sophisticated diners (as we all are, I think).

It seems to me that avant-garde food might as well be more explicitly compared to other avant-gardes art (isn’t this the point of the name?). Part of the point of avant-garde art is, obviously and fundamentally, that it is set in reaction to that art that has preceded it. Thus, Impressionism, Cubism, and Dada were all attacks at the artistic establishment of 19th century and early 20th century Paris. The important thing to point out, however, is that none of these reactions were utterly independent of what went before them. They were, in fact, utterly dependent on tradition. Without tradition, their sensational postures would be without meaning. You can’t stick a moustache on the “Mona Lisa” like Duchamp did without knowing what the “Mona Lisa” stands for or represents. The new meaning of the work is intrinsically linked, although in disagreement with, the earlier work. For those who know something about literature, Harold Bloom talks about matters related to this one in his “Anxiety of Influence.”

In the same way, I’d submit that avant-garde cuisine can be unappetizing for even the most seasoned and educated diners. I am talking here of people of huge refinement who do not always connect with everything last new dish produced. This is absolutely natural. There are cases when all of us—and people much more experience than me—simply do not “get” something. I didn’t “get” several things at Gilt last week. But I also suspect that means I should go back and try things again and attempt to adjust myself to the chef’s special vision of food. It is perhaps only after understanding the overall picture that I might understand the food better too.

If I had had any of the dishes that u. e. tried the other day, I might be able to help throw some light on what went wrong for ulterior epicure. In other words, I might be able to discuss whether I thought the problem was with preparation or with getting to know WD’s cuisine. In my many meals at WD-50, I have had a few disappointing ones. Therefore, I happen to think that u.e.’s reaction to WD-50 is entirely legitimate because WD-50 can be, occasionally, inconsistent. But I also submit (humbly) that u.e. should go back to WD-50 and give Dufresne another chance. I think at least one part of u.e.’s issue at WD-50 was, in fact, his/her lack of experience of the Dufresne’s cuisine--his very independent, contrarian “voice.”

Sometimes inconsistency is inconsistency. Other times I think the inconsistency is actually the fault of the diner: a failure of appreciation. As an issue of fact, it is sometimes very hard to say with food whether the “taste” of the meal is wrong or the _taste_ of the gourmand is off. What I mean is that we will have a harder time setting a control-like standard for comparison in food than we do in other realms of aesthetic experience (like the recording of a pianist for instance). We cannot preserve a dish of food so that we can go back again and again and check it out in order to determine its relative distinction, like one might simply stick the same CD of Horowitz playing a Chopin Etude back into the CD player and check whether we think it better or worse than another recording. In other words, there is a certain limit imposed by the ephemeral nature of food that makes it hard to go back and judge merit. Was a “bad” dish badly prepared or were we unprepared for it?

The fact that food is a transient experience that cannot be permanently recorded beyond the level of a “score” (you cannot do more than describe the preparation, a very incomplete method, or photograph the result) means that it is harder for us to get to know it and retain it. On the other hand, it means perhaps that we cannot study our experience of a dish to the degree we would like, especially at a restaurant where change is part of the idea.

I have had several "classic" WD-50 dishes (when they stick around long enough) that are great on some occasions and not so great on others. One example is the corned duck appetizer. I had it once and thought it amazing. A second time, it didn't do anything for me. Occasionally a “classic” will be paired with something it wasn't the last time around, throwing one's expectations of a known dish entirely off. This causes one to have to reconsider the dish entirely, and sometimes one preferred the previous preparation. Perhaps this means that the first interpretation was superior to the latter, but I would also venture to submit that we are not all equipped to know right off, just as people are not always equipped to hear an original interpretation of a favorite piano concerto if we have decided that we love another one that is entirely different. In my experience, aesthetic reactions are very much founded in memory and expectation. I am proposing here that avant-garde food is different than other varieties of cuisine in so far as it plays directly against memory and expectation, sometimes to immediately compelling effect, and sometimes to disappointment. And, indeed, sometimes the experiment merely flops: the food sucks, period.

But this very situation makes evaluating an individual invention extremely difficult. I wonder if we can't indeed guess (for I don't know for sure) that WD, like many other people, has bad days, and perhaps even quite a few of them. Thus, I wonder if everything that WD does should be tried twice before evaluation. I know too that this seems unfair to diners, and I totally agree that when one expects (and pays for) a certain thing one should get it right the first time. But I also believe that what WD is doing is something extremely special and different, and unfortunately not subject to the general expectations and rules of normal cuisine. Indeed, we do not blame Mark Twain because half the stuff he wrote was crap, because the other half was a miracle. In the case of Twain, you couldn't have one without the other. The same thing might be said of numerous creative artists, including the likes of Tchaikovsky. Other artists are famously moody, and thus unable to work properly for long stretches of time. I know nothing about Dufresne, and moodiness in a chef would spell disaster for a restaurant, but variables enter art when it is being practiced at the highest levels, especially when creativity is part of the equation. I’m no Dufresne, or anyone special for that matter, but I know that I’m not always at the top of my form when I am asked to do something important and imaginative (cf the current writing).

We do tend to blame critics who do not understand avant-garde works that are over their heads. With the benefit of hindsight, we mock the likes of Aretino (the great poet who mocked Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” for its scandalous nudity and “difficulty”. Aretino was--it must be confessed--an opportunist). But perhaps the burden of approaching cuisine is, in fact, much greater than that facing a critic of a painting or recording. We cannot return to the experience of eating unless we make a second visit and order the same dish. If the dish has been better prepared, or has changed, we cannot know as objective fact the reality of our judgment in the past. This is the very reason why Sneakeater and I cannot, ultimately, know for certain whether or not we have grown by eating at WD-50 or whether Dufresne has become a different chef. Perhaps both things have happened, but it is very difficult (although perhaps not impossible) to determine the truth of the matter.

Given that I have enjoyed over 20 meals at WD-50, and in the vast majority I have been tremendously satisfied (hence the 20 + meals), I can't concede that the place is bad, indifferent, or overrated. Although occasionally inconsistent, I think that Dufresne is right most of the time, and if I don’t like something, I generally discover (often later) that I was wrong. u.e. may have much better sensibilities than myself, but that does not necessarily mean that one meal is enough—and thus I urge u.e. to try it again at some point, if s/he can bear the thought.

(This email, incidentally, is meant for more than u.e., who was simply the occasion—sorry, u.e.! and sorry for rambling!)

[tan319]

ckkgourmet, I think this is a really great post.

I submit that sometimes a chefs cuisine is going to rattle one's perception.

This hit it on the head for me from your post...

" In other words, there is a certain limit imposed by the ephemeral nature of food that makes it hard to go back and judge merit. Was a “bad” dish badly prepared or were we unprepared for it?"

With Chefs like Dusfresne, Mason, Liebrandt, even the Adrias, it's not as Black and White, is it?

Great stuff!

[Sneakeater]

Where I disagree with that is that I think food is different from, say, music. Music doesn't have to "sound" good, but food has to taste good. Which maybe means that I don't think that cooking can be a high art the way music or painting or sculpture is. At best, it can be an applied art, like architecture (which still gives you a lot of room for artistry, obviously).

So with architecture, on the one hand, you can have a style people aren't yet prepared to appreciate (and it can be their fault if they don't). But on the other hand, your buildings have to work, they have to function.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm prepared to say there are certain tastes and textures I'm not prepared for, which I have to grow into. But I'm not prepared to say I can support the notion of food that abandons all notions of sensual pleasure -- of tasting good. Which is quite unlike my view of music.

Edited April 3, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Pan]

I also think that's a wonderful post. There are two problems with going back to a restaurant to give it another chance: (1) The expense involved, if it's an issue to you; (2) As you point out, you can't step in a river twice, so the dishes will probably be somehow different the second time, in any case. If we had to actually purchase artwork in order to experience it, there would be a much smaller audience for it. Aren't we lucky it's much cheaper to have a meal than to buy a painting or sculpture? But still, money is an object for some of us. In an ideal situation, though, I find it hard to disagree with your argument. Whether I'd still feel that way after dining at WD-50, though, I have no idea.

[ckkgourmet]

Where I disagree with that is that I think food is different from, say, music.  Music doesn't have to "sound" good, but food has to taste good.  Which maybe means that I don't think that cooking can be a high art the way music or painting or sculpture.  At best, it can be an applied art, like architecture (which still gives you a lot of room for artistry, obviously).

So with architecture, on the one hand, you can have a style people aren't yet prepared to appreciate.  But on the other hand, your buildings have to work, they have to function.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm prepared to say there are certain tastes and textures I'm not prepared for, which I have to grow into.  But I'm not prepared to say I can support the notion of food that abandons all notions of sensual pleasure -- of tasting good.  Which is quite unlike my view of music.

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I see where you're coming from, and I totally agree that the food has to be "good". Might we say, however, that the diner can grow to like something, even if at first he does not like it? Like you, I wouldn't support a chef who made interesting but, ultimately, bad food. I would support a chef, if I could afford to do so, who made interesting food that I had to adjust to like.

[Sneakeater]

If we had to actually purchase artwork in order to experience it, there would be a much smaller audience for it. Aren't we lucky it's much cheaper to have a meal than to buy a painting or sculpture?

←

This comment is interesting in light of something Michael Kimmelman (I think) wrote in the Times on Friday (I think). He quoted a visual artist to the effect that painting has changed significantly owing to the fact that artists frequently paint now with the expectation that their work will end up in a museum rather than a private collection. Accordingly, the visual artist said, they frequently go for a quick effect rather than something deeper or more subtle; they don't paint as if the work will be lived with.

I'm not even trying to make a point here. I just thought it was notworthy that these ideas are in the air.

Edited April 3, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Sneakeater]

Where I disagree with that is that I think food is different from, say, music.  Music doesn't have to "sound" good, but food has to taste good.  Which maybe means that I don't think that cooking can be a high art the way music or painting or sculpture.  At best, it can be an applied art, like architecture (which still gives you a lot of room for artistry, obviously).

So with architecture, on the one hand, you can have a style people aren't yet prepared to appreciate.  But on the other hand, your buildings have to work, they have to function.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm prepared to say there are certain tastes and textures I'm not prepared for, which I have to grow into.  But I'm not prepared to say I can support the notion of food that abandons all notions of sensual pleasure -- of tasting good.  Which is quite unlike my view of music.

←

I see where you're coming from, and I totally agree that the food has to be "good". Might we say, however, that the diner can grow to like something, even if at first he does not like it? Like you, I wouldn't support a chef who made interesting but, ultimately, bad food. I would support a chef, if I could afford to do so, who made interesting food that I had to adjust to like.

←

Oh, absolutely. As I've said, I've come to change my opinion and like Wylie's cooking -- and I'm still not sure if I've moved over to him or if he's moved over to people like me. It's entirely possible that it's the former -- that I've come to appreciate and enjoy what he does.

The question your post leaves is, by what standard do you come to grow to like something? In this case, specifically, so-called "avant garde" food. Do you like this food in a different way than you like other food, or is it that with time you come to be able to like it the same way you like other food? Let me try to be concrete. Say that, at one point in your life, you don't like sardines, or tapioca, or caviar, or olives. Say that, over time, you come to like them. It isn't the case, in those instances, that you've changed your criteria for what constitutes "good food". It's more that you've come to see how those foods fit into your criteria.

In your big post, you seemed to be saying something different. You seemed to be saying that one doesn't so much develop a taste for avant garde cuisine, but rather comes to subscribe to new criteria for food. Analogies might be dada and conceptual art. You could argue that, with time, people came to appreciate cubism and abstract expressionism on the same terms as they appreciated older styles. But dada and conceptual art required you to subscribe to a whole new set of assumptions about what art was and what it did. You can't enjoy them sensually, the way you can enjoy even the wildest Pollack or de Kooning. You enjoy them intellectually, and pretty much only intellectually: it's a whole other thing.

So I guess I'm asking you, which way you're saying one can come to like avant garde food? At least provisionally, I can agree with you on the first way, but tentatively disagree on the second.

Edited April 3, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Sneakeater]

Not to be tiresome, but another analogy might be Sichuan food. At first, many people think it's just too spicy -- the hot part is all they can see (or I guess I mean, taste). But with time, you can get beyond that and see the balance of flavors (the "ma" and the "la" and the other stuff that people who know more than me impressively talk about). You see how it all fits together.

Now, I'd argue that this appreciation is more like coming to appreciate that de Kooning's work can function the same way Ingres's can. Not like getting Duchamp.

I also think this is what happened to me with Wylie DuFresne's cooking.

But I think it's different from realizing that there's a whole other set of criteria that can be applied to food (which is what's involved in getting Duchamp). As I indicated above, I'm provisionally skeptical that there is a whole other set of criteria that can be applied to food. Which is not to say -- I hope I've become painfully clear by now -- that you can't come to appreciate things you just didn't like before.

Edited April 3, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Sneakeater]

While I'm being tiresome, there's one more thing I want to say.

Until the mid-19th Century, visual and musical artists viewed themselves as craftsmen for hire. It never would have occurred to them to follow a vision that they didn't think (or more to the point, care) that an audience could follow.

That changed with the Romantic movement in the 19th Century. Artists' self-image changed. They created for themselves, to express theirselves. (This is obviously somewhat simplified.)

But along with the invention of the artist creating for himeslf came the invention of something else: the day job. Before desktops wiped away the job category, my law firms' wordprocessing departments were filled with young men and women financing their art or dance or music work.

Restaurant chefs aren't like that. Restaurants are businesses opened to make money. They're not primarily there for self-expression. It may that self-expression can coincide with something the market will want, but in a way that's a happy coincidnece. (Maybe pop music is a good analogy here.) In any event, unlike painters, restaurant chefs can't just follow their muse and ignore what a substantial number of people will want to eat. Not if they want to stay open.

I guess I'm trying to say that restaurant food will be able to be truly avant garde, in the current sense, only when chefs cook in restaurants for love and do something else to support themselves. Maybe wait tables.

Edited April 3, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[ckkgourmet]

Sneakeater,

You've definitely got me thinking. You are saying that there are two ways of expanding one's aesthetic experience. I think you are saying that one is by expanding upon existing bases of experience and that the other means expanding the basic criteria for making aesthetic judgments more generally. Furthermore, you wonder whether I think the former or latter is applicable in avant-garde cuisine. I think, however, that we are often dealing with both.

I'm trying very hard to come up with an example.

[ulterior epicure]

Sneakeater,

You're post (excerpted below) reads like a Supreme Court ruling!!

So I guess I'm asking you, which way you're saying one can come to like avant garde food?  At least provisionally, I can agree with you on the first way, but tentatively disagree on the second.

I join Sneakeater in concurring in the first part of ckkgourmet's post and respectfully dissenting in the second.

ckkgourmet. Your points are all very well taken. Thanks for that thoughtful post with great observations. I will concede the following:

1. I may not be as familiar with Dufresne's "philosophy" or approach to food as you and others. Maybe I would have appreciated his food more if I did...

2. I don't think that my visit was plagued by an "off night" in the kitchen. I do know that Dufresne was not in. That being said, I don't fault any of the chefs. As I noted, the meats were all excellently prepared. Also, as I stated, I thought that all of the accompanying items, by themselves, were very thoughtful and ranged from good to very good. For these reasons, I suspect that my disappointment of WD-50's cuisine (at least, what I sampled) stems from a deeper fundamental disagreement in tastes.

edited to add: As I stated upthread:

Maybe I was mixing flavors and elements that weren't supposed to be...  But, overall, I was really turned off by the combinations that did happen, for one reason or another. Either "eating instructions" were not communicated correctly, or the dishes were just not to my (nor my companions') palate's liking, I'm sorry to say that WD-50 was a disappointer...

3. I will agree, as you accurately note, that tastes, preferences and appreciations can/do shift. Certainly, I will be the first to admit that my palate has grown more sophisticated, exponentially, over my many meals. I will also be the first to insist that my palate is ever-evolving. While I can't say that I've grown to like anything that I didn't before (which I can hardly count on two hands), I have certainly come to discover and appreciate different combinations that I never thought would work well together.

However, where I disagree with your post has been articulated, very well by both by "fellow bretheren," Pan and Sneakeater (at least, as of the last post of his that I've read ).

1. As Sneakeater noted, food should "taste good," where as visual arts doesn't have to eye-appealing or audio art has to "sound" good in order to be appreciated. These two forms of art can operate at a more intellectual level without compromising the appreciation of it. True, there can be a (very) cerebral element involved in eating that can enhance an experience - but when it all comes down to it, you could blindfold me and stick the most far-flung combinations of food in my mouth and I can tell whether I like it, dislike it, or am indifferent - regardless of the ingredients. You can explain why you decided to combine these ingredients all you want - but, in the end if it doesn't taste good, your intentions/motivations/philosophy won't win over my tastebuds.

2. ...

The question your post leaves is, by what standard do you come to grow to like something? In this case, specifically, so-called "avant garde" food. Do you like this food in a different way than you like other food, or is it that with time you come to be able to like it the same way you like other food? Let me try to be concrete. Say that, at one point in your life, you don't like sardines, or tapioca, or caviar, or olives. Say that, over time, you come to like them. It isn't the case, in those instances, that you've changed your criterion for what constitutes "good food". It's more that you've come to see how those foods fit into your criteria.

... 'nough said...

3. Re: revisiting WD-50. I haven't written Dufresne off. I have met larger disappointments in my dining days. In fact, I don't think I've ever completely written any one chef or restaurant off. But, as my fellow Pan notes, there are some borders that frame my dining capabilities... namely time, money and, of course, calories. If I'm going to spend my resources - especially the precious calories, on dining out, I will, of course, try to maximize the experience. My admittedly one encounter with WD-50 certainly did not encourage me to make such an investment anytime soon. The reality is that as much I try, I only get to hit NYC a few times a year. There are far too many places I want get to and only so many slots available. Yes, given a wide-open schedule and budget, I could certainly see myself revisiting Dufresne's cooking... but as for adding it as a regular must-do is something else. I guess it's nice to see a Modigliani or Duchamp in a museum, but I wouldn't bother hanging one in my house... you might, and that's fine.

Upshot: I don't discount Dufresne's creativity and talent. Certainly his following and success indicates that he has plenty of both. Although I respect him and his craft, I'm just not a fan... at least yet...

Restaurant chefs aren't like that. Restaurants are businesses opened to make money. They're not primarily there for self-expression. It may that self-expression can coincide with something the market will want, but in a way that's a happy coincidnece. (Maybe pop music is a good analogy here.) In any event, unlike painters, restaurant chef's can't just follow their muse and ignore what a substantial number of people will want to eat. Not if they want to stay open.

Or can they? I'd be interested in knowing how many chefs acquire "patrons" with big bucks who will back-up their restaurant aspirations. After all, cardinals and one emperor employed Mozart and Michelangelo had his popes...

u.e.

Edited April 3, 2006 by ulterior epicure (log)

[ckkgourmet]

Sorry to place another long comment, but in the spirit of a complicated and interesting discussion:

Here are some new thoughts in response to Sneakeater’s thoughtful comments. I’ve tried to define three categories (there are probably many more) of avant-garde food. I’ve spun these examples around my experiences at WD-50. I offer a few thoughts, all unbaked I confess, about what these categories mean for “culinary originality” in avant-garde food. But I want to agree from the first that I share the opinion that good food must taste good besides being "new". I don't think I meant to express anything else in my original big email, just to say that I think we have to constantly renegotiate the terms and conditions of good in our dining.

To pursue some art analogies for avant-garde food: I accept the idea that conceptual art, or Dada for that matter, engages us in a different way than, say, Abstract Expressionism. While Abstract Expressionism, and its main exponents like De Kooning or Pollock, can attract us according to traditional criteria, like color, brushwork, even composition, a piece by Joseph Beuys often cannot be judged in the same way. Dada and Conceptual artists challenged the very notions of the art itself, not only finding new means of expressing themselves in traditional media, but breaking from those media and placing them under new scrutiny. Thus Duchamp declared a urinal a work of art by merely staging it as such. By doing so, Duchamp opened up the definition of art in order to include other things, like his “found objects.” He was saying that art could be anything.

Perhaps the avant-garde in food does not need to ask this sort of question of itself. We’re not going to start gnawing on stones, for instance, claiming they are food. Food is not (or is not yet) a thing whose fundamental purpose seems to demand its own opening up, at least in so far as we do not need to question whether eating is a good thing to do (we need to do it to survive, and only occasional mystics think that surviving is besides the point). Dufresne is, however, like Duchamp or Warhol (as I’ve said elsewhere) because he does like to transform “low” food into “high” food (Category no. 1)—this is often most obvious in the pastry kitchen where, to take an example, carrot cake will be reborn as a loftier desert (and one of my favorites there). On these occasions, Dufresne (and his great pastry chef) are avant-garde in their attempting to open up the boundary between high and low cuisine. Sometimes, I would argue, we their patrons are unprepared for these sorts of inversions. We think it vulgar or we haven’t adjusted our oral (and mental) compasses. One might say to some of these dishes, “That’s not what I expected” and thus reject them. But this is not the category of avant-garde cuisines that fits the idea of “expanding the overall criteria that we judge and recognize good food by”.

Another level of originality might be the “new flavor combination” model (Category no. 2) where a combination is seemingly unprecedented by tradition or expectation. Sometimes these are immediately appealing, but often these are perhaps the hardest things to like. While the combination might be sanctioned by some very general concept like “sweet and sour”, for instance, the results are carried out with unexpected ingredients. We are not ready to have a candy-like sweetness combined in one of Dufresne’s famous foie gras combinations with the fishy sourness of an anchovy--but somehow the flavor works on us and we learn to like it. But I don’t know if even combinations of this kind might be said to take food to entirely new conceptual places, although they do depend on us making comparisons with other dishes. To take another example, this may be music with dissonance, but it hasn’t altogether renounced harmony and melody yet.

But harmony and melody are occasionally renounced (Category no. 3). Sometimes a dish is more conceptual than satisfying in terms of its flavor. I’d agree that in these cases I am not always able to come along with the chef. I suppose that I share your reluctance to give the chef total freedom to make unsavory but conceptually interesting things. I wouldn’t want to eat a “subverted” steak that was smothered in a purposefully yucky substance just because the chef thought that “steak” as a category was redolent with detestable and unwanted associations. That seems like an experiment more proper to the writer and essayist. In these cases, I’d agree with you that the chef (say Wylie is making a deconstructed “ants on a branch” or something) must still make his work appeal to us sensually, for if it did not, we would be unable to appreciate his point. Here I agree with both Sneakeater and u.e.

But the question is perhaps too easily classified as one between “good” and “bad” food. Great art can be disturbing. I’m not saying food should be. But I would say that some great food can be “difficult” and make us, perhaps, a bit “uneasy”. Pleasure can be defined, of course, in numerous ways. Sometimes the highest pleasures are those that seem to push pleasure to a whole new level. In his late years, Beethoven pushes the envelope on difficulty in order to make words that were more evocative than his earlier ones of spiritual depth by making them less accessible. I won’t engage in a full analysis, because I can’t, but the lack of accessibility perhaps made them seem all the more apart from normal existence. I’ve had an occasional chocolate desert at Alain Ducasse that I thought was difficult and even “deep” precisely because it seemed to press the seriousness of desert beyond normalcy and renounce all frivolity or easy pleasure. I cant' exactly explain why. Yet it was a monumental statement, not because it was “yummy” (although it was, I guess), but because it seemed to say “I am doing something with chocolate that you’ve never tasted before, I can make it serious, give it the demeanor of a noble serious thing, unlike other chocolate things. I am the god of chocolate. I am stronger, more powerful, and, because of that, I even make you think about what it means to be chocolate, what it means to be desert even."

Now, I dare say that food is not as eloquent as other arts, as Sneakeater says above. Perhaps its impermanence is one reason. But I also think that there is such a thing as food-based emotions, and that these emotions, founded in memory and recognition (we might frequently associate maple syrup with pancakes and mom, for example), can be manipulated by the highest chefs, like Dufresne, to recreate our experience of the world as an eaten thing. It’s true, we may never be able to respond in direct way to something like death by means of cuisine (as the “higher” arts are said to do), but I do wonder whether or not our own culture is now only beginning to witness how food can speak to deeper things than we have thought in the past.

There was a time, circa 1400, when painting was merely a craft and pragmatic thing, and not recognized as the equal to literature. It rose to new prominence after the introduction of treatises on painting by the likes of L. B. Alberti, Leonardo, and others who claimed for it a position amongst the nobler “liberal arts.” Maybe it’s time for food. Maybe you'll agree too.

[Sneakeater]

Or can they?  I'd be interested in knowing how many chefs acquire "patrons" with big bucks who will back-up their restaurant aspirations.  After all, cardinals and one emperor employed Mozart and Michelangelo had his popes... 

u.e.

←

That was kind of the point I was making. Generally, restaurant investors are just that: investors. They expect a return. They aren't funding somebody's vision. They're seeking a profit.

I can imagine a different model. I can imagine a chef with a significant cult following -- like, say, Paul Liebrandt -- attracting a bunch of rich followers to bankroll him irrespective of investment return.

But I don't know that it's happened yet.

Edited April 3, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[Sneakeater]

Sorry to place another long comment, but in the spirit of a complicated and interesting discussion:

Here are some new thoughts in response to Sneakeater’s thoughtful comments. I’ve tried to define three categories (there are probably many more) of avant-garde food. I’ve spun these examples around my experiences at WD-50. I offer a few thoughts, all unbaked I confess, about what these categories mean for “culinary originality” in avant-garde food. But I want to agree from the first that I share the opinion that good food must taste good besides being "new". I don't think I meant to express anything else in my original big email, just to say that I think we have to constantly renegotiate the terms and conditions of good in our dining.

To pursue some art analogies for avant-garde food: I accept the idea that conceptual art, or Dada for that matter, engages us in a different way than, say, Abstract Expressionism. While Abstract Expressionism, and its main exponents like De Kooning or Pollock, can attract us according to traditional criteria, like color, brushwork, even composition, a piece by Joseph Beuys often cannot be judged in the same way. Dada and Conceptual artists challenged the very notions of the art itself, not only finding new means of expressing themselves in traditional media, but breaking from those media and placing them under new scrutiny. Thus Duchamp declared a urinal a work of art by merely staging it as such. By doing so, Duchamp opened up the definition of art in order to include other things, like his “found objects.” He was saying that art could be anything.

Perhaps the avant-garde in food does not need to ask this sort of question of itself. We’re not going to start gnawing on stones, for instance, claiming they are food. Food is not (or is not yet) a thing whose fundamental purpose seems to demand its own opening up, at least in so far as we do not need to question whether eating is a good thing to do (we need to do it to survive, and only occasional mystics think that surviving is besides the point). Dufresne is, however, like Duchamp or Warhol (as I’ve said elsewhere) because he does like to transform “low” food into “high” food (Category no. 1)—this is often most obvious in the pastry kitchen where, to take an example, carrot cake will be reborn as a loftier desert (and one of my favorites there). On these occasions, Dufresne (and his great pastry chef) are avant-garde in their attempting to open up the boundary between high and low cuisine. Sometimes, I would argue, we their patrons are unprepared for these sorts of inversions. We think it vulgar or we haven’t adjusted our oral (and mental) compasses.  One might say to some of these dishes, “That’s not what I expected” and thus reject them. But this is not the category of avant-garde cuisines that fits the idea of “expanding the overall criteria that we judge and recognize good food by”.

Another level of originality might be the “new flavor combination” model (Category no. 2) where a combination is seemingly unprecedented by tradition or expectation. Sometimes these are immediately appealing, but often these are perhaps the hardest things to like. While the combination might be sanctioned by some very general concept like “sweet and sour”, for instance, the results are carried out with unexpected ingredients. We are not ready to have a candy-like sweetness combined in one of Dufresne’s famous foie gras combinations with the fishy sourness of an anchovy--but somehow the flavor works on us and we learn to like it. But I don’t know if even combinations of this kind might be said to take food to entirely new conceptual places, although they do depend on us making comparisons with other dishes. To take another example, this may be music with dissonance, but it hasn’t altogether renounced harmony and melody yet. 

But harmony and melody are occasionally renounced (Category no. 3). Sometimes a dish is more conceptual than satisfying in terms of its flavor. I’d agree that in these cases I am not always able to come along with the chef. I suppose that I share your reluctance to give the chef total freedom to make unsavory but conceptually interesting things. I wouldn’t want to eat a “subverted” steak that was smothered in a purposefully yucky substance just because the chef thought that “steak” as a category was redolent with detestable and unwanted associations. That seems like an experiment more proper to the writer and essayist. In these cases, I’d agree with you that the chef (say Wylie is making a deconstructed “ants on a branch” or something) must still make his work appeal to us sensually, for if it did not, we would be unable to appreciate his point. Here I agree with both Sneakeater and u.e.

But the question is perhaps too easily classified as one between “good” and “bad” food. Great art can be disturbing. I’m not saying food should be. But I would say that some great food can be “difficult” and make us, perhaps, a bit “uneasy”. Pleasure can be defined, of course, in numerous ways. Sometimes the highest pleasures are those that seem to push pleasure to a whole new level. In his late years, Beethoven pushes the envelope on difficulty in order to make words that were more evocative than his earlier ones of spiritual depth by making them less accessible. I won’t engage in a full analysis, because I can’t, but the lack of accessibility perhaps made them seem all the more apart from normal existence. I’ve had an occasional chocolate desert at Alain Ducasse that I thought was difficult and even “deep” precisely because it seemed to press the seriousness of desert beyond normalcy and renounce all frivolity or easy pleasure. I cant' exactly explain why. Yet it was a monumental statement, not because it was “yummy” (although it was, I guess), but because it seemed to say “I am doing something with chocolate that you’ve never tasted before, I can make it serious, give it the demeanor of a noble serious thing, unlike other chocolate things. I am the god of chocolate. I am stronger, more powerful, and, because of that, I even make you think about what it means to be chocolate, what it means to be desert even."

Now, I dare say that food is not as eloquent as other arts, as Sneakeater says above. Perhaps its impermanence is one reason. But I also think that there is such a thing as food-based emotions, and that these emotions, founded in memory and recognition (we might frequently associate maple syrup with pancakes and mom, for example), can be manipulated by the highest chefs, like Dufresne, to recreate our experience of the world as an eaten thing. It’s true, we may never be able to respond in direct way to something like death by means of cuisine (as the “higher” arts are said to do), but I do wonder whether or not our own culture is now only beginning to witness how food can speak to deeper things than we have thought in the past.

There was a time, circa 1400, when painting was merely a craft and pragmatic thing, and not recognized as the equal to literature. It rose to new prominence after the introduction of treatises on painting by the likes of L. B. Alberti, Leonardo, and others who claimed for it a position amongst the nobler “liberal arts.” Maybe it’s time for food. Maybe you'll agree too.

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FWIW, I think we pretty much agree with each other.

I guess if we both write things that are long enough, we end up in the same place.

[ulterior epicure]

I guess if we both write things that are long enough, we end up in the same place.

Despite the ramblings, I guess that brevity is still the soul of wit.

u.e.

Edited April 3, 2006 by ulterior epicure (log)

[ckkgourmet]

I guess if we both write things that are long enough, we end up in the same place.

But at least now we know how we got there!

Edited April 3, 2006 by ckkgourmet (log)

[tan319]

Or can they?  I'd be interested in knowing how many chefs acquire "patrons" with big bucks who will back-up their restaurant aspirations.  After all, cardinals and one emperor employed Mozart and Michelangelo had his popes... 

u.e.

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That was kind of the point I was making. Generally, restaurant investors are just that: investors. They expect a return. They aren't funding somebody's vision. They're seeking a profit.

I can imagine a different model. I can imagine a chef with a significant cult following -- like, say, Paul Liebrandt -- attracting a bunch of rich followers to bankroll him irrespective of investment return.

But I don't know that it's happened yet.

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I like this idea a lot!

I need some bankrollers like this!!!

Unless you're Emeril or maybe Mario, it's hard to make money in restaurants, high end ones, I mean.

Sorry, that's kind of a general statement, it's not quite that cut & dried but a restaurant like wd-50 or GILT at the very least are going to take some time to make money for people.

I would think wd-50 would before GILT because of ingredients, etc.

[ulterior epicure]

Or can they?  I'd be interested in knowing how many chefs acquire "patrons" with big bucks who will back-up their restaurant aspirations.  After all, cardinals and one emperor employed Mozart and Michelangelo had his popes... 

u.e.

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That was kind of the point I was making. Generally, restaurant investors are just that: investors. They expect a return. They aren't funding somebody's vision. They're seeking a profit.

I can imagine a different model. I can imagine a chef with a significant cult following -- like, say, Paul Liebrandt -- attracting a bunch of rich followers to bankroll him irrespective of investment return.

But I don't know that it's happened yet.

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Maybe Grant Achatz at Alinea? What about S. Starr's little bevy of chefs - Morimoto? Alfred Portale at Striped Bass in Philadelphia?

Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of these.

u.e.

Edited April 3, 2006 by ulterior epicure (log)

[ckkgourmet]

Or can they?  I'd be interested in knowing how many chefs acquire "patrons" with big bucks who will back-up their restaurant aspirations.  After all, cardinals and one emperor employed Mozart and Michelangelo had his popes... 

u.e.

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That was kind of the point I was making. Generally, restaurant investors are just that: investors. They expect a return. They aren't funding somebody's vision. They're seeking a profit.

I can imagine a different model. I can imagine a chef with a significant cult following -- like, say, Paul Liebrandt -- attracting a bunch of rich followers to bankroll him irrespective of investment return.

But I don't know that it's happened yet.

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Maybe Grant Achatz at Alinea? What S. Starr's little bevy of chefs - Morimoto? Alfred Portale at Striped Bass in Philadelphia?

Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of these.

u.e.

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I think I actually read somewhere that Liebrandt or another chef was busy cooking as a private chef for some enormous rich patron in London for a few years between restaurants. In many ways, the rich would enjoy an especially good connection, then, with the best and most innovative food! Really, it wasn't always different, in terms of access, in the Renaissance. Nobody except cardinals and high nobility were "tasting" Raphael's Stanze in the Vatican Palace back then.

Edited April 3, 2006 by ckkgourmet (log)

[Sneakeater]

Or can they?  I'd be interested in knowing how many chefs acquire "patrons" with big bucks who will back-up their restaurant aspirations.  After all, cardinals and one emperor employed Mozart and Michelangelo had his popes... 

u.e.

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That was kind of the point I was making. Generally, restaurant investors are just that: investors. They expect a return. They aren't funding somebody's vision. They're seeking a profit.

I can imagine a different model. I can imagine a chef with a significant cult following -- like, say, Paul Liebrandt -- attracting a bunch of rich followers to bankroll him irrespective of investment return.

But I don't know that it's happened yet.

←

Maybe Grant Achatz at Alinea? What about S. Starr's little bevy of chefs - Morimoto? Alfred Portale at Striped Bass in Philadelphia?

Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of these.

u.e.

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I think Starr expects ENOURMOUS returns on his restaurants. I think, if anything, he's in the business of exploiting famous names. I don't think he's bankrolling creativity with no conern for profit. I think he's the LAST guy who'd do that.

[ulterior epicure]

I think Starr expects ENOURMOUS returns on his restaurants.  I think, if anything, he's in the business of exploiting famous names.  I don't think he's bankrolling creativity with no conern for profit.  I think he's the LAST guy who'd do that.

Ahhh. Right. Agreed.

u.e.

[Sneakeater]

Hey, and we did it with SHORT posts!

[ulterior epicure]

Great minds think alike.

I wonder if great stomachs eat alike too?

u.e.

Edited April 3, 2006 by ulterior epicure (log)

[ckkgourmet]

  Great minds think alike. 

I wonder if great stomachs eat alike too? 

u.e.

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I think we've discovered that they don't!

[ulterior epicure]

I think we've discovered that they don't!

I think you're right! See you at WD-50 someday!

u.e.