Gastronomy in France in Flux?

[robert brown]

Because Part II of the Troisgros thread has turned into a general discussion of dining in France, its present state and where it might be headed, I think any continuing discussion should have its own thread.

We have recently dined with at Arpege. My wife asked me to compare it to our experiences in the 1970s and 1980s at Alain Chapel’s restaurant outside of Lyon. By coincidence, while formulating my response , I put it in terms close to what Steve P. wrote yesterday. I said the difference between going to the two was comparable to hearing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony performed by the Berlin Philharmonic and Beethoven’s Early Quartets played by the Cleveland Quartet. Chapel in its glorious country surroundings represented a by-gone era in which enormous choice and offerings of food, sometimes ethereal, sometimes staggering, were served by highly-trained waiters who somehow managed to serve 50 people unobtrusively, faultlessly and yet being able to talk with you as long as you wanted. Arpege is entirely at the other end with its small kitchen and dining room teams, relatively small choice of food and small dining room on a street corner on a quiet street in Paris. In both places, however, we have dined about as well as one could hope. Yet Chapel the way it was is irretrievable history and Arpege likely represents the future of luxury dining and creative cooking.

On one hand Steve’s comparison to opera today is a little off the mark since opera hasn’t shrunk and become as irrelevant as haute cuisine throughout France has. Yet, I think (and hope) there will be a revival in cuisine that takes on again the classicism of grand opera and that people will search for its gustatory equivalent. My guess is that “creative” restaurants will exist, but increasingly more so on the margins and that the restaurant infrastructure will become more like it is in Italy in which there are a few ambitious restaurants in the big cities, in hotels, and scattered throughout small cities and towns in Italy that reinterpret Italian cuisine or are part-French, part-Italian. Perhaps even the joy of eating (as opposed to the hope that you will spend) that reigns throughout Italy will come to characterize eating in France. As for Bux’s lamenting the decline is regional cuisine, I predict a comeback in varying states of authenticity as the “fad” of various manifestations of fusion cooking runs it course.

To clarify what I wrote in the Troisgros thread, I am now more willing to go out of my way and to plan my itineraries and outings more around the “small” gastronomic pleasures than the trophy restaurants. I, like Steve, think more about returning to La Cave in Cannes (and thanks, Steve, for the great recommendation) than to Chibois in Grasse or to perennial two-star restaurants that show their hand with one visit. I don’t think the lights are out on three-star or luxury two-star restaurants in France, but building a trip around them is becoming increasingly less relevant to enjoying and understanding the present state of gastronomy in France.

[jaybee]

I don’t think the lights are out on three-star or luxury two-star restaurants I France, but building a trip around them is becoming increasingly less relevant to enjoying and understanding the present state of gastronomy in France.

This is an interesting question. My brother-in-law and I often talk about the trips we took in the 70s and 80s where three star palaces were the anchors of the itinerary. We don't do that any more. One wonders if we had never done it, would we be as blase to the idea as we are, or is this a function of the evolution of our tastes to appreciate great culinary art and "authentic" regional cuisines? If Troisgros, Pic, Pyramide, Verge, Baumanier et al were still at the top of their games, would we old Francophiles be keen on making the tour again? I don't know.

[Steve Plotnicki]

What Robert said.

Jaybee - It isn't just being jaded that is at issue, it's that the meals you ate in the 70's and 80's (I wasn't eating at that level in the 70's being merely a child (which goes to show you how old you are ,)) were the height of the artform, or craft if you will. Robert's point is that not only are there very few Chapel's anymore, if any, the environment that they worked in has changed to be a small labaratory with a staff much reduced. I too enjoyed one of my most cerebral meals ever at Arpege but it isn't the lavish experience that Robuchon or Verge etc. was in it's heyday. I remember being in Chantecler for dinner one January night and one of my guests said he was in the mood for truffles. And he ordered an entire truffle. During our third or fourth course, while we were eating something like lobster ravioli, they served him an entire truffle the size of a good juice orange that had been braised in some type of bouillon. And while it was a supplement to the bill, it wasn't really much of a supplement. Today the same truffle would probably add $250 to the bill.

[jaybee]

Jaybee - It isn't just being jaded that is at issue, it's that the meals you ate in the 70's and 80's (I wasn't eating at that level in the 70's being merely a child (which goes to show you how old you are  ,))

Somehow I've been able to keep track of my age without such help as yours.

it's that the meals you ate in the 70's and 80's (I wasn't eating at that level in the 70's being merely a child) were the height of the artform, or craft if you will. Robert's point is that not only are there very few Chapel's anymore, if any, the environment that they worked in has changed to be a small labaratory with a staff much reduced. I too enjoyed one of my most cerebral meals ever at Arpege but it isn't the lavish experience that Robuchon or Verge etc. was in it's heyday.

I guess this means I have a base of experience you can't hope to have and therefore my subjective pronouncements on taste are more accurate than yours. I will remind you of this from time to time.

[Bux]

On comparing Chapel in the 70's and 80's to Arpege in the first decade of this millennium, there are other factors that will play a role beyond the times. Dining in Paris has always been a bit different than dining in the provinces and restaurants have always differed from each other, although I'd venture to say that one of the changes is that today's restaurants may bear an even greater stamp of the chef as the classic dishes of Escoffier have been all but abandoned. I'm agreeing that things have changed. I'm just suggesting it's hard to ascertain the exact difference by comparing those two restaurants.

I will disagree about opera. I think it's less relevant than haute cuisine. People still go to see and hear opera and people still eat haute cuisine, the difference is that there are more chefs creating new forms of haute cuisine than there are working on operas. Do opera buffs even consider Phillip Glass' work as opera? Gourmets who loved Robuchon flock to Adria's tables as they do to Veyrat, Bras, Passard et al. Have these chefs changed the rules so much that their food no longer qualifies as haute cuisine in your opinion?

On the comeback of regional cuisine, I find that's always very difficult and worse yet, forced. Traditional dishes need to be handed down directly. Once they're revived from books there's an inevitable loss in authentitcity and connection to the region. As France's agricultural base changes, it is often easier to resurrect a Burgundian dish in Paris or sometimes even in NY. The snails or frog's legs often have to be imported anyway.

I never thought one had to plan a trip around multi starred restaurants to enjoy the gastronomy of France although in the latter part of the 20th century it appeared to me that lapses in the middle were destroying regional, bourgeois and bonne femme cooking in France, while the talent of the great chefs has been rising. It's hard to measure and weigh the talent of one generation in comparison with another, but there are at least a half dozen chefs today that offer priceless experiences in terms of cuisine, even if they don't allow one to gorge on truffles and caviar. In fact, I might add that they may be better for having to earn your attention that hard way--without being able to offer a whole baked truffle at a reasonable price. La cusine francaise est morte, vive la cuisine francaise? Si non, vive l'haute cuisine internationale. I think the real change is not the decline in France, but the rise elsewhere.

[pirate]

" I think the real change is not the decline in France, but the rise elsewhere." Bux

I agree with Bux. My first realization of this was eating 3 superb meals at Comme Chez Soi in Brussels in the eighties. I also ate at the Carlton in Brussels when Passard was chef before going to Paris to open L'Arpege. He made the raviolis of scallops in the same delicious way as Senderens used to do at Lucas-Carton. I ate at L'Arpege several times when it had 2 stars. On the third dinner in a week he prepared an unforgettable steak with cepes for 3 of us as a variation from the menu. I went back once when he had 3 stars and there was more "grand complication" cuisine and I was disappointed and never returned. I have been impressed with Wohlfahrt at the Traube-Tonbach

French restaurant in the Black Forest and the Steirereck in Vienna.I have already made comments about the quality of French cuisine in Japan, my favorite country for food. In the USA I 've been impressed with

Oceana in NYC although I understand that Moonen has recently departed.

Economic trends are working against haute cuisine. But as long as talented young people enter the profession it will continue to exist somewhere.

[robert brown]

Bux, I made the contrast of the two restaurants to illustrate the past and the future. I am not sure that one restaurant being provincial and the other Parisian is a fallacy in the point I was trying to illustrate. A contrast that is even more extreme would be comparing Chapel to L’Astrance (if it were a three-star place). But that is the way I think the wind is blowing and that you will see provincial restaurants become inexorably less differentiated than Parisian ones (as my Troisgros experience exemplified).

I can see your point of the handing down of traditional, localized dishes more so in a domestic situation. Don’t you think that talented chefs can make an authentic classic dish? The best "pot au feu" you could possibly hope for comes (or came) from Michel Guerard. And that was another great aspect to the provincial three-stars of the recent past: They made traditional dishes (Escoffier ones as well) better than anyone. As for the clients of Robuchon, Girardet, Chapel, and even Blanc seeking out Adria, Bras, Veyrat, Roellinger, and so forth, if the number of them posting on this site is an indication, we must be a dying breed.

I would like to go on, but it’s time to pack up the computer, cancel the AT&T Global, and get up early in the morning as we say goodbye to the sunny Cote d'Azur.

[lizziee]

In the Great Chefs of France, there is a chapter about Chapel that I think embodies the pinnacle of the greatness of a chef.

"It is not enough for Chapel to send through to the dining room a perfect dish. It must be the perfect dish for the person who is going to eat it. For this reason, he likes to meet everyone as he arrives. Everyone arrives in a different state of mind. If he can meet them he can judge what they expect of him. If they demand the maximum, then he is challenged to provide it... It is dishes which are particularly requested that give him the greatest pleasure, for the enemy of a chef is monotony."

If only I could have gone there when he was alive.

[Fat Guy]

It's hard to measure and weigh the talent of one generation in comparison with another

Can you try to do it, Bux, for the benefit of those of us who are too young to have dined at these establishments during the relevant time periods? Is there nobody with first-hand experience who will take the position that Gagnaire and Adria are running circles around the chefs of yore?

[Bux]

It's hard to measure and weigh the talent of one generation in comparison with another

Can you try to do it, Bux, for the benefit of those of us who are too young to have dined at these establishments during the relevant time periods? Is there nobody with first-hand experience who will take the position that Gagnaire and Adria are running circles around the chefs of yore?

I'm probably not the one to do that clearly as my experience with "great" chefs is very spotty in my youth. Most of my love of French food and understanding of it came from travel on a very meager budget in the sixties, and then we didn't get back until the mid eighties, still on a limited budget. When we splurged on a famous place in the sixites, it was often ill chosen in certain ways, but educational in other. Le Pyramid after Point passed on and le Cote d'Or at two stars between three star chefs are examples.

[robert brown]

Steve Shaw, I’ll give your question a shot. In an “Iron Chef” type of situation, as opposed to a restaurant one, the judges may think that an Adria or Gagnaire ran circles around a “chef of yore”, whatever your definition of “yore” is. (Given the ages of the older posters, I will assume you mean as far back as the first wave of the “Nouvelle Cuisine” chefs, i.e. 1968). Most of the “Iron Chef” jury members would likely be carried away with the novelty, construction, or ersatz or exotic ingredients as opposed to the disciplined classicism of the designated chef of yore. (I did watch the program in which Morimoto received more votes from the judges than the Japanese man who is the head chef of Restaurant Alain Chapel in Kobe. I think it was easy to see that the Chapel-trained chef had immensely more skill and technique than Morimoto. Yet, the judges --or maybe the producers-- felt that novelty should triumph over classicism, or that Morimoto needed to stay on the program given his more effervescent personality) It is that kind of phenomena that is the closest I can get in any comparison). Your question is an intriguing one, though how meaningful it is is questionable in the everyday life of a gourmand.

My experience with the two chefs you mentioned is a lot less than with individual chefs of times past—limited to one recent visit to Adria and two to Gagnaire in 1987 and 1989 when he was still in St. Etienne. (Just to let you know how much certain departed chefs are regarded in the culinary avant-garde, Julio Solter who is part owner of El Bulli and who promoted Adria from an assistant chef to head chef told me he, like others including myself, could not talk about Chapel without breaking down. That Gagnaire also adored Chapel was apparent when we all were together for a lunch in Mionnay in 1989, a year before Chapel died). I share the opinion of many who feel that Adria is the most interesting and influential chef since Paul Bocuse and maybe even Fernand Point while Gagnaire is the most dazzling “off the cuff” chef I have ever encountered. Nevertheless, El Bulli, as much as I hope to return to next and every year, is not the restaurant I would necessarily want to dine in on a regular basis. It is also not clear to me how well Adria’s approach to cooking travels beyond his restaurant. In other words, a lot of the bang comes from being there and experiencing the whole ensemble. My second Gagnaire meal, for which he did a surprise multi-course menu years before it became fashionable, left no lasting impact. A day or two after, I could not recall much of anything, if anything at all, that I had eaten.

I think what renders moot the discussion of superiority of any of today’s avant-garde chefs, or running circles around those of earlier generations, is the concept or approach that is at the forefront of every kind of art, craft, or design endeavor: lessening the possibilities. What, in my opinion, made the cooking and the restaurants of the “Nouvelle Cuisine” chefs so satisfying and fulfilling was how they reinterpreted classic French cuisine and remained true to French ingredients even when what they made bore little resemblance to the classic. (Who is to know if certain chefs thought about, and then rejected or discarded, dishes close to what Gagnaire and other “crazy” chefs as they used to be known, thought up on the spot because they lacked some ring of “truth”)? To the inexperienced or uninitiated, the razzle-dazzle that often comes with breaking the mold, expanding the possibilities, or creating something can seem exciting when to the experienced gastronome it seems frivolous or undisciplined.

I believe that a major difference between the two classes Steve Shaw brings up is that the “chefs of yore” created dishes that became classics while Gagnaire and Adria (especially Adria) are creating new approaches or techniques that greatly interest young chefs. It is clear to me as well that today’s chefs are more risk taking than the chefs of previous generations, a luxury afforded by the many-course meal that allows much more room for error. Besides an avant-garde in the sphere of designing and preparing food, there is complicating the matter, a new modality of dining (at least as practiced by Adria, Gagnaire, Keller, Barbot, and others) of pre-determined and small, multi-course servings. Therefore, not only do we have to decide if today’s new generation of chefs is cooking even better, but if they are also feeding us in a way that is commensurate with the excitement they have also created.

[lizziee]

" It is clear to me as well that today’s chefs are more risk taking than the chefs of previous generations, a luxury afforded by the many-course meal that allows much more room for error. Besides an avant-garde in the sphere of designing and preparing food, there is complicating the matter, a new modality of dining (at least as practiced by Adria, Gagnaire, Keller, Barbot, and others) of pre-determined and small, multi-course servings."

Robert,

This was THE topic of conversation at the dinner table tonight and I think you have "hit the nail on the head." In a multi-course, small tastes, menu there is a huge margin of error allowed. If one dish out of 10, or three out of 15 etc. doesn't work, the diner can accept the occasional flop. L'Ambrosie is one of the few restaurants that still relies on the old system of only a la carte with the expectation that a diner will order an entree, a main, cheese, and dessert and as such each one must be perfect as there is no margin for error. I am not weighing in one over the other, but I think you have identified one of the defining trends.

[Steve Plotnicki]

I think that there is a big change in palate orientation going on with the new generation of chefs. And as part of that orientation the chefs are creating a new lexicon. Look at the deconstructed tortilla Steve Klc posted on the other day, "the flat, potato-onion omelet — into one-part potato foam, one-part onion purée and one-part sabayon, layered in a sherry glass with a topping of deep-fried potato dice." Now while deconstructing a tortilla is amazingly cerebral, and possibly delicious, it isn't natural. What I mean by that is that foam is not a logical state for a potato to end up in. The potato as we know it, starch, is gone. I don't think this is a small point. And I think the thing people should look at is why a chef (any chef) would need to dispense with all of the aspects of a potato other than pretty much its essence. That's a pretty radical departure if you ask me.

I think what modern cuisine suffers from is that it is in an experimental stage. And that the task set before the chefs is more daunting then the task set before the last wave of great nouvelle cuisine chefs that Robert has identified as starting in 1968. Because when you get down to it, Robuchon's mashed potatoes were just an improvement of a recipe that existed for hundreds of years. But in the end they were still potatoes, Robuchon unlike Adria didn't have the burden of reinventing the potato. But if we are to reinvent the texture of every food, and have diners decide if they like their potatoes to be liquid, gas or solid, let alone decide if they should be hot or cold, sweet or savoury, we are nowhere near the stage where they can be creating classic dishes. We are still at the stage where they are creating the language. Hopefully one day that language will evolve to the point of chefs being able to speak in entire sentences and paragraphs. Something which the great chefs of yore were able to do with great ease. And that is why despite the fact that modern chefs possess a technique that would allow someone to describe them as "running circles around the chefs of yore," it isn't the case when you define better as someone serving you a balanced meal that contains a number of classic dishes.

[Steve Klc]

Steve--ask yourself this--is the potato foam in that dish any different than a classic tomato sorbet on a composed salad, which has been done for decades? Both retain an essence--a surprising, delightful perhaps unreal amount of flavor in a form that appears unnatural to an inexperienced diner--or illogical to an experienced diner just new to the "form."

Now--if you believe the tomato sorbet to fall into the same category of elements which you find incongruous, unnatural and illogical--then my point is invalid.

But I don't think you do. The minute diners start telling chefs what is and what is not natural those diners are in trouble. You're beginning to close doors in around yourself and next you will close your mind. (This is in the larger context--apart from diners simply voting with their feet and choosing not to eat at restaurants where the style of the chef doesn't suit them--that's an inalienable right and I hope you know what I mean by this. You also have every right to wax poetic for times gone by. I mean this in the "I only eat bistro food because bistro food is simple and plain and good and that's the kind of food which appeals to me, that's what food should be and not the Michelin madness which is so overpriced and pretentious blah blah blah.)

Back to your potato foam--the starch in the potato which supposedly is "gone" is in fact still there, it helps give body and texture to the foam in the way a tomato's natural sweetness and gelatin impart body and texture to a cold tomato sorbet. And external form doesn't necessarily reveal anything about flavor or interest. There was a certain chef once who combined vanilla with lobster which had to seem so unnatural and illogical and unclassic to some observers at the time, no? Until they tasted the dish. Now lobster and vanilla is de rigueur.

Just because the usage and the final "deconstructed" dish don't seem classic doesn't mean that the dish is strange, disrespectful or an affront to what came before in any way. My fear is it seems you're applying something external, ascribing some motive or some assumption which isn't necessarily there in the deconstruction itself nor in the personality of the modern chefs themselves. Adria doesn't operate under any burden to do anything that he doesn't feel is natural for him to do as an artist and craftsman. He's the culinary version of "I'm OK, you're OK." Your stance also might imply the lessons learned from previous generations have not been incorporated into the dishes or combinations or techniques currently used. Are you prepared to go that far? (This is also not to say media hasn't had an effect on the modern era nor on the modality of modern dining--and chefs have been known to play to the media in countless large and small ways. But media had an effect on previous generations, classic chefs and classic dishes as well. Myth, mystique, terroir, stasis, cooking of place--all were cultivated media concepts.)

Just because the media says Adria's or Conticini's or Gagnaire's or Jose Andres's cuisine and palate is so technical and challenging doesn't mean it has to be seen that way--or that they're conciously trying to do things differently for difference's sake. It's like formal service in a high end restaurant--it doesn't have to be seen as stuffy and haughty if it is done well, done smoothly and professionally--unless of course it is stuffy and haughty!

Adria and Andres are still Spanish chefs. Sample Jose's deconstructed tortilla or omelete with potato foam--or his clam chowder which would really blow your mind-- and then say if it isn't the best thing you've tasted. All these things highlight individual ingredients in intense interesting ways you never thought possible as a diner. Keller in his own way aims for this as well. Like you always knew bacon was in a clam chowder right, but it was part of a whole taste--it was in every spoonful, infused into the cream, in the background never in the forefront. I ask you, why, in a modern deconstructed clam chowder, which Jose serves on a flat plate with whole raw clams enrobed in a gelee of clam juice, with potato foam among other elements and then sprinkles a fine crunchy powder of bacon over the dish--is this unnatural, illogical? It's his version of "Baco Bits!" End of story. It works or doesn't work--the flavors blend and wrap around themselves in your mouth or they don't. If they don't, then the deconstructed dish with these flourishes--flourishes which seem novel to you--is simply not a good dish. It's not indicative of a huge step forward, not symptomatic of a decline, not a grand statement, not sending me longing for a previous era and not an errant salvo in some generational warfare.

The modern cuisine in any era has always been seen as experimental, revolutionary or evolutionary. Each era viewed its changes as an improvement--an advancement. You'd think we'd be used to upheaval by now. You've said the true test of an Adria, whether he'd be seen as a trendy blip on the culinary radar or instead as massively significant will come in time--when those he's mentored have gone out in the world and make a name for themselves and other chefs start emulating him. Well, you're living in that time now. Don't fight it. Remember what it was like watching Magic and Bird? Then Jordan? Did you argue and compare and long for the days of Cousy and Russell (not that you are old enough--you know what I mean) or were you able to live in the moment and appreciate how lucky you were to live in their era and see them play live?

Well, Adria is Bird, Magic and Jordan all rolled up into one. He's just begun to play.

And why is it so hard to say we're now entering an era where there are no more "classic" dishes because that term, that concept is too limiting? That "classic dish" has perhaps become a construct from an era gone by? Those nouvelle French masters established a freedom to cook and see things differently from the previous generation--but a freedom that wasn't so entirely free, there still were boundaries of form and culture and Frenchness. This is what a Conticini speaks to when he says he loves America's spirit--it's the spirit to freely innovate in flavor and form. Why is it so hard to embrace that what Adria has shown these French masters is simply a way to be truly free?

It also may be that you are guilty of some of the same conservative sense and rigid sensibilities that has been holding modern French cooking back--that modern French chefs are now rebelling against slowly but surely?

As to the others issues--the teasing, palate orientation, tasting menus having an influence which Robert, Lizziee and you mention, yes I agree wholeheartedly it is having an effect on more than just perception in this era. How much, I'm not sure. Food media, dissemination of information in the internet age and culinary literacy are all having effect as well. So, too Bux's undeniable observation the rest of the world has caught up in an area in which the French once ruled supreme. And you really see the complexity of how all this can blur together when you read accounts of how ingenious and creative a Heston Blumenthal is, from supposedly knowledgeable authorities, who should know his lauded catch-phrase "molecular gastronomy" existed long before he put it on his website and that Adria, actual scientists, researchers and science writers like This, Kurti, McGee et al plowed virtually every square inch of ground he now walks on.

As a complete aside--Robert--I'd like to know why you think it was easy to see the Chapel-trained chef had immensely more technique and skill than Morimoto?

[Steve Plotnicki]

Steve Klc - You took my point the wrong way. Let me see if I can explain it better. It isn't that diners won't recognize the potato foam as potatoes eventually, it's the shock value of having it be in an unrecognizeable form the first time they taste it. Because while it has all the indicia of being a potato, it's not obvious. Without knowing that Andres has deconstructed a tortilla, many diners couldn't tell that the foam is potato. This "mistake" could not possibly happen with Robuchon's mashed potatoes as he has served it with the typical visual and textural indicia that we all recognize as a potato. This mistake happened to me when I had Fat Duck's red pepper essence lollipop. While I knew the flavor, I couldn't finger it. Taking the flavor out of the visual and textural context I understand red pepper to have is a reorientation of my palate. And ultimately that means I need to learn a whole new way to discern how food tastes.

Then I am trying to take this point one step further and respond to Fat Guy's question about Adria and Gagnaire "running circles around" and Robert Brown's response about "classic" dishes in modern cuisine. I don't see how anyone is going to contribute classic dishes to the lexicon of cuisine when the technique is still at a point where the diners can't tell if something is a potato or comes from a red pepper. And to put it in the vernacular I used, until the language is fully formed. One can only write a sentence if the language used to write it is agreed by all parties. It hasn't been agreed yet, and even you would admit it's still undergoing experimentation.

But I believe you have fingered the easiest way to inculcate society with the technique which is savory ice creams and sorbets. Whether it's tomato sorbet, or mustard ice cream, or avocado ice cream, the technique of pairing hot and cold will allow the chefs to train palates in detecting typical flavors in atypical contexts. It won't be until that point in time when people will create classic dishes. And it will only be when they can create classic dishes will the chefs "run circles around the chefs of yore." Because what the Adrias, Gagnaires etc. have contributed to cuisine is tremendous new technique. But what they haven't yet contributed is Salmon a l'Oiseille, Homard a Vanille, and of course the infamous Pommes Puree.

[Steve Klc]

Steve--why does something have to be obvious and why care what diners could tell visually? Just because something--anything--is not obvious in no way means it is a mistake. Unless you say it does. That's external and something you're imposing on the dish. Your choice, but again, you're the one making a mistake. I'm sorry if I'm being obtuse and not grasping your larger points.

I still posit that the notion of specific "classic" dishes is gone now, it's a quaint and irrelevant search for meaning that isn't there anymore--and when you speak of the high end--like an Adria he transcends the concept. That's why he is pre-eminent. It's a media construct now--like a reporter asking "what are your signature dishes?" For Adria, to be boxed in by a few classic dishes would be the worst imaginable insult. The worst limitation of one's mind and talent and abilities as a chef. If you think what Adria has contributed is new technique I'm afraid the boat has sailed without you. I hope it doesn't get too far from shore when you finally realize it isn't about creating classic dishes or establishing classic combinations anymore. Adria could do 10 different versions of "Salmon a l'Oiseille, Homard a Vanille, and of course the infamous Pommes Puree" if he wanted to--in ways their creators could not have imagined in their time--each wonderful, each different. That's what Adria brings to the table, that's what his influence and significance is and that is what is being emulated by chefs around the world who "get it." Not "technique," not foam. Focusing on that is as limiting as trying to create a "classic" dish!

Robert--when you speculated that most of the "jury members would likely be carried away with the novelty, construction, or ersatz or exotic ingredients as opposed to the disciplined classicism of the designated chef of yore" how do you slot the deconstructed clam chowder or the other dishes I've talked about--which use no ingredients NOT in the classic dish and which, when eaten, explode with the flavors of "clam chowder" in ways not previously imagined? If that happens--if you have that experience, that visceral reaction--does it matter what technique, what form, what skills presumably were employed to achieve it?

And if you ever have that example--Jose's deconstructed clam chowder--and it works, composed here in the States by a former employee of Ferran's at El Bulli from ten years ago--as I can assure you it does--then what further proof, what further demonstration of how well Adria's approach to cooking travels beyond his restaurant do you need?

[Steve Plotnicki]

"I still posit that the notion of specific "classic" dishes is gone now, it's a quaint and irrelevant search for meaning that isn't there anymore--and when you speak of the high end--like an Adria he transcends the concept."

Steve Klc - Well this is the issue that deserves our attention. Because if the concept of signature and classic dishes exist no more, it means that high end cooking is doomed to be esoteric and for only the most discriminating and cerebral audience. Like chamber music. What made haute cuisine special was the grand dining experience, of which the classic dishes and preparations were the centerpiece. People who were not necessarilly gourmands took part in the experience for all sorts of reasons, mostly celebratory. That will be less the case if modern cuisine stays on the path of asking you to think about a meal and fails to include a major component of rubbing your belly after it.

This is the issue that I grope with, and I think that Robert B. gropes with. We wonder whether this type of dining will be successful beyond the core audience of chefs and foodies and will make it to a wider audience. My instincts and experience tells me that if it doesn't, it will die out. I can not believe that that this level of dining will continue to exist if the tradititional purpose for dining is totally and forever removed from the experience. This has to be a temporary state while the creators invent and codify the technique. Once the technique is fully formed, and the possibilities exhausted, the experience will be "commercialized" and marketed to a wider scale audience. Until then chefs like Adria can be reported on and marketed to the extent he is, and in the way he is, because of who his audience is. But it doesn't ring true to me that the natural outgrowth of Ferran Adria isn't a cuisine based on his technique. And what cuisine have you ever heard of that doesn't have signature dishes?

[Steve Klc]

I'm going to stop posting on this thread for awhile Steve, not out of any sense of frustration or disinterest--quite the contrary my friend!--but just that I'd like to give Robert and Lizziee and Bux and Shaw and everyone else a chance to weigh in and impact the direction of this before I continue. You've raised interesting points--I may have as well--and I want this to be operatic in scale rather than a duet within an opera. If it turns out there's a chorus lined up against me, fine. That just means I have to work on my form and my vocal technique a bit more.

I leave you with this: are vision, a way of seeing things, and freedom, a way of combining things, "techniques" in your book Steve? They're not in my book--speaking as a chef--techniques are merely tools, like equipment--a means to an end.

I continue to ask: if a dish tastes good why bring up media-constructs like esoteric, cerebral and discriminating? Why is it so important to have expectation of "form"? What if what Adria wants to accomplish is the complete surrendering of a diner--surrendering of expectation and of form, the complete removal of classic or standardized dishes prepared over and over and over again? Eat and experience the joy of the moment--don't qualify it, try to repeat the same experience over again, don't try to seek a "better" one or more "classic" one based on outmoded values you bring to the table. Why is it problematic for you not to know how something is going to come to the table?

You say "But it doesn't ring true to me that the natural outgrowth of Ferran Adria isn't a cuisine based on his technique. And what cuisine have you ever heard of that doesn't have signature dishes?"

In true eGullet fashion, I'd say define technique--does it include spirit, vision and freedom? And just because there may not have been a "cuisine" without individual signature dishes doesn't mean a revolutionary thinker or creator can't appear to disrupt how we see things from now on.

Here's how I see Adria: techniques--some new, some classic--freely utilized in the service of a revolutionary chef's vision, creativity, spirit. Gagnaire and Blumenthal and American chefs like Keller, Trotter, Jose Andres, Ken Oringer, Rick Tramonto and on and on all have access to Ferran's techniques and have all eaten at each other's restaurants (well, most probably not at the Fat Duck). How it all shakes out and the overall impact on dining and our approach to food and to eating remains to be seen. Some will undoubtedly have fond remembrance for things past.

But it is not technique that the wisest of these chefs are emulating or co-opting from Ferran--unless you include spirit, freedom and vision in your definition. It's just the easiest and most accessible aspect to focus in on. My guess is there are alot of chefs in and out France who have these feelings, this creativity innately--and are just now realizing they too can stretch the bounds, they too can cook more personally, more freely.

And I think you are definitely seeing more French chefs within France showing the courage to go farther toward this new direction--this loosening of bounds and boundaries and expectations piled on their shoulders from eras gone by. They may not articulate it in conversation or admit it publicly--but why do you think the talk is of a Conticini or Gagnaire or Herme or Barbot et al? I think it's because to one degree or another each is aiming for freedom in ways Adria has already pushed far beyond what's previously been possible within France.

And Robert--I just re-read your initial post and boy, there are so many good issues, factors and predictions you have highlighted "still out there" it is hard to know where to start or even to embrace them all. I think what I'd like to ask you is how much of this change in direction and emphasis might...might...be attributed to or influenced by what has been happening in America on the culinary scene?

I'll conclude by saying I think it is always best to look to the dishes themselves--give yourself over to the dishes--and all else will become clear in time.

[Bux]

I'm going to stop posting on this thread for awhile Steve, not out of any sense of frustration or disinterest--quite the contrary my friend!--but just that I'd like to give Robert and Lizziee and Bux and Shaw and everyone else a chance to weigh in and impact the direction of this before I continue.  

For that opportunity I am indebted to you. From Robert's post last night which began with " Steve Shaw, I’ll give your question a shot," I've found this thread intriguing and positive. I find my self agreeing with almost all of the observations made, if not always with the conclusions. I have, at several points, felt like I've arrived at an interesting party with my mouth sealed as I looked at the right hand side of my screen and saw the length of the thread to go before I could get a word in edgewise. I don't know where to begin. Robert made some insightful and provocative statements.

Nevertheless, El Bulli, as much as I hope to return to next and every year, is not the restaurant I would necessarily want to dine in on a regular basis.

This doesn't sum up his post, but I think it's key to how I regard much of the conversation that follows. Chef's such as Adria and Gagnaire are changing the nature of dining out as much as they are challenging our palate. Adria in particular, is a social revolutionary as much as a culinary one. I've mentioned elsewhere that he has been collaborating with NH Hotels in Spain, not so much about what people will eat in their restaurants, but how they might eat.

The earlier chefs, even the ones who broke with classicism, were serving variations on the classics and establishing new classics. Entering the realm of analogies with their slippery slopes and thin ice, I'd compare them if not to the Royal Shakespeare Company, than to a repertory company with an avant garde director, bent on lending a new interpretation to the classics. Adria sems far less interested in pleasing the cultured tastes of an educated palate than he is in having you respond directly to his inventive foods and approaches to cooking and serving. At the same time, he clearly displays an understanding of the classic palate and classic dishes with his intellectual deconstruction that may or may not speak to the diner at another level. For this reason he is sometimes more appreciated by the diner with an open mind and an uneducated, and therefore unencumbered, palate at one pole and by the most sophisticated diners at the other end of the spectrum of diners. Both Lizzie and Robert got it, at least as well as I did, but Robert says El Bulli "is not the restaurant I would necessarily want to dine in on a regular basis" as if that's a fault. There is avant garde art I would not want hanging in my dining room and avant garde music I would not like to hear every night and avant garde theater I would not care to attend every night, but all of those will thrill me no end when I see or hear them. So it is with El Bulli.

I am not exactly sure why the simple meal at a very simple traditional seafood restaurant by the beach in Barcelona was so satisfying after, and in contrast to, a meal at El Bulli the night before, but I suspect it was not because the meal at El Bulli was lacking. Rather I suspect it had to do with the human need for contrast and because Adria's performance left my tastebuds in a state of excitement. I can't recall ever following a three star meal that left me so open to appreciate a bistro the next day in that way. Some credit I guess has to go to Catalan traditional cooking, but part of the problem is that classic French cooking has just been home cooking raised to the nth degree until lately. Adria is special in a way that chefs have not tried to be before. None of this is to say that he will produce classics or that his is not just of the moment and transitory, but if that's the case, how lucky we are to be here at this moment. To judge creativity and the avant garde by the classic standard may be to miss the whole point of creativity--which in my view is to change the standards by which the Johns and Janes compare things.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Steve Klc - It's a matter of fame and communicating the techniques Adria invented. Without signature dishes, or signature techniques like foaming for the media to report on, who is going to know about the guy? The notion of salmon and sorrel is understandable and accessable to everyone. But the notion of having to schlep, as Patti Marx's cartoon in the New Yorker said, for three flights and then to drive three hours to get a surprise menu is less accessable to everyone. What is it exactly we are traveling all that way for, his genius? Well there are people who would travel a long way for that but there are 100 times as many people who would travel for genius that the media can encapsulate into the words "Salmon with Sorrel Sauce."

Now I believe that whether Adria reduces his cuisine to signature dishes or not, some chef who is also a good marketing guy will do it and take the credit for it. If it doesn't happen, modern cuisine as we are describing will stay esoteric and will only be practiced by a few people. Now while that might very well be the case, I've just never seen any artistic commodity work that way. It's just not the way the media communicates information about cooking. High art yes, cooking no.

Of course that is a possibility. The Adrias and Gagnaires of the world are the equivelents of artists showing their works in small galleries to the elite. And that is really what you have going on. Whether it's Keller, Adria, Gagnaire, Bras, they are all scientists in their out of the way labs serving people surprise meals that challange everything we know and think about food. But I think Robert's point, and it's the answer to Fat Guy's question about "running circles," is that the chefs of yore penetrated further into our culture because they offered an experience that was more about satisfying our hunger and less about the cerebral experience. Todays chefs offer an experience that is balanced significantly in favor of it being a cerebral experience. And that is why Robert says that El Bulli isn't his first choice to eat a great meal at. And when he says that, he means a meal that is satisfying on more levels than just thinking about it.

[Bux]

And that is why Robert says that El Bulli isn't his first choice to eat a great meal at. And when he says that, he means a meal that is satisfying on more levels than just thinking about it.

I'm not so sure that's exactly what he means as I read his post on his visit to El Bulli. It sounded as if he found most of it satisfying on several levels. In terms of marketing and success in the market place, it may not be any signature dish or even an indetifiable technique that will let Adria make his mark, and maybe his fortune. Who knows what drives Adria beyond the basic need to experiment and create. In the meantime he is selling his talents to others and branching out. I'm not sure about his arrangement in the place outside Seville. Originally he was to have just installed a chef there, but now it appears as if he may have taken over the whole hotel. In the meantime he has several contracts with NH Hotels as an idea man and as a operator of restaurants or snack bars. We are just not recognizing that "creativity" can be a product as much as salmon with sorrel sauce. People go to Adria for what they haven't had before anywhere, the way they went to Troisgros for sorrel sauce. Troisgros could only feed so many and others could easily copy his recipe for their own profit. It is so much harder to copy Adria's creativity and sell it in your restaurant or to hotel chains. Thus one could say Adria has a product that he doesn't need to copyright to protect.

And what if El Bulli produces food that no one wants to eat every night? Does it matter to his success as long as his restaurant is full every night? Consider that it's not full of people that haven't ever had his food, or that he will run out of customers either, for if the restaurant is not the sort where you'd eat every night, or even every week, it is the place people come back to on some regular basis even if yearly or biannually.

El Bulli and Adria are not well know in the US beyond a limited circle of gastronomes and young chefs--likely the most influential group anyway--but they are much better known in Spain and even in France. We haven't elevated chefs to quite the position they are in France where they share the headlines with football players. Our friends live in a small village. When we show up with them at a favorite cafe in the nearby town of Pezenas, the owner of a cafe with no gastronomic pretentions, greets them by saying he's heard that they've been to El Bulli twice in two weeks in a sort of half mock and half serious tribute. How many bartenders in my neighborhood or yours would know, or give a damn, if either of us went to Ducasse or El Bulli twice in two nights? Adria has a kind of penetration that may be greater than previous three star chefs, even in France. The effect of their penetration remains to be seen. Every penetration does not produce offspring, which I guess is your point and one well taken.

[robert brown]

It seems as if we are having the classic kind of debate that occurs when someone in a creative endeavor gives it a quantum leap forward; one of those big pushes that happens two or three times in a century. Adria will either end up being a Pablo Picasso or Charlie Parker of the ovens, or else a flash in the pan. As my favorite TV financial reporter Ed Hart used to intone, “We will know in the fullness of time.” In the interim, however, based on a minute sample of Steve Klc and the fact that to be admitted to the semi-private club known as El Bulli you need to have some connection to the profession of chef, might it be possible that we now have a cuisine that accommodates chefs to the detriment of gourmands?

In the course of the past decade, we have seen the growing phenomenon known as diner passivity. With each passing year, we see increasingly more the chef dictating to the client what to eat and the more recent practice of what to drink. This does not happen in the majority of restaurants since I think if you started serving a dozen or more classic Italian, French, or Chinese dishes in two-bite portions, you would be closing the doors in rather short order. To be successful as a passive diner chef, you need to have a “creative”, “personal”, “avant-garde” or however you want to call it cuisine. Adria’s achievements are the ultimate manifestation of this. (I do not mean to imply that this is what drives his cooking; it just so happens to have arisen at a time to fit the restaurant economics of the day). It is hard for me to imagine that most of the chefs who come back from El Bulli or his laboratory in Barcelona and then incorporate some variation of an Adria dish in their offerings do not appreciate the economic benefits of it.

I do not think that Steve P. and I have an ax to grind with the cuisine of Adria, his disciplines, or the odd appearance of his inspiration per se. It is, as well, not so much that this cuisine will win over converts from the traditional chefs and cuisine; it is more that it will cannibalize or blunt the kind of cooking(as Steve marvelously described it) the kind that makes you rub your stomach. What I bemoan is the lack of Romanticism that I find characterizes this new cooking. I would hate to see become passé the image of a cook going to market or taking in impeccable ingredients and doing something marvelous, delicious and even spontaneously novel with them. In fact, when I dined at El Bulli I became so engrossed with a kind of culinary sleight of hand that I indeed found novel and even amazing, that I lost sight of the role of raw ingredients in my meal. In fact, when I reviewed my descriptions of the dishes, the use of short-lived ingredients was somewhat limited. When Steve Klc described Jose Andres’ version or interpretation of clam chowder, it sounds as if it is a dish that evokes “clam chowderness” rather than being clam chowder: that the goal is to engage in culinary witchcraft to invoke a seafood dish without using seafood. (During my dinner at El Bulli, I could not avoid thinking about the titled of the Oliver Sachs book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”; the disassociation between object and name; and how Adria enjoyed making a dish from ingredients that tasted like a dish that it actually was not. Not that he was the first to do it, but rather it was taking the concept of vegetarian steak and doing something very much more sophisticated and even witty. I wonder if the French lads working in semiotics have gotten their hands on this kind of cooking.)

Ultimately I think and hope that the meal I had in Madrid at La Broche, whose chef, Sergio Arolo worked for Adria for eight years, is the model for the future of this kind of cooking. My lunch was a four-course meal with superior products (veal and tuna steak in this case) accented or accompanied with delicious foams (bacon and egg as an appetizer and carrot as part of a dessert). His Adria inspirations were disciplined and held in check. (Chef Sergio almost apologized for not having the 20 or so courses I would have if I were at El Bulli.) My meal was marvelous even though it only hinted at the amazing barrage I would face three months later “ Chez Adria”. I hope Arolo’ s approach turns out to be the way since that would be ideal.

Steve Klc, thank you so much for your positive reaction to my post. I have the opinion that because America does not have the history and traditions of the Old World in terms of a “high” cuisine, this creates both a positive and negative situation for dining in our country. Because we do not have it, its lack actually encourages and makes more viable the kind of experimenting and even plagiarism of techniques and dishes from other countries, adding a variety and richness to American cuisine few, if any, other countries have. On the other hand, I do not think this is helping us develop a distinctive cuisine any time soon, though eventually we may if it is not to late in the development of civilization for such a phenomenon. Although the tide may be turning in the ratio of native to foreign-born, consider how many of the best and most successful chefs in America are French, Spanish, and Germanic.

The Morimoto Iron Chef episode I mentioned took place on December 25, 1998. You can read the details on the unofficial Iron Chef site. I have to admit that my opinion that the Chapel chef should have won was influenced by stopping two or three times a week in the late 1980s or early 1990s to my neighborhood Japanese restaurant where Morimoto was the sushi chef. He always made special dishes for us (sushi and otherwise), but it was clear that he culinary skills were limited.

I realize I haven’t touched all of your points and those of Lix, Jaypee, Steve P. and Bux, but let’s see how this marvelous discussion continues.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Just to speak about one aspect of this discussion, the mutli-course, polyphonic meals that Adria, Gagnaire, Keller and a few others serve, there has to be a limited market for dining in that style. How many chefs can the Western World accommodate who serve you those type of blowouts?

A few dozen? It can't be that the standard method of dining at the Omaha Hilton someday in the future is going to be a 20 course tasting menu. Yet, Adria's techniques, as well as the techniques of other cutting edge chefs will find a way to take hold somehow.

I think that the distinction lies in the fact that while Adria has invented a new way to approach food, and new techniques to apply to food, and possibly a new way to view fine dining. what he hasn't yet invented is a cuisine. And that isn't to say that one day his creations won't be codified in a way that one can't identify it as a cuisine, it's just that it's not there yet. His cuisine is about him and his razzle dazzle, it isn't about the food.

Maybe this is an important distinction that will change fine dining forever. Maybe in the future chefs will be more important than the dishes they create. In that environment there is no need for a salmon with sorrel sauce. But I really hope that isn't the case, and that the Adria's of the world aren't isoloated in a "cooking as high art" category. Because on a visceral level, eating is about saying to oneself, I'm in the mood for a nice steak or I'm in the mood for some of those Robuchon mashed potatoes etc., in reality, both ways of saying "I want to feel satisfied." And I don't yet see that any of the modern chefs offer that type of satisfaction, at least in the way I understand satisfaction in the way the chefs of yore offered it. But of course, a younger generation who hasn't been weaned on the chefs of yore might see it differently.

[Bux]

"I want to feel satisfied." And I don't yet see that any of the modern chefs offer that type of satisfaction, at least in the way I understand satisfaction in the way the chefs of yore offered it. But of course, a younger generation who hasn't been weaned on the chefs of yore might see it differently.

I think this is key. Tomorrow I may have more to say on the subject, but I think it's worth adding that when Matisse began to paint like Matisse and When Charlie Parker began to play like Charlie Parker, an awful lot of people didn't find satisfaction in their expression. Later generations weaned on their works, get great satisfaction from them. The question remains as to whether the first to appreciate the work got a sense of satisfaction and if so, what kind of satisfaction. There's a satisfaction from seeing and hearing the beauty of a familiar esthetic or sound and another satisfaction to be derived from exposure to a new and exciting form of an art. It may be that most people cannot resolve excitement of this kind with the term "satisfaction." If that's the case, I may have to rephrase my point. It's meant to be in line with what you said.

[Steve Plotnicki]

I think you have raised a different point. To say that many people didn't find satisfaction when Matisse and Parker first showcased their artistry is a misuse of the word. You mean people didn't like them. There weren't many people who liked them but didn't find them satisfying. But I think that is different because both Robert and I like the modern chefs very much. But what we are pointing to is an aspect of cuisine that other arts and crafts don't have. The emotional factors of dining that are connected to sustenance. You can live without music, or painting. But you have to eat. There is something primal to it that isn't cerebral.

I'm willing to admit that cuisine is at the point where the chefs are challanging how we view food. A way to eat that does not include the element of being sated as we have historically known it to be. And while that's fine for both you and me and Robert on the occassions we want to eat that way, I'm not sure how far that concept can go with the segment of the public that made 3 star dining in France so successful between 1970 and 1995. Because if it can't, high end cooking as practiced by modern chefs will stay as something esoteric, and you won't see a similar type of expansion on the Costa Brava, to the one they had in France due to tourists flocking there for among other things the food. Think of the French Laundry without the Napa Valley. In reality the reason the place is overrun is because it's in one of the country's great tourist regions. But would you have as hard a time getting in if it was not on a tourist route generally travelled?