Personal Taste

[Steve Plotnicki]

Gavin - That'e because they didn't know that the French had figured out the right way to eat it .

Seriously, we have had many friends that insisted on taking their meat well done. For years I tried convincing them that it would be better rare. But my results were about as good as yours. But over 20 years and countless meals they have taken in my home, the occassion came up where the meat was served much rarer than they would have liked it to be served. And it was the type of social situation where it couldn't be sent back for a bit more fire. So they took a bite here and there and guess what, they realized that rare meat was juicier. So while they still won't take it rare, they now at medium, maybe even slightly rarer than that instead of "burn the hell out of it" degree of doneness they used to eat their meat at. I wonder if there isn't some authority on this point? What is the history of meat being cooked well done, and when did it change to rare and who is responsible.

J.D. - Very well done. More verses indeed. But I'm not proposing forcing anyone to eat it other than the way they choose to. But I am wondering (as Adam Balic tried to ask, but woefully ) why people would refuse to pay money for a bad opera singer but would gladly pay a hefty sum for an overcooked steak? How come society hasn't imposed (by teaching) similar rules about dining?

[Fat Guy]

Because everybody eats, but only a minuscule percentage of people ever gets exposed to opera?

[Steve Plotnicki]

That's not true. Everybody has seen the movie "Pretty Woman" and everyone has heard the aria from La Traviata that is in it. If the version of the aria they used was sung by a singer who sang off key, everyone would know it and it would screw up the entire ending of the movie. How come we aren't taught to think of steak the same way? Or is off key singing more more obvious than burnt steak?

[hollywood]

That's not true. Everybody has seen the movie "Pretty Woman" and everyone has heard the aria from La Traviata that is in it. If the version of the aria they used was sung by a singer who sang off key, everyone would know it and it would screw up the entire ending of the movie. How come we aren't taught to think of steak the same way? Or is off key singing more more obvious than burnt steak?

I seriously doubt that everyone would know it. In fact, I had totally forgotten this aspect of the film.

[foodie52]

Two things....

I think our palates undergo a continuing education from the moment we are born. Some of us were lucky enough to be raised in families where food was celebrated and cooked well. I have fond memories of my mother's roast chicken and cabbage rolls. Perhaps whenever I eat those particular foods, I am subconsciously comparing them to her cooking? Ergo, my food standards are something I can't very well change without conscious effort.

Secondly, I'm really glad that there are lots and lots of people out there who don't have a clue about good food and , besides, think that Hooters is gourmet stuff: makes it easier for me to get reservations at the good places!

[lizziee]

"The real question that we are trying to crack is why can't we convince the people that like it well done that a rarer steak tastes better? "

I think the reason it is so difficult to change someone's mind about food is that eating is something we all do. It is egalitarian because everyone eats and since everyone eats, anyone can be a critic. Most people's criticism tends to center on what they like to eat. This sounds simplistic, but I honestly think it is that simple. Many people don't feel comfortable judging opera, ballet or classical music. But ask someone what they thought of their last meal, be it home cooked, at McDonald's, at Sizzler, at the local Italian, Chinese or Thai restaurant and there is absolutely no hesitancy in voicing an opinion. A four year old child is just as vocal about their preferences as a 50 year old gourmand. It is this "we are all equal because we all eat" quality that allows the "since we all eat, we can all have an opinion."

I am not weighing in on the rightness or wrongness of the opinion, only why food is not judged in the same way as "other arts." Of course, I am in favor of the educated palate, but for most people "good food" means what I like and "since I eat and you eat, I know as much as you."

[LaNiña]

People pay good money for bad opera all the time. There is very little truly excellent singing these days. Very few people, even opera-goers, know real quality singing from mediocre singing. Just like very few people, relatively speaking, know good wine from mediocre wine, good food from mediocre food, etc.

[Jonathan Day]

There are at least three strands to this debate.

The first is about cultural relativities. I was once taken to a performance of Chinese opera by a friend who knew I loved opera and was a connoisseur of the Chinese variety. The troupe was famous.

To me it sounded a bit better than cats making love on a garden wall, but not by much. I could not understand the language or the music. Perhaps I could have learnt it after many years of study. But I won't say it was "worse" or "better" than a great performance of Rheingold. Just different, though in a way I could not appreciate.

The second is that even within a distinct cultural genre there are genuine differences in view even amongst the connoisseurs. Look at the arguments over 3 star Paris restaurants. Some opera lovers believe that The Marriage of Figaro should be conducted at a fast clip, others prefer a more langorous interpretation. That last word is a useful one. Does Plotnickiism allow for interpretation? Just how rare should a steak be cooked?

The third and perhaps most interesting question is why our preferences for food are so immediate and strong that many refuse to allow that tastes can be learned. Here I am a partial Plotnickiist in that I believe there is enormous scope for deepening and broadening one's horizons, not just to appreciate French cookery and wine but to get to enjoy ducks' tongues, raw fish, bitter melons, durians...

My own guesses as to why many people refuse to learn about food:

1) We all spend a lot more time eating than going to the opera. Opera is in some sense optional, food is required for survival. It's in a lower rung of Maslow's hierarchy.

2) We first experience food as an infant, when we are less capable of being reflective about what we're doing. It is more immediate, more visceral. "Good" doesn't happen in the brain but in the body as a whole. Think of the first taste of food after you've been really horribly hungry for a long time. It is a different and more basic appreciation. It has (help! help!) a subjective quality of objectivity. It may be difficult to break through this.

Some American friends came to visit us in Japan. We were travelling in a rural area and staying in lower-budget places where it was difficult or impossible to find Western foods. Breakfast was, interestingly, the most challenging meal of the day for them. After a few weeks they would talk about their cravings for scrambled eggs, or buttered toast as opposed to the fish and rice and pickles we generally found. When we finally reached a larger town (Matsumoto) they spotted a McDonald's and rushed in for a hit of burgers and fries.

3) A lot of people resolutely refuse to learn about anything. They know what they like and they like what they know. Why exempt food (or opera, or literature) from this self-imposed restriction?

Alice Waters writes, somewhere, about her attempts to influence peoples' tastes, starting with children with the Edible Schoolyard project. She talks about Chez Panisse gently introducing newer and more adventurous foods and their menu broadening over time. For example, they once offered steaks and chops as a "backup" for customers who couldn't handle the no-choice menu they offered. No longer. She grew more confident and her customers more broad-minded.

What other ways are there to develop taste and appreciation for culinary traditions in adults? Perhaps an adult education programme could offer courses in gastronomy as well as cookery.

[Steve Plotnicki]

JD - Good points all. Let me ask you, why did you conclude the opera had merit, even though it sounded like cats making love on a garden wall? Because one of my big issues here (which we revisit in your third point) is that, and here's that awful word again, we are capable of looking at things objectively even when we don't like them. Secondly, your second point is like my second question in my response to Robert S. about Callas and Sutherland. We have passed a threshold and there is a range of acceptable answers. But if I might not offer a different way of looking at this point. Like I said to Wilfrid, when we go to the opera, we have no choice in how they sing an aria. Why do we not give chefs the same latitude for a steak? Are they not capable of deciding what the right degree of doneness is? Don't they know better than we do?

To me the mysteries of your third point have to do with the diner being in control for point number two. As you said, from the time we are babies we are pushing foods we don't like away from our mouths. So I am prepared to admit, and agree with you, that on a visceral level, food is *too personal* to be treated like things like opera and paintings. But in the same token, when we get older and acquire some maturity and objectivity (I know,) some people start eating with their heads as well as their emotions.

I think much of this comes down to your point about infants in control. It's just been updated to the diner and the chef. If we go back to my point about how chefs would feel about the appropriate degree of doneness, some diners have ceded control of this point to chefs, and others have refused. Even more so, the likelihood of someone allowing Roger Verge to decide what temperature their meat should arrive at is greater than allowing the chef at a place like La Coupole to decide. If I've noticed any major change in high end dining over the last 20 years, it's when ordering things like tuna steak or duck when they tell you the chef recommends it be done rare or medium rare. I've also noticed that over the last 5 years or so, they have become a little bolder and say that they serve it a certain way.

To me the interesting bit is in this chef/diner point and who is in control over dining (gee that sounds like a good new thread eh?) Because obviously if the dining experience was more like opera, or more like the museum where *they decide* which paintings are displayed, the dining experience would be more rewarding. Yet people demand, and this is true of even experienced diners, that the dining experienced be limited to their personal like and dislikes that they have formulated through what are often faulty means.

It is Jeffrey Steingarten who has to take credit here. In the first chapter of The Man Who Ate Everything, he remarks that he has learned that if you eat anything 10 times, you learn to like it. I think Jeffrey is right and we can call him the inspiration for P-ism. Because once there isn't an issue over whether we like things or not, the issue can become how we assess things and why we would assess them differently? And of course P-ism would say, other than there being a difference of opinion within an acceptable range, we wouldn't. We would all be in general agreement, providing you limit the sample group to people who have the ability to distinguish the difference (again, an entirely new and fascinating thread.)

[Jonathan Day]

Why did you conclude the opera had merit, even though it sounded like cats making love on a garden wall?

All I could conclude was that I couldn't understand it. I started with the presumption that it had merit within a particular cultural frame, since my friend was deeply acquainted with the genre. I was unable to formulate a judgement either way.

when we get older and acquire some maturity and objectivity (I know,) some people start eating with their heads as well as their emotions.

I agree with this and will remember this pithy and useful phrase. I think you are talking about the ability to stand outside oneself, to treat one's emotions as nothing more than another datum. In this sense a judgement can be somewhat "objective", i.e. depending on more than my immediate perceptions. Another judge could come to a different point of view, though, if she came from a different cultural matrix (Chinese opera example) or interpreted the tradition in a different way (Cabrales on Taillevent). This difference could emerge regardless of the level of mastery.

when we go to the opera, we have no choice in how they sing an aria. Why do we not give chefs the same latitude for a steak? Are they not capable of deciding what the right degree of doneness is? Don't they know better than we do? To me the interesting bit is in this chef/diner point and who is in control over dining

Marco Pierre White used to throw customers out of Harvey's when they asked for a change in doneness or seasoning. A restaurant is a commercial establishment in a different way to most artistic endeavours. I am a customer of a restaurant but a patron of the opera. The relationship is different. I agree that the best chefs are gaining confidence e.g. to leave salt and pepper off the table or to recommend a particular way of cooking meat. Even at the high end, though, they almost ask for the customer's approval of their recommendation.

Personally I wish there were more restaurants where you could walk in, agree a budget with the chef and ask him to produce a dinner with wines within that budget. No menus. To me this would change the nature of the experience, in a positive way. It does increase the stakes for the chef, because she has to take more responsibility for the diner's pleasure.

I have found that in some restaurants you can ask the chef to order for you, but most either want you to make choices or to approve, in advance, the tasting menu.

The act of handing a menu to the customer puts a lot of choice into the customer's hands. To then withdraw that choice around the matter of doneness would seem odd to many customers.

Another issue, of course, is that many customers have special requirements e.g. severe food allergies, vegetarianism, no pork, etc. This is not true for the opera. So there are practical obstacles to putting the experience into the restaurant's hands.

[Robert Schonfeld]

I don't like baba ganouj. I've tried it, I don't like it. I am capable of understanding in the abstract why it is good, I just don't like it.

As JD(London) points out, food is a survival item first. There is also a whole lot of choice. So it seems to me that there needs to be a willingness to try something different. It can be taught that rare is better than well done. It has been taught. Most people know it. But some just don't give a damn. The statistical universe for food is everybody. That's a lot of people. We have to fairly assume that some who profess a preference for well done steak will try rare and eventually like it. Some won't. Some will never try. So it goes.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Personally I wish there were more restaurants where you could walk in, agree a budget with the chef and ask him to produce a dinner with wines within that budget. No menus.

I have done this any number of times with success, most notably at Nobu, where omakase is part of what they do.

But even when putting yourself in the chef's hands, it is fair, I think, to tell the chef that I don't want any baba ganouj, or, in the case of Nobu, red fish eggs, because they disagree with me (aqdmittedly a separate issue).

The experience of a high end meal is different than the very much broader idea of teaching everyone that rare steak is better. It is reasonable to accept the chef's intentions, reserving, however, the right to avoid foods one dislikes.

I have an image of a restaurant with a sign in its window: "If you don't like baba ganouj, don't even come in here."

[Toby]

Some people (and I'm assuming it's all of us here) have a passion for food, where the idea of food consumes us as much as we consume food. Where does this passion come from? I don't know. I woke up one morning when I was 16 and wanted to know everything about food. Other people, for whatever reasons, don't. People who are passionate about food are going to be much more open about trying everything, because it's exciting. (I think the passion would usually comes first, and then the curiosity (cerebral).) For people who don't have that feeling, new foods or new preparations can be scary.

Actually, too much passion can be scary. MFK Fisher has a wonderful story of wandering into an out-of-the-way country restaurant in France where she's the only diner. The server, a young woman, is so passionate about the chef's cooking, that she keeps on piling on dish after dish, until you begin to fear that MFK Fisher will never escape.

[hollywood]

The statistical universe for food is everybody. That's a lot of people. We have to fairly assume that some who profess a preference for well done steak will try rare and eventually like it. Some won't. Some will never try. So it goes.

Crossculturally, steak may not be the best example. I was having my hair cut the other day by a lovely woman of Persian Armenian extraction. She was kind enough to serve me two delicious pastries she had made. Great stuff and light. Later we got into a discussion of her problems in ordering steak out. She has ordered well done but doesn't find it to her liking. Culturally, I think she is from the kill all the germs school. I ended up suggesting that she try ordering medium well.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Good points being made by all. First, I think that the most recent responses do a good job of supporting P-ism which is, not everyone is capable of knowing or caring about good food. Just like not everyone is capable of being a curator of an exhibit at a museum and not everyone is capable of appreciating that exhibit. This gets to my point about how experts, or connoisseurs, or an elite, however you want to term them make decisions that need a special group of people to make. It is irrelevent whether the general population takes part or advantage of those decisions. They can choose to if they like and avoid them if they would rather not. But would any of you argue that art, music, literature and fine dining are constantly being propelled forward without any significant help from the masses?

As to JD's last point, you see I mostly allow the chefs to choose my meal at this point. It isn't true 100% of the time, but at the better restaurants it's probably true 50% of the time or even more often. Doing it has completely changed my perception about the ritual called dinner. I might also add, that the ability to bring my own wine to a restaurant has unshackled my dinners in many ways. Quite often a group of us go to a restaurant with a number of bottles that have been chosen in advance and the chef cooks to the wines. That aspect of it has totally changed experience of dining for me.

Case in point, last month 6 of us organized a dinner at Craft. All six people are pretty serious wine collectors and collectively we showed up with 15 bottles of wine. Tom and Marco were out of town opening Craft Steak but had left word with the sous chef that we were coming. When we sat down, we talked through the meal with the sommelier, just to organize in what order the courses should come. All we said was raw fish, charcuterie, warm fish and then meat and which wines we were going to drink with each course. Well they served us a minimalist masterpiece with the highlight being a thick chunk (of maybe 3-4 inches, from the tail I think) of Alaskan King Salmon. This intelligent choice was explained to us after the meal by the sommelier who said that when they saw how much wine was there, they decided to keep the amount of food to a minimum. But their ability to make our experience be a great one didn't end there, because someone graciously brought a bottle of 1978 Ponsot Clos de la Roche to the dinner and the kitchen nailed it that salmon was the right thing. In another place they could have served skate.

Robert S. - You have to go see Ali at Kebeb Cafe. He makes a great baba ganouj topped with sprikled zatar that I bet you would enjoy. It's different than other babas. It isn't as wet. He must squeeze the water out of the egglant slices before cooking. Although I will admit that it isn't as good as the hummus is. But your comment about accepting the chefs directions while reserving for your dislikes is right on the point. After all, eating is a matter of balance. And preference and the *right way to eat things* need to be balanced.

Hollywood raises the issue of eating habits being left over from the days when people felt that meat wasn't clean. How much of our perception of foods and how we order them is based on myths that aren't or were never really true?

[Robert Schonfeld]

hollywood, were these by any chance filled with seasoned ground meat, lamb, perhaps? the empanada/sambusek is probably a much better cross-cultural example than steak. I suppose the debate there would be over fillings and seasonings.

[Fat Guy]

Food is also bundled with a host of other issues. Steak is a good example of this: Some people don't like being reminded that they're eating an animal, and some people think that by cooking meat to well-done they will be protected against disease (this is actually true in the case of many micro-organisms, though not all). I have a feeling that if you ask people who like well-done steak why they like it well-done, you will very rarely get the answer "Because I like the taste better." You will be far more likely to hear that well-done is a choice made in reaction to something else.

Trying to treat dining as opera is going to get us nowhere. Dining is not opera, nor are the two endeavors remotely analogous. Dining has -- and should have -- its own set of rules.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"Trying to treat dining as opera is going to get us nowhere. Dining is not opera, nor are the two endeavors remotely analogous."

What do you mean, I always dine at the opera. Don't you?

Seriously, where dining and opera meet is on the issue of whether a chef is a performer or a servant. Sorry if the choice of the word servent offends anyone but I couldn't think of another word. And I'm not proposing that chefs be allowed to run amuck, but, culturally we treat chefs as if they are working for us, instead of creating for us. And I think it's fair to say that this aspect of our culture works to our detriment.

[Fat Guy]

Have you done the dinner-during-intermissions at the Met thing? Oh, man, what a riot. If I haven't already posted something about it -- surely I must have, somewhere -- I will.

[Varmint]

I have a feeling that if you ask people who like well-done steak why they like it well-done, you will very rarely get the answer "Because I like the taste better." You will be far more likely to hear that well-done is a choice made in reaction to something else.

The typical answer is that they eat it well done because that's the way they've always eaten it. My four children, the oldest of whom is 8, complain if I overcook the meat. They certainly don't have the most discerning palates; they just get fed rare and tender cuts far more often.

[Varmint]

Have you done the dinner-during-intermissions at the Met thing? Oh, man, what a riot. If I haven't already posted something about it -- surely I must have, somewhere -- I will.

Please do. My in-laws fly up to the Met for the Saturday matinee about 8 times a year, and they have talked about grabbing a bite to eat during the intermission. Granted, that's a lot different than running over to Picholine to grab their cheese course, but your story sounds interesting.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Dining has -- and should have -- its own set of rules.

In relation to Steve's point that diners should be taught that rare steak is better than well done steak, what are the rules?

I don't like rules. I do like customs and traditions, though.

[Fat Guy]

what are the rules

Choice is a big one, and it's a major factor that differentiates dining from all these performance- and studio-art endeavors. The dining experience is an interactive and individualized one. It is not a passive viewing of a performance or artwork. Although I appreciate omakase as a choice, it would be the death of the restaurant industry to make all restaurants like that. That would be the case in France as well as anywhere else. And I don't see how it would make anything better.

[LaNiña]

Just a note about Ali's baba ganouj - it varies wildly from visit to visit. Sometimes it's sublime, sometimes it's inedible. I think it depend on the mood of his helper guy.

[LaNiña]

what are the rules

Choice is a big one, and it's a major factor that differentiates dining from all these performance- and studio-art endeavors. The dining experience is an interactive and individualized one. It is not a passive viewing of a performance or artwork. Although I appreciate omakase as a choice, it would be the death of the restaurant industry to make all restaurants like that. That would be the case in France as well as anywhere else. And I don't see how it would make anything better.

But I know lots of people for whom the dining out experience is a passive one. They order, it arrives, they eat without comment. They wouldn't dream of requesting anything special or variable. I'd bet that most people are that way.