Gastronomy in France in Flux?

[marcus]

Sensual pleasures, the appreciation of food, music and art, are right brain experiences. Over intellectualization, which moves these experiences from the right to the left brain pervert the essence of these experiences and tend to make them irrelevent to the population at large. Modern classical music is probably the best example. It exists largely within universities and other government subsidized areas and has virtually no impact on popular music or the population at large. Within a very small subculture it is certainly an active topic and generates long and well reasoned threads, but I don't believe that we would like to see fine dining relegated to that position. We need to differentiate between over-intellectualization and newness. Matisse and Charlie Parker were new, but still well within the parameters of emotional impact that make for great music and art.

My own love of fine dining was developed at places like Bocuse and Guerard, also Garin in Paris and Vanel in Toulouse among others, with Troisgros not far behind. Ducasse in his Paris restaurant carries on this tradition. These restaurants take the essence of what we love about satisfying home cooking and enhance it with superior ingredients perfectly prepared, and complementary flavors that we can appreciate as a unified whole, very much like a Beethoven symphony. I recall a meal of about 10 years ago at Guy Savoy, I haven't been back since and don't know what he's doing today, in which my reaction was that the flavors were very interesting, but that I didn't have the sense of having eaten food, it was another experience and ultimately not quite satisfying. Adria has evidently gone miles beyond.

My thought is that there is no academic or government infrastructure that will support fine dining, that it can only succeed with a genuine paying public of its own. I further would assert that an intellectualized approach, and there is no approach more intellectualized that deconstruction, cannot be successful if it defies our basic genetic programming as to what constitutes food which has evolved over the ages. So I agree that we're at a transition point and these new ideas will either fold back into and contribute to more traditional approaches or will disappear.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Marcus makes some excellent points about the accessability of high art and its relationship to, and how it impacts on, popular culture. I tend to think that he is generally correct. But I also know that often overintelectualizing often means that the gap between high art and popular culture is too wide and that high art is moving too fast for popular culture to keep up with it. Optomist that I am, I really believe that at some point all good ideas become influential. Look at the composer Varese. At the time he composed, one could easily have said that his ideas and concepts were disconnected from, how did Marcus put it, oh yes, "paying customers" and his works were always going to be relegated to those who appreciate the esoteric. Except a Frank Zappa comes along and incorporates elements of his music into popular music and all of a sudden he has visibility, and gains appreciation, in the land of paying customers. Who knows what future generations will reap from, and then credit to, artists once deemed too far out or too esoteric for popular culture? Does this mean that 50 years from now my grandchildren, who will be old enough to have children of their own, will serve my great-grandchildren foamed bacon and eggs?

Trying to push this back towards food, there is another aspect to this that I would like Marcus, and the others if they want, to respond to. In Marcus's post, in describing Bocusse, Guerard etc. he says that, "These restaurants take the essence of what we love about satisfying home cooking and enhance it with superior ingredients perfectly prepared, and complementary flavors that we can appreciate as a unified whole, very much like a Beethoven symphony." Well can we always rely on, and expect that cuisine will be derivitive of home cooking? Is it possible that in terms of the Western palate, and European cooking strategy, we have exhausted the possibilities to enhance home cooking? And if that is the case, then what? And if that isn't enough to chew on, how does this style of cooking co-exist with the "Slow Food" movement and restaurants that feature simple but perfect cooking based on top quality market ingredients like Chez Panisse or Craft? It seems my choices are coming down to having a mixed radish salad at Craft that is ultra-fresh as they got the radishes at the greenmarket that morning, or to go to some faraway place to have a dish composed of the essence, foam, dust, and sorbet of various radishes. Hmmm.

[Steve Klc]

At your level of understanding, Steve, yes it seems your "choices are coming down to having a mixed radish salad at Craft that is ultra-fresh as they got the radishes at the greenmarket that morning, or to go to some faraway place to have a dish composed of the essence, foam, dust, and sorbet of various radishes."

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I hope, in time, to convince you you'll have many more rewarding options.

Marcus--what would happen to the perception of Modern classical music, and its marginalization, if a figure of Mozartean creativity and vision were to come along, prompting such a siesmic shift in sense and sensibility that both the marginalized few and popular masses who listen to nothing written since the first Mozart are both jerked from their comfortable realities? You say eloquently that "Matisse and Charlie Parker were new, but still well within the parameters of emotional impact that make for great music and art." What if we have only felt the first ripple or two of Adria jumping into the water--and will still have waves and waves yet to roll over us on both the high and low end?

If that's the case, Steve, then in answer to "Does this mean that 50 years from now my grandchildren, who will be old enough to have children of their own, will serve my great-grandchildren foamed bacon and eggs?" I'd have to say no. It will happen alot sooner than that. You'll foam that dish up yourself 10 years from now.

[Bux]

I don't know if there were any people who liked Matisse or Parker, but didn't find them satisfying as you're correct in noting that satisfaction in those fields is just plain different than it is when eating.

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.

The operative words for the Costa Brava are "for among other things." Having recently returned from the Costa Brava, I can say that none of the two or three star restaurants have inns attached, nor does the most intriguing one star. This has been discussed elsewhere as has the fact that the tradition of gourmet driving tours has a rich tradition in France, but it is non existent in Spain.

This may be why Gagnaire, Bras and Veyrat get more press in the US than Adria, Berasategui or Arzak. France is on the road map. Spain is not. Far more telling is that Adria has managed to get gastronomes to beat a path to his door over a tortuous road. I don't know how long Arzak had three stars in San Sebastian, but although he is friends with some of the top French and Italian chefs, I suspect his restaurant was all but unknown to Americans although his creativity is of an earlier era and his food exceptionally satisfying.

I don't know how easy it would be to get a table in The French Laundry if it were in Kansas City, or if it would have ever gotten off the ground there. I know that Adria is at the end of a rioad out of Roses, which is not exactly a place I'd care to stop for anything but Adrias' food. El Celler de Can Roca, a two star restaurant in a residential suburb of Girona, was full on a Saturday night. A week before we arrived, we were unable to change our reservation from dinner to lunch because lunch was full as well. On a weekday afternoon, Sant Pau, in Sant Pol de Mer, a two star restaurant a block away from the Mediterranean, was practicaly empty. Both of these places are very creative, but temper the menu with very satisfying dishes. Spanish restaurants seem to work on a different model and in a far different economy. We've often dined in empty restaurants in the middle of the week.

Ducasse is a big fan of Adria and the number of young chefs who come through El Bulli is bound to have an effect on how people dine.

[robert brown]

Steve Klc, do you find the interest in Adria (I have always been meaning to include both brothers because I detected Albert’s hand all throughout my meal at El Bulli) has continued to increase, leveled off, or diminished recently? I ask because there was this big flurry of articles two years ago (Adria PR or copycat journalism?) and I haven’t seen much since.

Marcus, thanks for jumping in. It is nice to have an additional voice making cogent statements. I think you caught the essence of the present situation surrounding the cooking avant-garde. ( I think “displacement” is as good a word to use as “deconstructive”). By the way, I always wanted to try Vanel (Wasn’t it Les Freres Vanel?) and Chez Guerin, which Monsieur Jamin mentioned to me a few times.. How were they?

Steve P. and I are worried about the possibility (somewhat small, I think, but hardly discountable) that the way we enjoy eating at serious restaurants will be eroded away with this kind of cooking in which spontaneity is lost for a cuisine that is carefully plotted out ahead of time; is less reliant on markets (the food kind); and by which, in essence, something that you don’t want to stop eating is “taken away from you” because of small portions. I am also starting to see a form of culinary corruption (even in Italy of all places) where I have had a few meals in regional restaurants where “Adria things” appear on my plate. This does not mean I am backtracking from the very enthusiastic reaction I had to my one meal at El Bulli. Rather, to reiterate, I think that key to enjoying it to the maximum is to have it at Adria’s restaurant in 25 or so courses: the “El Bulli ride” as Bux aptly named it. However, I am willing to admit that it is early in this new manifestation of cuisine and that it is unknowable how it will fit in several years from now with the way we eat.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"At your level of understanding, Steve, yes it seems your "choices are coming down to having a mixed radish salad at Craft that is ultra-fresh as they got the radishes at the greenmarket that morning, or to go to some faraway place to have a dish composed of the essence, foam, dust, and sorbet of various radishes."

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I hope, in time, to convince you you'll have many more rewarding options. "

Steve - Gee I was making a joke based on the fact that the two concepts couldn't be farther apart.

"This has been discussed elsewhere as has the fact that the tradition of gourmet driving tours has a rich tradition in France, but it is non existent in Spain."

Bux - But gourmet dining tours in France happened because the restaurants built hotels for people to stay in. And the reason that they were able to build hotels is their fame spread beyond the most demanding diners to a category of diner that was as much or more traveler than diner. This gets us back to Marcus's point that the whole thing revolves around paying customers, and how many there are.

The reason that the Costa Brava or San Sebastian isn't overrun with people from the U.S., or from other countries in Europe is that the reviews from people like Robert do not extol the virtues of the cooking in terms of deliciousness. Yes the creativity is extolled, and yes it is reported that if you are interested in food at this level you have to experience it, but so far I haven't met anyone who claims that the food at El Bulli is as delicious as we used to describe the food at numerous three star establishments in France during the last 30 years of the last century. This week we went to Daniel with another couple who are truly world class eaters. Their review of both El Bulli and Bertesegui is "weird." But Bras and Charlie Trotter were both phenomenol. I'm not saying they're right. But "weird" doesn't make a lot of people rush out for plane tickets to Spain.

When that changes, and when the common answer to questions about the restaurants is "phenomenol," people will go in droves. But while the reviews revolve mostly around extolling the technical virtuosity of the chef to a greater extent then "deliciousness," the number of visitors will remain chefs and those like you and me who have the highest degree of interest in food. But for some reason I feel that Steve Klc doesn't agree with this. And I'm waiting for him to describe why he thinks that people are going to flock to eat this type of cuisine unless mere foodie civilians report that they had among the greatest, that is great as in delicious, not great as in most interesting, meal of their lives?

[Bux]

While I've ceded point that satisfaction at the table may be very different than satisfaction in the art gallery or concert hall, I haven't meant to suggest that people walk away from table at El Bulli unsatisfied or in need of radical debriefing. My wife just pased by and noted that I was writing about El Bulli. Her comment was that she was ready to eat there again and wished she could eat there several times in a single month. She added that next time, she'd like to go there alone, so she could just sit back and enjoy the food without having to discuss each dish right then and there.

I think I've already mentioned my first lunch at El Bulli and how we met some members of a luxury hiking and biking tour who were also dining there. The ones we met and talked to on the veranda of the restaurant were not followers of the Michelin stars. The tour company just happened to take them to first rate places to eat and stay. Neither Adria, nor Ducasse were important figures to them. To a man (and woman) these well to do, but outdoorsy folk, loved their meal. Don't make the mistake of thinking Adria can't punch right thorough to your pleasure center.

[Steve Klc]

Robert--short answer--diminished. That round of articles two years ago--when Food Arts first mentioned Adria, took note of Albert and his pastry book, then Gourmet and Esquire ran their pieces, the Time and Newsweek crowd had their pieces--let's call this the first wave.

The chefs had, of course, already beaten a path to El Bulli since the early 90's. So Adria had influenced countless chefs already, for going on a decade. It just took the media a while to catch up.

But your larger point, I think, is very valid--that there has been a drop-off of "Adria" pieces in the mainstream and we've entered the second wave: Spain itself is discovered, that there are other three-star Michelin chefs there doing interesting things, etc. I've already predicted elsewhere that this will not end until paella is as ubiquitous in the US as risotto. Inclusive in this is that the French are playing catch-up on the world stage.

For the third wave, I expect a big renewal of interest in Adria as his 10 year anniversary/retrospective book comes out and Albert's new plated dessert book comes out--both this Fall and both in English. Plus, I expect you'll start to hear more about the entrepreneurial side of Adria, more product, licensing, consulting and global business stories. He'll "out Ducasse" Ducasse, "out Bocuse" Bocuse. He's already clearly the most innovative, scientific and creative chef--but I expect that opinion to continue to be solidified as well, even within France and England, who aren't quite able to admit that, but for different reasons. Naysayers at the moment will realize Adria's food actually tasted soulful and satisfying all along--or as Bux says "Don't make the mistake of thinking Adria can't punch right thorough to your pleasure center." And, his creativity and vision will make more inroads at the lower end, the more popular end of food and dining as well.

This will really throw Steve P. for a loop because none of the influence as a result of the third wave will require making the trek to El Bulli to dine! I keep missing your posts Steve, sorry. But the short answer to "describe why he thinks that people are going to flock to eat this type of cuisine unless mere foodie civilians report that they had among the greatest, that is great as in delicious, not great as in most interesting, meal of their lives?" is that I think chefs are on this arc at the moment--embracing what Adria really has to teach them or show them about their art and craft--and eventually we'll get to the point where not only the most talented chefs, doing the most interesting work in the best food cities will have been able to process Adria through their system, to internalize him so to speak but all of their sous chefs and line cooks will have as well.

As a chef, Adria makes you see things differently and can change the course of your professional career. It starts with Jose Andres coming to the US, then the Trotter/Keller/Palladin level of US chef goes, then the Rick Tramonto and Ken Oringer level goes--which is where we're at now--but then it filters down even to the level of interns and stagiares from those kitchens, or like how David Bouley sent his team to El Bulli, who come back from their El Bulli enlightenment, impact their restaurant or get a new job and start getting in the papers themselves. Call this the Will Goldfarb/Alex Urena level.

We're just waiting for all of this to coalesce, to gel a bit more, but I'm betting it will Steve. And that would render moot all this talk about the travelling to Spain for Adria's cuisine. It will be alot closer than you think.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Well the issue isn't whether there won't be diners who find "satisfaction" in an El Bulli type of meal, the issue is how many of them. The fame (and fortune to a large extent) of a chef are driven by this issue. I'm not surprised that your wife can appreciate a meal at El Bull as much as a meal at Gagnaire. But how many people are like that? And the people on your luxury hiking tour and not a perfect example because, the issue isn't will people like the food if they are there, the issue is, will they travel long distances for it like people traveled to places like Illhausern or Eugenie les Bains.

Steve Klc - I like your point about risotto, and in the context you have used it here it makes more sense to me then it ever did before. But one of the chefs, preferrably Adria, needs to deconstruct and reconstruct a version of paella so it becomes a household world so to speak. The paella version of salmon with sorrel sauce.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"Naysayers at the moment will realize Adria's food actually tasted soulful and satisfying all along--or as Bux says "Don't make the mistake of thinking Adria can't punch right thorough to your pleasure center." And, his creativity and vision will make more inroads at the lower end, the more popular end of food and dining as well."

Steve Klc - I wouldn't say I'm a naysayer, but what I will say, and you reach the same conclusion when you speak of the third wave, that Adria's contribution might likely be to the technique of cooking, not to the ritual of serving a meal. Because for it to be for the ritual of serving a meal, one would have to make the trek to eat there. But yes, Adria can be some type of uberchef who influences other chefs and dining at large. *But that will not,* make him as famous as Bocuse and Robuchon etc, ever were. If Adria has created new techniques to be applied to food, but does not figure out how to apply those techniques to make *the most delicious restaurant in the world,* someone else will take those techniques and do it for him. That's the point I was trying to make at the beginning of this thread, and which Marcus stated in a much better way. It's what made Shakespere Shakespere and Mozart Mozart. They not only figured it out, they sold it to paying customers.

[Fat Guy]

It's interesting that Robert Brown chose 1968 as a possible dividing ling between the present culinary era and the days of yore, because I was born in 1969. More importantly, my education in haute cuisine came mostly courtesy of Gray Kunz, who is unfortunately without portfolio at the moment. On the few occasions that I've dined in the style of Boyer or Blanc or Ducasse, I've found my meals delicious and even exciting in their precision. But I haven't detected any inherent naturalness or intuitiveness in their approaches.

The use of the term deconstruction in discussions of Adria has always seemed curious to me, because having studied deconstruction -- as in the philosophical and literary work of Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man -- I've never seen the connection. The word deconstruction as commonly used in the food media -- and indeed it's a handy word for breaking down anything into its theoretical components -- has little to do with deconstruction. At the most basic level, deconstruction in the literary world is not a way of writing; it is a form of criticism. Without getting deep into the semantics of it all, to me deconstruction in the culinary world cannot come from chefs -- it has to come from critics saying things like, "there is no inherent superiority of Les Crayeres over McDonald's."

The more colloquial use of deconstruction -- meaning to analyze the components of a dish and rebuild them into something that tastes good using the tools available in the kitchen -- is simply what chefs have always done. I don't acknowledge an intellectual distinction between making potato foam and turning wheat into bread. Pretty much all cooking is about transformation. Whether the end result is familiar is a completely different issue. Remember that what Adria is trying to do (and I will use Adria as shorthand for the modernist movement in cooking) is extract the essence of flavor from food and present it in a stimulating form. In other words, he's trying to make food taste good by escaping the prison of form and focusing instead on flavor, texture, and temperature as pure concepts. I think the reason Special K is especially accepting of this approach is that it's much like what pastry chefs do every day. Save for the occasional use of fresh fruit, pastry is all about transformation and the essence of flavor. There's no big piece of animal muscle or a whole bird or an asparagus spear to preserve.

Conservatism in art, music, literature, and as we see here cuisine, plays an important role. It's not just the natural order of things -- society depends on conservatism as a tool of self-perpetuation -- but it's also the best way to make a lot of people good at something. Most chefs would be better off following the formulae of the haute cuisine masters. There are schools to teach it, and the distribution of ingredients and the design of kitchens are aligned to support it. Most chefs lack the skill set to depart in any meaningful way from the orthodoxy while still making delicious food. But some do, and they should be celebrated.

[robert brown]

Nicely done Fat Guy. I am even willing to discount your being the son of an esteemed literary scholar. I am not comfortable with "Deconstructivism" being applied to Adria either. That is why I suggested the word "displacement" which I think describes the phenomenon of rearranging the pre-existing structure of a song or reshaping the subject matter of a painting, with the most vivid example I have ever come across being the Marian McPartland NPR interview with Bill Evans during which he demonstrates how he displaces the melody in "All of You". The big question, however, is (and it should be a thread of it own) do many fewer people care these days about Adria and the repercussions on the best eating than had he arrived on the scene 15-20 years ago. And finally FG, maybe you were conceived after one of the first "Nouvelle Cuisine" dinners.

[Fat Guy]

It was actually after a modern dance concert (my mother was with the Erik Hawkins company at the time), but let's not go there.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Hey Fat Guy that was a good post.

"The more colloquial use of deconstruction -- meaning to analyze the components of a dish and rebuild them into something that tastes good using the tools available in the kitchen -- is simply what chefs have always done. I don't acknowledge an intellectual distinction between making potato foam and turning wheat into bread."

To me the issue here is why people eat. People eat potatoes not for the essence of the flavor, but because the flavor is combined with starchiness. Someone could do it, but I would have no desire for a cup of steaming liquid that tastes just like french fries. Nor do I need a cube of warm aspic that gives the sensation of eating a bite of a rare piece of prime rib. Not that it isn't interesting when someone serves something like that but, I don't think that type of innovation advances cuisine very far. Bread is bread, and taking a tablet that tastes just like pain Poillane will never replace the sensuality of the sensation one gets while eating the real thing. At least I hope it doesn't in my lifetime.

[Fat Guy]

Some flavors are more wedded to their textures than others. Prime rib is a good example of one where the chewing and release of juices is such an integral part of the whole experience that it's hard for me to imagine a way to improve that particular flavor-texture-temperature combination. So if somebody served me frozen prime rib goo in a cup my first criticism would likely be "why bother?"

But I'd say the same thing if you made a hamburger out of prime rib -- it's the bad judgment I object to, not the new-fangledness of the transformation (it's in this aspect of the objection that you old-timers start to sound a bit fuddy-duddy-ish about food). And I don't rule out the possibility that somebody might have more imagination than I do and might come up with a way to improve on the prime rib experience, especially when it's just one component in a complex dish and it has to be played off something else.

After all, we did lots of stuff to improve prime rib to get it to where it is now: We cross-bred the cattle, we devised special diets and methods of slaughter, we came up with the dry-aging process, we figured out about those things called salt and pepper, and we built the Jade upright broiler to cook it with. Compared to all that, what the iSi Profi-whip does is a fairly minor intervention. And when you get into the question of bread, well, there you have something that bears almost no relation at all to its underlying ingredient. Ever taste wheat raw?

But it doesn't always have to be about improvement per se. Sometimes it's just a question of appreciating something in different ways -- call it being cerebral if that helps. Sometimes tasting something in multiple versions is enjoyable even if you prefer one of the versions over the others. If you put mashed potatoes, french fries, potato chips, and potato foam on a plate and you liked the mashed potatoes best, you wouldn't necessarily ask to have the other three removed and replaced with more mashed potatoes. That's a metaphor for the way we eat and enjoy food -- contrasts take place not only within the context of single meals but also across multiple meals. Eating the denatured potato creations of an Adria is not only interesting but also bumps up your ability to appreciate every other potato dish you eat going forward.

[Steve Plotnicki]

"Eating the denatured potato creations of an Adria is not only interesting but also bumps up your ability to appreciate every other potato dish you eat going forward."

Fat Guy - I can't disagree with anything you said, except the bit about the oldtimers if you are including me . Except I think you, and Steve Klc keep straying from dealing with what both Robert and I (and Marcus) are questioning. It isn't whether the denuded potato is interesting, or whether it will have a place in our culinary culture. We concede its virtue. But the question is whether it will permeate our culinary culture (at the haute cuisine level) to the extent Robuchon's mashed potatoes, and like signature dishes have done? There is a huge difference between the foaming of potatoes catching on with one or two major chefs in every city that offers restaurants at the level we are discussing and minions traveling long distances to sample the famous foamed potatoes.

Maybe the world of high end eating as we know it as over? Maybe like Roy's or Ducasse, there will be no such thing as eating from a top chef's own hand anymore and you will only get to eat their recipes and their inventions as cooked by others. That means the role of the chef will change to one that is similar to a composer or playwrite. And I guess that is what Ducasse and Roy's and now Gordon Ramsey are. And if that is the way the world is going, I guess the three of us will grin and bear it. But you will never convince me (and I think that this is true for Robert as well) that we wouldn't rather hear Coltrane plays his solos himself, rather than hear someone play what he imagined. But maybe that way of thinking when it comes to food is out of date.

[marcus]

There is an essence to food that goes beyond intellectualization that I think that Steve Plotnicki is getting at and that was my real point in my original post. The basic love and appreciation of food is genetically programmed, and this programming arose from from the sustenance value of real foods such as potatos. To the extent that cooking techniques enhance the essence of that experience in line with our programming, we will experience these as improvements. The history of cooking has followed this direction from Escoffier to Point to Bocuse to Guerard to Robuchon just as music progressed from Bach to Mozart to Beethoven to Wagner. The risk is that man has a tendency to overreach and to believe that through intellect he can leave behind his instinctual core. This leads to inevitable failure, and the question to which I don't have the definitive answer is, is Adria leading us down that path which has been initiated by chefs like Bras and at a much lesser level, Trotter. As someone very interested in food, I would certainly be interested in eating at Adria's and I'm sure that I'd find it interesting and stimultating. I can understand that a professional such as Steve Klc finds it to open exciting directions. However, all of the things that Steve Klc says about Adria's approaches including that it encompasses all that went before, was said by music professionals who jumped on board of Aaron Schoeneberg's innovations with 12 tone music. Music also has an underlying basis of genetic programming, which this over-intellectualized approach didn't satisfy, and now almost a hundred years later, classical music is in continuing decline and modern classical music attracts only the most minute audience.

[Robert Schonfeld]

God is dead, art is dead, American foreign policy is dead...

Is what you all have been talking about the end of gastronomy, or have Adria and his school, like Charlie Parker, gone inside the music and turned it inside out? Through the culinary looking glass, so to speak.

Another question: the fine arts, as Marcus has pointed out about classical music, and as is true about painting as well, went through their modernist contortions a hundred years ago and more. Why has modernism, as FG calls it, come so late to the intellect of cuisine and the craft of cooking?

One of you should write a think piece called "The End of Cuisine", preferably in French. It could become a landmark essay.

[Fat Guy]

Marcus, I'm interested in what you mean by "genetic programming" and how that figures in evaluating which foods taste good. How do you sort food into the categories of "this goes against our genetic programming" and "this is what our genetic programming supports"? To use the potato example, when did homo sapiens or our predecessors first eat potatoes? Was it long enough ago for it to have made a difference in our evolutionary development or in natural selection (those groups who enjoyed potatoes reproduced, and those who didn't like them became extinct)? Certainly those of us descended from European genetic stock had no history of eating potatoes until the post-1492 era. I think we like mashed potatoes for more abstract reasons: Because they are salty, sweet, fatty, starchy, warm, etc. It doesn't matter that they're potatoes per se; if there's any genetic programming it's our disposition towards sweet, salty, fatty, etc. And then there is the intellectual exercise -- which has been in play for centuries and is nothing new -- of learning to enjoy bitterness and other flavors that we are genetically programmed not to like, because of the contrasts they lend and the nuances they can convey.

I don't have a position on atonalism in music, but I don't buy into the analogy either. Chefs still have to survive by making food that tastes good, and as Robert has observed (and I agree) the culinary arts are a century or more behind the studio and performing arts in this regard. The whole point of the Adria strategy as I see it is to use the technology available to us to make food taste, feel, smell, and look its best. I think it really helps to look at specific Adria dishes when discussing the concept of Adria's approach -- I find most of them inoffensive when described. If some modernist chefs are guilty of cooking dishes with reckless disregard of flavor just to prove the point that something can be done, I reject that approach as self-satisfying and ultimately detrimental to the craft. But if they are trying to make delicious food, I don't want to deny them any avenue of expression -- even if it means I have to re-educate my palate.

[robert brown]

This discussion may well be the first in which there is a hint of a backlash to Adria and Adria-inspired cooking, or at least a questioning (mostly from Steve P.) about the ultimate impact of it on international gastronomy. I, at least, have never read anything that extols him as being anything less than a genius. I think, however, that if anything changes this, or that he ultimately ends up as an idiosyncratic chef with no ultimate impact, it will be this concept of playing at food—in introducing the phenomenon of snack food or junk food and space-age or science fiction food into serious dining at the expense of diminishing the primacy of impeccable ingredients. This is not to say that he is not making food, or creating approaches and techniques that may forever change the face of cuisine. Yet, I think Steve P. raises some interesting points that he may sharpen or revise after visiting El Bulli. One that does not require a visit is his observation that it seems no one says the food is delicious. In my case, there were some delicious dishes, but Adria’s meals are such that “delicious” plays second fiddle to “amazing” and to their novelty and uniqueness. But take for example the liquid chicken dish I had. On one hand, it was delicious and captured the essence of the meat of a chicken; on the other, it lacked the textures and the contrasts that eating a “Poulet de Bresse” meat and skin together have. The novelty of eating Adria’s dish may be worth repeating in a couple of years, but day in and day out, I would rather eat a chicken made by a French three-star chef.

I think the questions we have to ask that Adria’s work has raised, are:

Have we hit a dead end in innovation in “traditional” cuisine?

Does Adria’s approach suit the parsimony that has overtaken serious cooking and restaurant dining? (I am curious to know when El Bulli began offering strictly “degustation” menus and when chefs started coming there in meaningful numbers since Adria took over the kitchen in, I believe, 1984).

Does Adria’s pre-eminence partially result from the decline of great chefdom in France?

Are we entering an era of “programmed” cuisine, both in cooking and presentation in the "degustation" format, in which spontaneity and freedom are given up for elaborate “a priori” conception?

[Steve Plotnicki]

"or have Adria and his school, like Charlie Parker, gone inside the music and turned it inside out?"

To me what Charlie Parker did was simply to reharmonize jazz, and change the tempo it was played at which happened to perfectly accomodate the types of melodies that he wrote because of the reharmonization. But what he did is not a complete departure from jazz as people knew it at the time. In hindsite, looking at jazz on a continuum, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington. Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Miles & Trane all get absorbed into what we would all call jazz. In fact we can take it further and say that the seminal musicians in each era set the stage for the next era. But then along comes Coltrane with A Love Supreme and then Ohm, Ornette Coleman, or even the Miles Davis quintet albums of the late 60's. They were avant garde and not jazz in the form we were familiar with. Our ability to appreciate jazz on a visceral level had been greatly diminished. They eliminated tempo, and they often eliminated chord changes completely. It was the spirit of jazz, and it had all of the elements of jazz, but it was an intelectual version of jazz because but they had taken the guts of it. And in the end, it was the guts that drew us to the music.

If nobody has noticed, jazz has been dead since that time. There hasn't been anything really new in jazz since the early 70's. In that instance, and I believe Marcus was making this same point about Schoeneberg and the avant garde in classical music, the intelectualization of classical music heralded its death with the paying public. The twelve tone scale was a great intelectual invention, but it eliminated the visceral reasons that drew people to classical music.

Then Fat Guy comes along and says,

"Chefs still have to survive by making food that tastes good, and as Robert has observed (and I agree) the culinary arts are a century or more behind the studio and performing arts in this regard. The whole point of the Adria strategy as I see it is to use the technology available to us to make food taste, feel, smell, and look its best."

And as usual Fat Guy is either all or mostly correct. But what I see missing from this argument is that food is a natural thing. Yes we can manipulate it by cross-breeding and changing growing conditions, but will people ever want to eat the essence of a potato rather than a potato itself? This is the hard question and I made a joke about it by saying one day we will eat a tablet and it will offer us the sensation and flavor of having eaten a slice of Poillane bread. I mean what's the difference if cuisine is nothing more than a bunch of science? But I think what Marcus is trying to say is that we don't eat for those reasons. There is something primal that draws us to the ritual of a meal and feeling satisfied, not as in intelectually satisfied, satisfied as in feeling full. And there is some point in this "deconstruction" of food that is analagous to avant garde jazz and avant garde classical music. Not that I believe we are at that point. But I wonder if Adria (generic) isn't a harbinger of that era in food?

Robert B. - Quickly as to your points because I am leaving to go back to the city. I think the issue we are all struggling with is how does what Adria has contributed impact on cuisine and the dining experience as we know it? It isn't a matter of questioning his genius, as Marcus has pointed to, Schoenenberg was a genius and we can illustrate the same point with many geniuses that didn't matter to the public at large.But everyone has heard of Beethoven and Gershwin and nobody but classical music fanatics have heard of Schoenenberg.

[Fat Guy]

Anyone who predicts the future with absolute confidence is delusional, so I can't say Adria and so-called molecular gastronomy are without a doubt the wave of the future. But we can look at numerous factors and judge based on experience whether there is a high likelihood of the Adria style having a lasting and widespread impact. In that regard, I think all the evidence points to yes. When Robert Brown reports:

I am also starting to see a form of culinary corruption (even in Italy of all places) where I have had a few meals in regional restaurants where “Adria things” appear on my plate.

It makes a point about how widely Adria's impact can be felt. Every chef with a desire to be modern (which is most chefs) is watching this one guy in the middle of nowhere in Spain -- I don't see it as just a fluke. When you look at the number of Adria disciples out there and their influence, and you add to that the fellow travelers and their disciples, and you throw in the imitators who are operating based only on secondary-source-based knowledge, it adds up to a whole lot of chefs in important places, shaping tastes and moving the ball forward. So I think it is far more likely than not that Adria will have serious, lasting, respectable impact on cuisine, and indeed already has to a great extent. I'd almost say we're past the time for debating the extent of his impact (it is arguably ubiquitous) and into the era where the only debate is the nature of his influence.

But all that aside, let me throw one more element into the mix: We simply don't have a food media that is capable of explaining Adria and molecular gastronomy to the wider audience without resort to sensationalism (fish with chocolate!!!) or reductionism (foam, foam, foam). And even worse, we don't have critics who are capable of giving constructive feedback to guys like Adria -- for most critics, Adria is all or nothing. The next generation of critics, who can look at individual Adria-type dishes and critique them effectively (or, as Plotnicki put it, we don't yet have critics who speak the language of this new cuisine), has not yet risen. Will it ever?

[robert brown]

Steve, what do you mean? They're all right here.

[Bux]

A few thoughts--some extraneous to the discussion.

Here we are in the France board, in a thread entitled "Gastronomy in France in Flux?" and the focus of our conversation quickly turns to Spain and Adria. Can I take that as a "yes?"

Analogies suck. No one has ever made a point well in this site using one and it seems we're all safe from tommy's analogy police here in the France board. Nevertheless, it would seem that food--a basic necessity--might better be lumped in with shelter and clothing, rather than art and music. Not all building is architecture and not all clothing is designer clothiing or haute couture. Not all food is haute cuisine, or perhaps in the US we might say that all food is cooking, but only some is "cuisine." Of course fishermen's sandals, peasant blouses and dungarees can become fashion statements and Adria can incorporate pork rinds and pop rocks in his cuisine.

No matter what happens in Roses, we will not stop eating. How much of an affect do we all think Robuchon has had on the mashed potatoes eaten by the typical American diner? I have ordered second generation seafood "capuccino" soup before I even heard of Adria and his foam. Savory ice creams are already pervasive in western cuisine. This is a larger jump in the evolution of haute cuisine, but it's already filtering down. Is the effect negative or positive? At his point it only seems to display one's prejudices to make that sort of judgement. As with any major shift, the net effect may depend as much on the ability of the chefs who embrace the new style as the strength of the style.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Analogies suck. No one has ever made a point well in this site using one and it seems we're all safe from tommy's analogy police here in the France board. Nevertheless, it would seem that food--a basic necessity--might better be lumped in with shelter and clothing, rather than art and music. Not all building is architecture and not all clothing is designer clothiing or haute couture. Not all food is haute cuisine, or perhaps in the US we might say that all food is cooking, but only some is "cuisine." Of course fishermen's sandals, peasant blouses and dungarees can become fashion statements and Adria can incorporate pork rinds and pop rocks in his cuisine.

Bux, would you mind expanding on your thoughts along these lines? I don't quite see what you're getting at.