Personal Taste

[Fat Guy]

Yes, but they order.

With a performance, you have two basic choices: Whether or not to go, and where to sit (which is mostly a function of how much you want to spend and your priority in seating assignment). In dining, the choice of where to eat is just the beginning. Sure, there are a few restaurants that offer a no-choice format, though even there the beverage choices alone are a major interactive component. But at most restaurants each individual or party creates a customized meal experience.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Fat Guy - You help to distinguish different types of dining experiences. I don't think anyone including me is proposing that choice from here on in be left exclusively to chefs. But again it's an issue of where lines are drawn and what exactly achieves the best balance. Even in Omakase there are levels of choice. You can go to Sugiyama and order the simplest menu and even specify that you want certain dishes. All fish or all vegetables would be an obvious one. But the highest expression of Omakase, and I think the word expression is an important point here which we will get to later, is *Chef's Choice, Best Quality." That also happens to cost the most money.

We need Robert B. to chime in here because he raised this point in his El Bulli post about chefs being performers serving tasting menus. A level down from that is a more interactive approach like my Craft example. Then there are people who insist on doing the ordering. Being in charge of the meal rather than relying on the chef and staff. Certain people believe that what the staff recommends is the food that they can't get rid of. That strikes me as a similar myth to the one about well done meat killing all the germs. Ultimately what makes food different than opera is the same point I believe Sandra made in the food stigma thread. Food touches your body, opera stands quite a distance away. So our relationship with it is more personal. But in the same way, as mature adults we should be able to get over those types of visceral reactions we have to it.

[Fat Guy]

Even with tasting menus, the experience is typically customized after your first visit in such a way as to place dining and viewing-of-performances in completely different realms. Take Nobu for example. You go to Nobu for the first time and you order omakase. I can tell you the exact meal you're going to get -- it's been the same for years. But when you return, you tell them you've been there before or they recognize you, and then you get different dishes. You can go to Nobu a hundred times and as long as they realize you've been there before you will never get the same menu even if you cede total control to the chef and express no preferences whatsoever. Pretty much every high-caliber restaurant in the world that offers tasting menus will do this sort of thing automatically for repeat customers unless it's one of those tiny places where they just don't have the ingredients on hand to be able to pull it off. (You will also find widespread disagreement even among educated gourmets as to the desirability of tasting menus.)

I suppose there are subtle variations evening to evening at the opera, but it's a totally different thing and it's not custom-tailored to the audience. In fact those variations are something the performers strive to eliminate. In theater I'm told some of the really great actors actually interact on a personal level with the audience in some mysterious way, but it's still a group experience.

I think it comes down to this: No matter how much respect you accord a chef and a restaurant, there's no escaping that a chef is -- to adopt your terminology, with which I agree -- a species of servant. Even the best chefs in the world, or perhaps especially the best chefs in the world, realize this and are at peace with it. Of course composers and such are servants of a sort too -- so are lawyers, doctors, and writers -- but chefs must serve in an interactive manner that composers, singers, actors, etc., don't have to deal with unless they happen to work at the improv.

[Fat Guy]

Varmint: I'm talking about the official dinner they actually serve at the Met during intermissions. It's really quite hilarious. They fax you a menu and you check off what you want. Then you eat your courses during each intermission -- they're waiting on the table for you as you sit down. It's basic lousy catered food, but the Met patrons seem to think it's the coolest thing.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Forget the opera. I'm asking about rules as they relate to Plotnickiism's thesis that diners should be taught certain things about food. Where do you stand on this, FG? Is it ok to have the steak well done (freedom of choice) or not?

[Steve Plotnicki]

Robert S. - How do you feel about pasta cooked until it's mushy? Risotto too. Forget about the red herring question of whether diners should be allowed to order and eat it that way. I'm talking about right vs wrong as a matter of aesthetics. The tuxedo with brown shoes.

[Jonathan Day]

This discussion has been sufficiently interesting and civilised that I am going to take the risk of introducing an economic theme.

I would not be prepared to "put myself in the hands of a chef" if I believed that she had no other motive than profit in opening the restaurant. This goes back to a theme I introduced in a post some time ago, and one that John Whiting has brought up in a different way.

The great restaurants, the ones where I would happily turn the choices over to the chef, are ones that started from a concept or an idea, and then figured out how to make the economics work. Perhaps it was a new expression of terroir. Perhaps it was a new set of techniques. Or perhaps it was Molecular Gastronomy. In any case it started with something other than money. The money was a means of making the concept work.

This "principle of obliquity" applies to lots of other pursuits. The greatest lawyers I know start with a focus on a particular kind of law practice and strive to achieve greatness in that. Billings, profits and the like will probably follow, but I don't believe for a second that these people devoted a lifetime to study and practice after a dispassionate calculation that this was a great way to make money. Similarly for doctors. And I believe that this applies more broadly to corporations, but that's another story.

But restaurants illustrate the point well. You don't need to spend that much time behind the scenes in a restaurant to know that this is a terrible way to live your life if your primary goal is wealth accumulation.

This is one place that the restaurant/opera analogy breaks down. There are restaurants -- probably the majority -- that try to operate purely as businesses. Even at the high end, if we define this by price, there are places whose goal is clearly to charge as much money and give as little as they can for the price. And hence the dreadful places often found in top hotels around the world.

Most opera singers and classical musicians will make mediocre incomes, and in some cases incur enormous expenses for instruments and travel. They do it for the sake of the art. A few make a lot of money. Similarly for writers. As Whiting rather sharply pointed out, all of us are spending large amounts of discretionary time writing essays in eGullet. We could be selling insurance in our spare time...

Fortunately, there are places where the restaurateur has primary goals other than money. That's the kind of place I am happy to go omakase.

Steve P: your recent experience at Craft sounds wonderful. I am assuming you know the restaurant and the owners well. Have you often done this at fine restaurants you haven't visited before (assuming that such restaurants exist)? How have restaurants in France reacted when you have brought your own wines?

None of this is to say that profit or wealth are bad things! May we all make lots of the former, keep lots of the latter, and give as much of it as we can to good causes.

[Fat Guy]

Robert S.: It's okay with me, for sure. I think if a customer wants a steak well-done the chef should go figure out a way to cook it through such that it doesn't taste like shit.

[hollywood]

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.

Actually, these were dessert pastries, but I seem to recall she makes bourek (?) as well. If the debate turns to fillings and seasonings, my response is: fill me up.

[Steve Plotnicki]

JD - I find any introduction of money in this conversation to be a red herring. Because the fact of the matter is that whether someone does something for money, or whether they do it for passion is irrelevent as long as the result is outstanding. Clearly if we could interview the great chefs of the world, we would find out that their motivations are properly balanced between passion and finances And I don't see how an emphasis on either makes their food any better. Now whether a chef who dislikes his job can make a delicious meal is another issue. Because most things artistic need inspiration that comes from a source other than a bank. As I've said in the past, food needs to have soul. That people choose to make smaller incomes in order to practice their chosen vocation while commendable, doesn't prove that greedy chefs that only care about money can't make good food.

As for lawyers, many of the young people that I meet today go to law school because they can't figure out what else to do. Getting a law degree or one from business school is becoming happenstance for an entire segment of society. I am intimately involved in this issue because the daughter of a cousin of mine who I'm close with, and who is sort of living with me for the summer is going to be a senior at a top U.S. university this year, after having spent her junior year at Oxford. She would very much like to go to jounalism school but the thought of making $30,000-$40,000 a year upon graduation isn't doing it for her. So she's studying for her LSAT's (law school exams) instead. And based on the type of test scores she's getting she will get into a top school and upon graduation, probably make in excess of $100k a year. So money very much dictates what we do with our lives.

If I may frame this principal a different way, I think people just want to be happy with their lives. And many people realize that having an income that supports the lifestyle they want to lead means that there are compromises you have to make. And as long as you are happy with those compromises then you should be entitled to the lifestyle of your choosing. And it's my experience that most people who are successes in business, whether they are performers, chefs, corporations etc., have acheived their success because they were willing to live with those compromises. And how much compromise is relative to how much talent you have. The world's greatest flamenco guitar player can choose his own repetoire and make people pay a large sum for the right to hear his choices. A lesser flamenco guitar player plays in the flamenco show on a cruise ship and he has no choice as to what to play. And so it goes.

Where Whiting is wrong, and where I think he diverges from you, and I'm not sure I know how to say this the right way, is that the way the market generally measures things is by money. I think that we are just stuck with that for now. And the "principal of obliquity" does not include the emotion of resentment as a valid one because the market doesn't see it your way. I believe it cuts off right there because right in your example about lawyers you say that the money follows the passion. I couldn't agree with you more. But with the one gigantic proviso being, you are happy allowing economics to be the ultimate measure of success. Or, are content with some other non economic measure of success that is self rewarding. But the principal doesn't reorder the world according to your sensibilities. And what proved this point for me are the numerous times that critics reviewed recordings I released and they highlighted certain aspects as "artistic" when they were calculated by the artists and recording company to make things a bit more commercial. Had we all been less openminded about it, that "great art" might never have been made.

But trying to reel this point in back to the original one, a meal is the same type of balancing act. What I've been pointing to is that the culutre and history of dining has given the diner too much control over the meal. To the point of it being detrimental to the final result. All parties, the diners, the chef, the staff need to be on the same side. And while not saying that dining is like going to the opera, I can assure you you would eat much better if more of this aspect was included in your meals. As for Craft, I don't know of any restaurants in France that allow you to bring your own wine. But I do know of some in London. When I'm over there in Septemeber we can organize a big shebang at one of the restaurants that allow it.

[Fat Guy]

I would not be prepared to "put myself in the hands of a chef" if I believed that she had no other motive than profit in opening the restaurant.

I do not believe such a person exists. If profit is your only motive, you don't open a restaurant. At least not a restaurant in the category I presume we're talking about (i.e., not McDonald's or TGI Friday's).

At the same time as a paying customer I feel reassured knowing that the profit motive is part of any rational chef-owner's calculus. Presumably, the desire to earn repeat business is part of the profit motive. And to me it's a good thing when the chef tries to please customers, rather than imposing some abstract artistic agenda on them as I think might happen were money not an issue.

[lxt]

"Objective" means that something exists independent of any person's perception. An absolute. Something about which nobody in her right mind, in full possession of the facts, could rationally dispute.

Objective simply means “uninfluenced by emotion, surmise or personal prejudice” or a “material object as distinguished from a mental concept, idea or belief” (Webster). It is a set of standards that prevail only at certain time, and it is a perfectly good term to use for evaluating food.

How would one distinguish the quality of a musical performance for instance? One would know that a composer marked the tempo of a specific musical piece to be Allegro (fast). It is an objective standard identified by a composer/professional. Had the musician performed the selected musical piece in a different tempo, say Largo (slow), it would’ve been a good indication of its poor interpretation. Analogously, if an expert were to mark a steak to be cooked rare as an objective norm, then overdoing it would by default be considered to be a poor performance.

After the musician followed an objective standard, however, more complicated and rather subjective elements are involved to form one’s opinion of the performance. It depends on this person’s natural talent, taste, experience, personal preferences etc. For example, one may like that the selected musical piece is played Allegro toward Presto (very quick) whereas the other would like it played Allegro toward Moderato (moderate). I’ll let you improvise an analogy with steak.

[lxt]

...why people would refuse to pay money for a bad opera singer but would gladly pay a hefty sum for an overcooked steak?  

People pay good money for bad opera all the time.  

My observations are identical to Nina’s. Blinded by prestige or perhaps due to lack of cultural education, more often than not, the current audience is incapable of properly assessing opera performances. With rare exceptions, operas mostly turned into rather theatrical performances where vocal skills became secondary. Poor timbre, inadequate volume, lack of vocal taste and capacity, narrow tessitura are now acceptable standards at the Met and City Opera. No longer one can afford the luxury of closing his eyes to enjoy just the music. Generally good acting and staging are so much in contrast with poor vocal performance that one may legitimately wonder how great it would have been had arias been replaced with recitatives. However, despite poor performances, the audience generally gives standing ovations.

Therefore, not only do the majority of people pay money for a bad opera, but for those few who can “hear”, it is simply impossible to “send it back to the kitchen”; at least those with overcooked steak still have a chance…

[spqr]

Personally, I prefer my beefsteak cooked rare to medium rare. My aunt, however, makes a fetish of ordering her steak burnt to a crisp. I have seen her send things back two or three times because it wasn't cooked enough for her. Her fetish applies also to pork, and I think it derives from an "old days" fear of germs and illness, but I also believe she truly LIKES IT THAT WAY. There couldn't possibly be anything worng with this. Therefore I conclude that primadonna chefs ought to realize that they are not the center of the universe, the arbiters of all taste, and that their basic job is to cook food for their patrons. They're COOKS, for God's sake, not gods.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Steve, pasta cooked to mush, and brown shoes with a tuxedo are wrong in my book, as is well done steak. Most people know these things are declasse. But it's a free country. We can inform, but we can't insist.

[lxt]

Therefore I conclude that primadonna chefs ought to realize that they are not the center of the universe, the arbiters of all taste, and that their basic job is to cook food for their patrons.

Of course, but "... the real issue here isn't how we can force someone to eat steak that is cooked 'correctly,' but how it is we can eductate people about it and hope they take to it. " (Steve P)

[Steve Plotnicki]

Lxt - I often like to alternate between Allegro Moderato and Allegro Presto but not when eating. Often before to work up an appetite. I'm also glad you aren't the opera czar in this country because they would have to shut all the opera houses down. Finally I don't think how a composer marked the tempo is analagous to how a steak gets cooked. I think it's more like a composition sounding better in a certain key. Steak has a natural flavor and the reason it tastes best at a certain temperature is because that degree of doneness maximizes the experience and flavor. But there are certain songs that sound better on guitar when played in an open tuning (the guitar tuned to a chord without the use of fingering.) Is there not the equivelent of that in classical music? Doesn't Moonlight Sonata sound *right* in a certain key?

Robert S. - Who is talking about forcing? What we are talking about is whether is should be *considered* right or wrong. People are so stingy about using the word wrong in so many instances that it actually applies to. Like mushy pasta. Or maybe serving it in the first place .

Fat Guy - You don't like an strict abstract agenda from a chef? I'm not going to Papillon with you.

Spqr - Of course there isn't anything wrong with it. But it happens to taste bad that way. What we are really talking about is semantics and the use of the "W" word. There is an incongruity between chef and diner because there is a proper way to serve a steak yet many diners refuse to acknowledge the point. It's the visceral as oppossed to cerebral way of looking at food. While your aunt can certainly state she likes burnt to a crisp better, I can't imagine she can fashion an rational argument as to why.

[hollywood]

Therefore I conclude that primadonna chefs ought to realize that they are not the center of the universe, the arbiters of all taste, and that their basic job is to cook food for their patrons.

Of course, but "... the real issue here isn't how we can force someone to eat steak that is cooked 'correctly,' but how it is we can eductate people about it and hope they take to it. " (Steve P)

Isn't Fat Guy correct? If we miraculously convinced every one to eat steak or tuna steak rare, wouldn't that stiffle creativity? We'd all be clones of one type of taste. Of course, the reverse is not true, we don't want every one ordering steaks well done. Steve, honestly, don't you enjoy being one of the cognoscenti? Isn't it the case that you'd have no fun being an aristocrat if every one else had good taste as well?

[Fat Guy]

Isn't Fat Guy correct?

That goes without saying, though I think you're quoting someone else.

Plotnicki, believe it or not Paul Liebrandt is trying to make food that people will like. He just has a funny way of going about it.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Steve, not only should it be considered right to wear black shoes with a tuxedo, it is right. It is right to serve pasta al dente and steak rare or medium rare. But we can't insist that everyone do it. I think, though, that that does it for this particular point.

[Fat Guy]

Do you own a midnight-blue tuxedo, Robert?

[Fat Guy]

Hey this is sadly ironic:

"Women who consistently eat well-done steak, hamburgers and bacon have a 4.62 times increased risk of breast cancer."

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2000/nov200..._barbequer.html

[Robert Schonfeld]

Do you own a midnight-blue tuxedo, Robert?

Iridescent midnight blue, with a matching blue velvet clip on bow tie and a ruffled shirt with studs with fake sapphires. I got it to wear to a special Paul Revere and the Raiders concert, but I'll put it on for you if you want me to, FG.

[Fat Guy]

Me too.

Well, I was trying to make a point about dinner jacket etiquette, but I think I'll skip it.

[Jinmyo]

"When did eGullet become so grandious?"