Comfort vodka anyone? A new trend seems to be sweeping the restaurant/bar scene–gummy vodka, cookie dough vodka, bubblegum vodka, chocolate milk vodka… I have no interest in this.

Derek Brown’s take on it is right.

I don’t believe that nostalgia is without merit. I can certainly understand the use of nostalgic elements in food and drinks. For instance, Christina Tosi’s famous cereal milk from Momofuku Milk Bar, or cheeky references to drinks from our childhood in cocktails. The difference is that these references are a kind of phrasing. The same thing that happens in jazz when musical phrases from other songs are transposed and improvised within an original work. Nostalgically-flavored vodkas are more likely to apply a literal interpretation of flavor. Whipped cream vodka tastes like, well, whipped cream vodka, which mostly tastes like whipped cream.

Taking flavors and placing them in a new context is the essence of culinary innovation. Making vodka taste like cream is just a gimmick. The problem is that nothing new is revealed here about cream or vodka

Similar misguided innovations have been spurred by the interest in molecular gastronomy.  So when I spotted “pork lollipops” in a review of Rome’s Metamorfosi by Elizabeth Minchilli, “culinary disaster” immediately crossed my mind. But my palate was piqued, by her mention of “barely cooked tuna with chestnut ice cream”—interesting in flavor and texture.

And the rest of the meal is extraordinary. Here is a taste:

Hard to call out a favorite, but the pressed raw shrimp, on a bed of crunchy bread crumbs and topped with oyster cream and avocado was sublime. And as with all the dishes, topped with just-picked fresh herbs that were not garnish, but an essential element of the dish.
After an exquisitely cooked scallop with radicchio (sorry no photo) we moved on to secondi.
Marsciarelli spaghetti, perfectly al dente, topped with ‘polvere e profumo di mare.’ Dried, dehydrated mussels that did indeed make me think I was standing by the sea. Then three prefect ravioli, filled with creamy blu di monviso and dressed with rounds of beets and black truffle. And finally Risotto in Pacchetto Zafferano e Chinotto. That would be rice in a saffron package with chinotto (a type of Italian soft drink). I’m not sure what the packet was made out of, but it was gorgeous, melted away magically beneath my fork, and contained a truly ethereal saffron risotto.

Avocado and oyster cream, spaghetti with dried, dehydrated mussels—thoughtful, creative, and intriguing because they show new dimensions of traditional Italian ingredients. And the photos show the extraordinary attention to detail.

Genuine artistic innovation is never different for the sake of being different or merely odd and unexpected. It gives you a new experience of something treasured, a new way of tasting, a revelation rather than a curio. Cutting-edge-different but nevertheless grounded in tradition—unlike vodka that tastes like cream.

“The beginning and root of all good is the pleasure of the stomach; even wisdom and culture must be referred to this”. (Epicurus, Fragments)

That is a rather striking sentence coming from a philosopher—we tend to be a less than hedonistic tribe. Epicurus seems to have thought that everything worth valuing in human life, especially wisdom, is ultimately traceable to food. This view is unique in the annals of philosophy, and is not widely held among ordinary folk either, aside from the tribe affectionately known as “foodies”.

In one sense, of course, the connection between food and a good life is obvious. Without nutrition we could not survive to pursue other goods. But Epicurus did not focus on nutrition only. It was the pleasure of food (and wine) and its role in social exchange that seems to have prompted his encomia to the delights of the table. Unfortunately, the only surviving writings we have are fragments so his reasoning cannot be reliably elaborated.

So what is uniquely virtuous about a life centered around food and wine. No doubt the pleasures of the table are satisfying and they grease the wheels of social commerce. But the same could be said of lots of other human activities—sports, music, art, religion, sex and romance, etc. What is so distinctive about food and wine?

Of all the pleasures we pursue, food is the one that is constant in its satisfaction since we must eat several times during a day. These satisfactions are temporary—we get hungry soon after being satiated. But that impermanence is a good thing, since the pangs of hunger are a reason to once again seek pleasure. There are very few other activities in life in which the imperative to seek satisfaction and thus to experience pleasure is so constant. (Sex may be in second place—but not three times a day!)

Thus, food is a unique and singularly anchoring sort of pleasure. Because the attractions of food are so persistent (not to mention the difficulties in securing and preparing them), they shape our lives in a variety of ways and have implications for all aspects of life, especially social life. Eating is a center around which our social lives revolve, and feeding ourselves and others well is an essential part of socializing well. The pangs of hunger are not only a reason to seek pleasure; they are a reason to seek friendship.

The pleasure of food (and wine) is not an afterthought—a bonus over and above the nutrition that food supplies. It is both a symbol of love and friendship and the substance of them as well. Ignoring the pleasures of the table is a kind of disrespect—a deliberate disregard for the offer of friendship. The practice of feeding others well is a kind of excellence that reverberates throughout the rest of life.

This is the wisdom to which Epicurus alludes and foodies embody. It is as plausible a conception of the good as any other.

San Diego has a newly formed Meetup group devoted to serious wine tasting. San Diego Wine Society meets once a month over dinner to taste high-end, international wines. By meeting as a group, everyone gets a generous taste of these very special wines while spreading the cost among all the participants.

This past Saturday, the society invited me to help guide a blind tasting of 8 premium wines. The atmosphere was convivial and relaxed yet thoroughly devoted to wine education. The wines were invariably interesting and in some cases extraordinary. The event was well-run and the food well-prepared, at a reasonable price.

If you have a serious interest in wine, I urge you to sign up for this group and attend their dinners—their Meet-up page is here. There is no membership fee.

The wines poured for February’s dinner are as follows:

2007 Vega Sicilia Alion, Tempranillo,  Ribera Del Duero, Spain.

2009 Ata Rangi, Pinot Noir, Martinborough, New Zealand.

2009 Tres Picos Garnacha Borja, Spain.

2004 Conterno Fantino Barolo, Piemonte, Italy.

2009 Clos La Coutale. Malbec, Cahors, France.

2004 Michel and Stephane Ogier Lancemont, Cote Rotie, France.

2008 Clio Monastrell, Jumilla, Spain.

2009 Le Sughere di Frassinello Super Tuscan, Italy.

To my palate, the star of the show was the Ogier Lancemont Cote Rotie. My tasting notes are here.

I hope to see you at a tasting in the future.

An intense and highly focused attack of dense blackberry and cherry flavors gives way to toasty oak, chocolate, and baking spice on the mid-palate. The complex flavors are supported by bracing acidity that reverberates throughout the taste experience and gives this wine extraordinary presence and movement on the palate. The finish is very long with well integrated tannins  that sustain core fruit flavors. There is nothing subtle or muted about this wine. It is a powerhouse. Can be found for around $175.

Good: Intensity of flavors and acidity

Bad: If you like subtlety, you won’t find it here.

Distinctive: Sheer power

• The Anxiety of Influence. Molecular gastronomy expert Grant Achatz, in his new restaurant called Next, is serving up dishes by the man who started it all—Ferran Adria.  Check out the slide show.
• Edible Helium Balloon. Despite the travails of opening a new restaurant, Achatz has lost none of his experimental elan. Here is a video in which he makes an edible helium balloon.
• Are local food sources more friendly to the environment? Not necessarily, claims Jason Clay.
• This needs explaining. It really does. “Gourmet” pet food has been around a long time. But lobster consommé? Have these people ever watched a dog eat?
• The Taste of Austerity. Italy’s recession is forcing Italians to seek out dishes using offal and stale bread.
• Zagat’s 10 signs of a bad restaurant.

The Wine Spectator’s Matt Kramer wonders why good wine lovers tell bad lies.

If You Like It, It Is Good. This is, without question, the biggest lie of them all. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard wine lovers—fellow writers, merchants, consumers—serve up this whopper.

Why do they do it? The answer is actually simple: They think it will make wine more accessible to more people. They think they’re doing everyone a favor by “democratizing” wine. Wine is too elitist, you see. It’s important—nay, essential—that wine be taken down a peg or two in order to make it accessible to all.

Kramer is right. This advice is indeed misleading.  “If you like it, it is good” assumes that there is nothing beyond your merely liking something that accounts for its quality, nothing more to be discovered and nothing more to be enjoyed. Thus, if you endorse this claim you have no reason to recognize the limitations of what you like or search for something better. It is a shame to encourage such an attitude in novice wine drinkers.

Sommeliers, of course, know this is misleading—that is why they put in the work to gain expertise. But they pretend otherwise because customers want their palates validated and are perceived to be intimidated if wine becomes too serious. Granted, not every situation is a “teaching” situation and sommeliers/merchants must be sensitive to what the customer is looking for. But to dismiss the possibility of educating a palate is irresponsible.

Kramer’s remarks stirred up some controversy. Wine blogger Chris Kassel takes Kramer to task for his alleged elitism.

People like Matt want to be the arbiter of what’s ‘good’ and ‘not good’, what’s ‘hot’ and ’not hot’, because that’s precisely how they justify their paychecks.

Kassel proceeds to give us a dissertation on the ambiguities of “good” arguing that “good” is best understood as “good for some purpose” or “good at some price”. People who are satisfied with inferior wine are judging with a different set of criteria than an expert like Kramer would use, criteria that are more meaningful to them, according to Kassel.

That is no doubt true. But it doesn’t follow that there is nothing to be gained by expanding one’s horizons. Kassel is skeptical that there is any absolute sense of “good” that can be applied to wine (mistakenly using the Sorites paradox to make his point.) But that question is needlessly “metaphysical”. What is important is that we maintain a distinction between appreciation and evaluation. We can appreciate a wine for all sorts of reasons that are only modestly related to its quality—when relaxing after work for instance. Enjoying what is in front of you regardless of merit maybe all that matters in that context. But when we evaluate wine we are asking a different question—does the wine meet a less subjective standard, consideration of which can teach us something about the character of a wine when compared to others of its type. Discovery, learning, and insight ultimately depend on evaluation.

Kramer is engaged in this task of evaluation and is right to insist that “if  you like it, it is good” will not do.

I ran across two items last week that illustrate a peculiar mistrust of pleasure in American life.

The first is this article from the NY Times on mindful eating. I talk about mindful eating a lot because only by thinking about food can we maximize the pleasure we get from it. But “mindful eating” means something quite different to most of its proponents. Taking their cue from Buddhist meditation,

In the eyes of some experts, what seems like the simplest of acts — eating slowly and genuinely relishing each bite — could be the remedy for a fast-paced Paula Dean Nation in which an endless parade of new diets never seems to slow a stampede toward obesity…Could a discipline pioneered by Buddhist monks and nuns help teach us how to get healthy, relieve stress and shed many of the neuroses that we’ve come to associate with food?…

Mindful eating is meant to nudge us beyond what we’re craving so that we wake up to why we’re craving it and what factors might be stoking the habit of belly-stuffing.

Notice that the purpose of mindful eating is not to get more enjoyment from food (although the proponents admit that is a side benefit). It is to improve our health. The pursuit of pleasure is not sufficient reason to be thoughtful about food—it must contribute to a devotional practice or inhibit our tendency to overeat.

Healthy eating is, of course, a good thing and if mindful eating encourages it then all the better. The oddity is not the doctors and nutritionists that, for good reason, advocate it but the fact that the public seems receptive to the message only if it will improve health outcomes. Enhancing the quality of pleasure isn’t on the table.

In a similar vein, at the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Brainstorms blog, evolutionary psychologist David Barash extols the virtues of the Costa Rican diet that consists mainly of rice, beans, and fruit often eaten three times a day. The Nepalese diet consisting mostly of lentils comes in for some praise as well.

Barash wonders, in light of our unhealthy fast food diet, why we don’t have a similar healthy, inexpensive but one-dimensional diet.

And I can’t help noting that it’s unfortunate—maybe even tragic—that the United States, for example, doesn’t have an equivalent of rice and beans or dal bhat: a basic, healthy, inexpensive, easy-to-prepare default meal. Instead, we have “Happy Meals” that are nutritionally miserable, or variants on Coca Cola, Doritos, and cheeseburgers: high in salt, fat, sugar and, ironically, cost as well.

This is a bizarre suggestion. Why is boring good? The problem with the American fast food/packaged food diet is not that it contains too much diversity. It is not as if the choice between Burger King and Wendy’s is a real choice. The problem is we don’t take the time to distinguish and focus on genuine quality. We approach food as if it were fuel—an assumption that underlies both linked articles.

Unlike Costa Rica, we are a nation of immigrants. If we wish to avoid the sugar/salt/fat-laden American diet, we have a wealth of healthy, inexpensive options to choose from including rice and beans from Latin America, lentil-based dishes from India, the various healthy cuisines from the Mediterranean, and the stir-fries from Asia.

The many food choices we have in the U.S. are a good thing. But that virtue is undermined by the seemingly inexhaustible search for convenience and indifference to the quality of pleasure, both of which are encouraged by the idea that food is merely fuel rather than one everyday focal point for leading a life of excellence.

Good: Creamy mouthfeel and refreshing finish

Bad: It’s all good.

Distinctive: Unusually substantial body for this varietal

Although the dish originated in Southern China, the version I remember–rubbery chicken, soggy vegetables in a sweet, cornstarch thickened sauce—was distinctly 50’s style American food. Bland, soft, convenient—a crude vehicle for sugar and salt that was a far cry from anything authentically Chinese. (Restaurant versions were only slightly more appetizing.)

In a remarkable sign of progress, Americanized Chinese food is now being sold in China.

..as Beijing is internationalizing, hundreds of thousands of foreign transplants who call the city home are bringing with them a craving for expat versions of Chinese dishes. Panda Express, the largest Chinese-restaurant chain in the U.S., is considering expanding into China. Meanwhile, a few entrepreneurs in Beijing have begun trying to peddle American “Chinese” food to the locals.

Chinese cook Lu Wentao, having recently returned to his home in China from a stint in the U.S, is giving his fellow countryman a taste of Americana:

Foreign dishes like Mongolian beef, sesame chicken, and kung pao pork line his menu; he even graces his chop suey with those pieces of fried nothings called crispy noodles served pre-meal at Chinese restaurants in the States. His sesame chicken tastes like the American shopping-mall version, with a comforting sweetness. “I really want to find fortune cookies in China,” he says with a sigh. “That would make a big difference here.”

An excellent illustration of two old adages: Bad ideas know no borders; and the more things change the more they remain the same.

If you have spent much time in a bar you already knew that.

But this research is interesting for anyone who depends on the objectivity of their sensory experience—such as wine critics. The linked article refers to “previous studies that indicate how heightened senses of bitterness/sourness can be achieved by playing specific types of sound (i.e. squeaking metal makes things taste more bitter).”

Our taste perceptions are powerfully influenced by our environment which makes it difficult to give objective evaluations of wine and food.

Wine and food tasting is already challenging enough because flavors and flavor memories often lack definition, we lack the semantic categories that would help with identification and recall, and we all have different thresholds for the detection of various chemical substances that trigger flavor sensations.

There is also substantial evidence that we are easily influenced in our judgments by price, reputation, and other contextual factors. Now we can add environmental influence to the list of influences that make evaluative tasting very difficult.