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~ Exploring the Aesthetics and Philosophy of Food and Wine

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Tag Archives: aesthetics of food

When a Chef Becomes an Artist

15 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by Dwight Furrow in Art and Food, Contemporary Food Culture, Philosophy of Food and Wine

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aesthetics of food, Chef Massimiliano Alajmo, Chef Rod Butters, Van Gogh

imageJust as Van Gogh revealed the secrets of the landscapes near Arles in his paintings of Southern France, culinary artists reveal hidden dimensions of ingredients and dishes, dimensions that previous cooks overlooked that create a new way for that dish or ingredient to be. The idea is not merely to create a fantastic concoction or to add a new flavor note to a dish. It is to capture the essence of something that has hitherto gone unnoticed and to impress upon the diner that there is something here to be explored and understood. Unlike craftwork, art works reveal some new treasure that solicits our attention and demands the kind of studied focus we give to the visual arts or music. A chef who has mastered the craft of cooking will prepare food that squeezes every bit of flavor from her ingredients. The chef who is an artist will challenge a diner and provoke a revelation that will be arresting, illuminating—and ultimately pleasurable.

salmon-and-rhubarb-editWorks of culinary art, it should go without saying, must be pleasurable as well as revelatory. Pleasure is the seducer that makes knowing the secret worth our efforts. But the chef’s intense focus on giving pleasure is not peculiar to the edible arts. Music or painting that is flat and inexpressive will fail as art as surely as a watery, under-seasoned bisque. We would not be discussing Van Gogh today were it not for his voluptuous brush work and color palette.

Thus genuine culinary art creates something in addition to pleasure—a revelation that not only tastes good but is arresting and illuminating.

Even relatively simple dishes can be revelatory such as Rod Butters’ Grilled & Smoked Pacific Salmon with rhubarb broth, and rhubarb jam from Raudz in Kelowna BC that revealed rhubarb’s affinity for smoke, or Chef Massimiliano Alajmo’s Risotto with Saffron and Sorbet of licorice and rosemary from Le Calandre near Padua, Italy  that brought out the licorice note in the saffron.

saffron-risotto-with-licorice editFor more on the philosophy of food and wine visit my Monday Column archives on Three Quarks Daily

Le Calandre and the Challenge of Fine Dining

08 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by Dwight Furrow in Contemporary Food Culture, Philosophy of Food and Wine, Restaurant Reviews, Travel

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aesthetics of food, Italian food, Michelin star

crudo-w-trufflesedit2For me, the biggest challenge in fully appreciating tasting menus is the pace, even in dining rooms where the wait staff and kitchen are sensitive about the timing of the meal. It is difficult to taste each dish carefully, to understand how all the ingredients interact, to reflect on the emotional expression of the dish and how it exemplifies the chef’s style, and to write all that down for future reference all in the few minutes in which the dish is in front of you (and still hot if it’s a cooked dish). Add to that an appreciation of how the wine pairings are working while carrying on conversation with dinner companions and leaving time for pure enjoyment– it feels like a hectic day at work instead of a consummate aesthetic experience. This is why restaurant reviews are usually just lists of ingredients with an adjective or two.  Perhaps each dish should come with an information card with detailed accounts of the chef’s intention as an entrée into the meaning of the dish.

Le Calandre is a 3-star Michelin restaurant just outside of Padua, Italy, on some lists among the top 40 restaurants in the world. I was fortunate to get reservations there last summer and was, as usual, faced with this dilemma about how to fully appreciate the meal. This time I was rescued by a mighty tome written by Chef Massimiliano Alajmo available for purchase at the restaurant. It included not just recipes but conceptualizations of many of the dishes we were served that evening, along with a dialogue that goes into some detail about how he thinks about his compositions. Of course, I didn’t spend the evening reading a book. The meal was delicious and interesting, and thanks to photos, a few notes and a subsequent reading of the book I’m still “tasting” the meal.

The most telling quote from the book is this. Speaking of his signature dish, cuttlefish in black cappuccino (see below), he writes:

It was clear from the beginning that coffee wasn’t the motive. The motive as an attempt to enter into contact, or even better to communicate with the intimate part of the ingredient because nobility is intrinsic in all true and genuine elements. In them we have two components: the essential and formal parts. The essential is interior and animated. The formal is exterior and obvious, and is passive in comparison. In other words, the ingredient is the way we view it but an in-depth study is the way we communicate with it. We elevate each element through understanding with comprehensive examination not limited to the exterior….Above all, to penetrate an ingredient means to go beyond the sensorial level (sight, touch, taste…) unleashing a metaphorical charge. The symbols bound to the elements also stimulate us to search within ourselves. This is how one grows, and learns, for example, not to be limited by the palate’s simple pleasures because more profound and superior gratifications exist.

al-aimo-editedThere is a lot going on in this paragraph but I think it’s essentially right. To understand anything, including ingredients in a dish, we must understand the underlying forces at work, some of which are barely perceptible and some of which can only be accessed via feeling states. It’s the chef’s job to uncover them and make them perceptible. Some of these themes are exemplified in the tasting menu below.

Italian food is noted for its simplicity. Although these recipes are not simple to prepare, they leave an impression of simplicity on the diner. The emphasis is on trying to pull out just a few intensely bright flavors in each dish. As far as I could tell there were few if any molecular techniques employed.

Here are the courses with a few comments:

Al aimo

This is a dish of red tomato tartar, green tomato tartar, fava bean tartar, fava bean, green bean and basil salad, ricotta sauce and Sardinian flatbread. The dish exemplifies the concept of weaving with the three tartars exemplifying overlapping yet distinctive flavors. The colors also represent Italy’s tri-color flag, itself a weaving of the separate regions that formed the nation of Italy in the 19th Century.

Cuttlefish in black cappuccino cuttlefish-cappucinoedit

This dish consists of small cubes of squid and drops of squid ink in a potato cream served in layers in a vertical glass cup. A play on tiramasu and cappuccino, it comes with instructions to plunge the spoon straight down so the fusion of the layers occurs in the mouth. A simple, comforting, enveloping dish that exemplifies layering. Indeed the layers persist in the mouth even as the ingredients are fused.

Sicilian raw shrimp with tomato cream and basil

A variety of interpretations on fresh, especially the raw shrimp which was exceptionally fatty and vibrant. It came together with the wine, a St. Clair Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, which cut the fat of the shrimp. As with all the dishes that included cream, it was light almost weightless.

Crispy ricotta and buffalo mozzarella cannelloni with tomato sauce

The chef calls this an anomalous calzone which represents tactility. Crispy cylinders and creamy flavors, it’s clearly a dish meant to evoke childhood memories of pizza, all the senses working overtime. Of course the tomato sauce was glowing.

shrimpcanneloni

Smoked tagliolini with carbonara, dried fruit, and gelatin of meat broth

Very aromatic, the fresh pasta freshly smoked and paired with a unique, Sicilian dry Moscato with a distinct smoke note as well. Despite all the smoke, the dish was light and multi-dimensional, a very deft hand with an ingredient that can overpower.

saffron-risotto-with-licoriRisotto with saffron and sorbet of licorice and rosemary

The saffron and licorice represents the extreme parts of a plant, root and flower, a dialogue between opposites. This dish is often served with licorice powder but in this case the licorice sorbet was brilliant, a thrilling contrast between hot and cold. Saffron and fennel, with its anise aromas, are a classic flavor pairing. This dish takes that concept in a new direction.

Beef tartare with black truffle, egg, cream, and star anise aroma [pictured above]

Velvety, hand chopped beef . Another dish of very fresh tasting fat with a wonderful fusion of truffle and anise aroma.

Roasted beet with burnt herbs.

The only dish that didn’t quite work for me. It was basically a well-roasted beet. Nice, attractively presented, but not intriguing.

Crisp, suckling pig  with olive sorbet, grean beans, and pea puree.

Once again the hot/cold contrast was a theme that amps up the intensity of the dish. Served with a bright, fresh, slightly bitter Amarone.suckling-pigedit

For dessert #1, an apparently empty dinner bowl was place in front of us. I just sat there waiting for the food to show up. But at the behest of the waiter, I finally flipped it over to reveal a creme brûlée in the bottom of the plate covered with a layer of gold leaf.

And finally a chocolate and hazelnut cannellone with hot chocolate foam finished the meal.

A delicious meal made more memorable by the chef’s attempt to put in words flavors too easily forgotten.

random-dineeditr

Of course I was accompanied in this culinary adventure by legal counsel. My accountant, however, had fallen ill and could not attend.

A Bad Argument for Why Food Cannot Be Art

01 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by Dwight Furrow in Art and Food, Contemporary Food Culture, Philosophy of Food and Wine

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aesthetics of food

line cookThere are some serious although mistaken arguments for why some food preparations cannot be works of art. Then there are some really bad arguments for the same conclusion. Here is a really bad one by John Mariani which I rediscovered while going through some notes.

Thus, imagination and creativity go into cooking, often at a very high level, at which point it is called haute cuisine. But there is nothing that rises to the level of true art in a craft whose very existence depends on the constant replication of a dish, night after night, week after week. The replication of a series of stencils, even if originally designed by Raphael, does not constitute art, and I’m sure Andy Warhol was mumbling all the way to the bank when his work went from reproducing Brillo boxes to having assistants mimic his own work.

The claim that individual dishes are reproductions and thus cannot be original works is simple nonsense. Mariani apparently has never heard of a recipe. He is right about paintings.  Copies of paintings are indeed mere reproductions, not original works. A print of the Mona Lisa is not a work of art because painting is what we call in aesthetics  an autographic art—only the painter can directly cause the work to exist, and there can be only one legitimate instance of it.  Passing off a copy as an original is forgery.

But many arts are not autographic but are instead allographic. An allographic work has a master recording, score or some other form of notation from which individual works are derived. Thus, for allographic works, copies of an original are genuine instances of the original. My copy of Hamlet is a work of art even though it is a duplication of the original. The bookstore is not routinely guilty of selling forgeries. A streaming version of a Springsteen tune or live performances of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony are genuine instances of works of art despite the fact they are reproductions.

Cooking is similarly allographic. Individual dishes are instances of a recipe just as a performance of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is an instance of its score. So the fact that line cooks churn out 25 copies of a dish in no way shows that cooking is not an art–unless Mariani is prepared to claim Beethoven and Shakespeare are mere craftsmen.

For more on the philosophy of food and wine visit my Monday Column archives on Three Quarks Daily

Why Not Just Admit It? Flavor is About Pleasure, Not Survival

17 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Dwight Furrow in Contemporary Food Culture, Food History

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aesthetics of food

pleasureMost cuisines can be identified by the characteristic flavors they use to enhance their dishes: Chili peppers, tomato, and lime in Mexico; soy sauce, rice wine, and ginger root in China; tomato, garlic, and olive oil in Southern Italy, etc. As Elizabeth and Paul Rozin point out in their well-known essay ”Culinary Themes and Variations”, (reprinted here) these flavor principles persist through the history of a culture and, in fact, are more persistent than the staples employed in a cuisine, which undergo more change. And people will overcome considerable obstacles to make sure they have access to these flavors. (Think of the resources Europe devoted to the spice trade in the age of exploration.)

Apparently, flavor principles are really important to human beings.

Why are they so important? Why do human beings spice their food? Animals don’t, and the practice doesn’t seem to serve a nutritional function. The Rozins argue that, nevertheless, there must be an adaptationist story to tell. Their hypothesis is that flavor principles provide a kind of identification system for safe food. As omnivores, we have a natural interest in eating a wide variety of foods and we get bored when variety is unavailable. Yet, we live in a world with lots of toxic substances and have a justified fear of eating anything unfamiliar. Thus, we need an efficient way of identifying foods that are safe to eat. That is the role of flavor principles. They mark food with a distinctive and familiar flavor as safe to eat. And whether new foods can be accepted or not depends on whether they are prepared with that familiar flavor principle.

Furthermore, by introducing rich and subtle variations of these flavors and modifying their combination, we overcome the boredom of eating the same thing all the time. Hence the attention paid in Mexican cuisine to the subtle differences in varieties of chili peppers or in Indian and Southeast Asian cuisine to varieties of curry.

This explanation strikes me as wildly implausible. If people are familiar with a food why would they question its safety if it is not spiced. And if they are unfamiliar with a food, why does adding a flavor principle overcome their fear. Surely the spices are not making their food safe. The use of flavor principles to mark food as safe just seems irrational. Furthermore, as the Rozins point out but don’t explain in this essay, some cultures, specifically the Northern tier countries such as Germany, England, and Scandinavia don’t employ flavor principles. Their traditional foods are largely unspiced. Yet there is no evidence they are especially fearful of their food.

There is a much simpler explanation for why we flavor foods—it tastes good. The aesthetics of everyday life are important because the small things we do to make ordinary life enjoyable and interesting—spicing food, decorating homes, celebrating holidays, etc.—make life worth living. In the absence of adornment and decoration, life would be drudgery much of the time. Small things like adding flavor to food thus become enormously important for beings capable of doubting life’s meaning. (There is another adaptive explanation at work. We are hardwired to seek pleasure in our food persistently throughout the day since that encourages us to take in the calories we need to survive.)

What about the northern tier countries that lack flavor principles? Do they not care about everyday aesthetics? The simple explanation is that most spices were historically unavailable to them—they do not readily grow in cold climates. Thus, northern cultures focused their aesthetics, not on flavor principles, but on the various textures and ways of presenting animal fats. The Germans especially are adept at conspiring to get as many types of animal fats on the plate as possible.

What I find interesting about the Rozins’ explanation is that they seem to ignore the obvious explanation—that the persistence of pleasure is fundamental to everyday life.

Might there be some residual Calvinism loose among food anthropologists?

Cuisine Has Reached It’s Postmodern Moment

08 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by Dwight Furrow in 3 Quarks Daily Column, Contemporary Food Culture

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aesthetics of food, art and food

My recent visit to Alinea, the temple of modernist cuisine in the U.S., prompted some thoughts about whether molecular gastronomy is maintaining it’s radical edge. I ponder the issue in my essay this month at Three Quarks Daily.

Is Alinea the Best Restaurant in the U. S.?

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by Dwight Furrow in Contemporary Food Culture, Edible Art, Philosophy of Food and Wine, Restaurant Reviews, Travel, Uncategorized

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aesthetics of food, Alinea, food and emotions, food as art

alinea-7editedFor the 12 years it has been in existence,  Grant Achatz’s Alinea, located in a utterly non-descript building in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, has been at the top of best restaurant lists. It earned its 3rd Michelin star in 2010, is consistently rated in the top 20 restaurants in the world on S. Pelligrino’s top 50 list (although it fell to 21 this year) and is widely recognized by other publications as the best restaurant in the U.S.

Is it really the best in the U.S.?  I have no idea how to answer that question, having sampled only a small portion of the candidates for such a list. Furthermore, lists and rankings give the illusion of commensurability. They assume that there is a set of easily comparable standards and a single scale along which restaurants can be ranked. But when comparing restaurants that strive for originality, there is no such scale. What is the relative worth of innovation and creativity, authenticity, accessibility, and sheer deliciousness? There is no clear answer to that question.

A better question to ask is whether Alinea achieves its artistic aims with something left over that exceeds artistic intention, that uncanny “something”  that great art possesses. The answer I think is not quite, although the experience was surely enjoyable and unforgettable.

In 2016, Alinea was at the top of its game when Achatz decided to close for several months to remodel the restaurant and retool the menu. After all, if your entire reason to exist is to be on the cutting edge of culinary art, stale familiarity is the kiss of death. Alinea is not really a restaurant. It’s performance art and artists are in the business of creating the new. The decision to revitalize seems inevitable when contextualized as a move within an art world. Chef Grant Achatz the patron saint of modernist cuisine in the U.S. has no tradition to which he’s beholden, no constraints other than the outer limits of what his patrons will accept, and he has an obligation to test those limits. At Alinea diners have no choices; you put yourself in the hands of a chef who has always relished disrupting expectations and challenging assumptions. Like a well curated art museum, at Alinea it’s the allure of surprise and fascination that brings success. In that light, the logic of shutting down for several months in order to create new experiences seems unassailable.

The former Alinea offered one, 16 course menu for all. The new Alinea features three experiences: for the Gallery menu downstairs there are two 16-18 course seatings each night replete with a communal introductory course, a visit to the kitchen while the dining room is transformed into more private spaces, and lots of emotion-invoking aroma and musical theatrics to accompany the food.  [The cost is around $300 per person]. Also downstairs, there is a single group table enclosed in a glass box with a view of the kitchen that could be reserved only for groups at least when I was securing my reservation. [$385 per person]. And then there is the Salon upstairs which offers a paired-down menu of 10 courses similar to the Gallery menu but with fewer theatrics, for about $200 per person depending on what time in the evening you want the reservation.

To dine at Alinea has been a goal of mine for many years and I was lucky enough to score reservations this year as we meandered through the upper Midwest heading toward Chicago. Reservations are difficult but not impossible to secure if your timing is right. Tickets for the upcoming month are released on the 15th of the current month at 10:00 A.M. If you’re at your computer at the appointed time and have a generous range of acceptable dates and times, you will likely get a suitable reservation. Unfortunately, even with my good timing I could not get a reservation in the Gallery during the short window of time allotted for our visit to Chicago. (I suspect VIP’s had the opportunity to book before tickets were available to the public since many slots were already filled at 10:00 A.M.)Thus, I had to settle for the Salon reservation and opted for their standard wine pairing ($135 per person).

Achatz is one of the more prominent proponents of what has come to be known as modernist cuisine (aka molecular gastronomy)—the use of food science and technology to break down food molecules and recombine them in surprising new forms. The rap against modernist cuisine is that it’s idiosyncrasy for its own sake, dishes that are interesting without being satisfying, pleasing to the chef who can display virtuosity but not necessarily to the diner  who is confronted with unfamiliar mash-ups of incongruous flavors. However, I found none of that idiosyncrasy and innovation for its own sake on Alinea’s new menu. There were no dishes that failed, and none seemed just odd with no other purpose behind them except novelty.  If fact I was surprised by how traditional the flavor combinations were. Each course consisted of flavors typically found together in the region of the world from which the dish originated, but always with a twist that made the dish seem innovative. And of course there was always something about the form of presentation that was surprising and unexpected.

I had never dined at Alinea so I can’t speak to earlier menus. But in recent interviews, Achatz claims that in the reinvented version there is plenty of  molecular gastronomy going on but it is disguised with ingredients appearing in their natural form with less manipulation than in its previous incarnation. Some of the dishes were in fact quite simple in appearance although flavor complexity was always present. Achatz’s current style is to play with form but leave the content in tact. There was less flash than I expected, less eye candy and more focused, robust flavor and clarity.

The other feature of the meal that stood out is how weightless and delicate each dish felt. The bold, often earthy flavors were conditioned by ethereal textures, tender, melting, and ever evolving in the mouth. In almost every dish, flavor contrast was achieved through the judicious use of fruit that contributed to the impression of buoyancy.

Why then do I claim the experience is only partly successful? In interviews with the press, Achatz has said that he’s interested in the capacity of food to evoke emotion. He wants diners to feel surprised, intrigued, nostalgic, exhilarated, puzzled, etc. That is all well and good. But food is ephemeral, not a stable object like a painting but an object that is consumed, disappearing relatively soon after it appears. Grasping its point crucially depends on memory and reflection. If we just eat without thinking, without mindful attention, the experience is gone before we can fully understand it. The problem with our meal is that it felt rushed. We barely finished a course before the dishes were whisked away and a new course appeared on the table. We had little time to discuss the dishes, ponder the feelings they evoked, or think about their meaning. The experience was like standing before a painting in an art gallery and being told you had only a few minutes to enjoy it before moving on. This is in contrast to tasting menus I’ve experienced in Europe where the pace is more leisurely. I get that restaurants need to turn tables to make money. But if chefs such as Achatz are serious about food being art, restaurants must provide the opportunity for reflection on what you’re eating. Savoring happens not only when the dish is in front of you but afterwards when memory and thought performs the crucial task of clarifying feelings, sorting though confusion and contradiction, and synthesizing random thoughts.

On a related note, we were told we would be given a list of dishes served after the meal. But the descriptions on the list turned out to be too perfunctory to be particularly informative. Thankfully I took photos, a practice which Achatz used to ban, and a few notes to help reconstruct the meal and remind me of how ingredients in the dishes were related.

Here is a blow by blow account of the meal with commentary where appropriate:

alinea-lynn-6edited           alinea-11edited

Two amuse buches led off the proceedings. The first was a spear of romaine lettuce filled with avocado and garlic flowers, the second a banana pancake perched on a lime and filled with Osetra caviar. The contrast between the aggressive spear and the soft, comforting avocado had some emotional resonance. The caviar and pancake was paired with a textured, bready Bollinger Brut Rose Champagne—the only emotion it evoked was pure delight at the classic, perfect pairing.

alinea-10edited

alinea-9edited

The first main course was one of the highlights of the evening. A  rich, unctuous, umami-infused seafood and caramelized tomato broth was poured into a bowl containing a gelatin sheet of langoustine that formed a noodle when hydrated and then slowly melted into the broth. Called bouillabaisse on the menu, this bold, intensely flavored broth was accompanied by seaweed encrusted nori wrapped around a filling of creamy, spicy rouille, a chile and saffron sauce traditionally served with bouillabaisse in the the South of France. A melding of Asian and French flavors, the presentation was dark in color, the flavors deep and impenetrable like the sea, set off by the cheerful, encouraging rouille. This was paired with a Rouilly Premier Crus (Chardonnay) from a region in the south of Burgundy.

alinea-8editedNext up was one of the reversals for which Achatz is famous. The dish is called Bocadillo which is the name of a Spanish sandwich often filled with jamon and cheese. In this case, the gossamer-like crisps forming the sandwich contained the flavors of jamon and cheese; the filling was essentially a viscous, liquid bread (pictured above). The large fruit basket in front of us was drizzled with liquid nitrogen, the “smoke” pouring forth laced with aromas of orange, mingling with a deconstructed gazpacho salad of heirloom tomatoes, frozen sherry and orange, marcona almonds and gooseberries (salad not pictured). As noted above, these are all traditional flavors commonly found together but radically transformed. It was paired with a Rhyme Vermentino from Carneros.

alinea-6edited

Our trip to Spain was then erased by a pan-Asia dish with Thai and Japanese inflections. A coconut broth surrounds a simple piece of black bass and mussels obscured by a garden of flowers, passion fruit, grapes, kaffir lime leaf, and dehydrated yuzu accompanied by compressed melon. An explosion of flavors and textures, the briny, plump fleshiness of the seafood was continually foiled by sweet fruit. The relentlessly, sunny joy of this dish was tempered by the mysterious black pot of flames set on the table as a centerpiece without explanation. Only a Riesling would pair with this dish—a lovely Weingut Brundlmayer “Heiligenstein” from Kamptal Austria.

alinea-lynn-4editedThis visually gorgeous dish was entitled Glass, referring to the stunningly-hued sheets of blueberry blanketing earthy, maitake mushooms and foie gras, in a sauce inflected with the Chinese tea, lapsang souchong. Once again, Achatz achieves a seamless marriage of French and Asian flavors with fruit providing acid and sweetness to give the dish a lifted, delicate countenance, an impression encouraged by the cool-climate, acid-bomb Syrah by Peay from Sonoma Coast.

And now we finally discover the reason for that mysterious burning pot in the middle of the table. It contains a bed of salt concealing a buried potato. Just a potato, but cooked sous vide for 12 hrs. and kept warm by the burning embers. After digging out the potato, the waiter crushes and mixes it with butter, crème fraiche and black truffle puree. This is rich enough to buy a yacht. One might complain about being served a mere spud but this was a soul-stirring spud, the humble potato proudly dressed to the nines by the velvet truffle.

alinea-lynn-2editedThe last savory dish may be the best single dish I have ever eaten. And it was quite simple. Wood-smoked veal cheeks in a coating of fried wild rice—very Midwestern—and served with a puree of vanilla flavored beef jerky, pineapple and hearts of palm. The contrast between the exterior of crunchy rice and the melting, almost fluid, yet deeply concentrated veal was one of those magical moments of sheer beauty, a fitting end to the savory portion of the meal. These last two dishes were paired with the standard but always reliable Argiano Brunello.

alinea-1-editFor me desserts are an after thought. The sweet potato, chocolate, miso dish called Rock was sweet, crunchy, and gooey, great fun even if desserts aren’t your thing. And finally the dish called Nostalgia was essentially bubblegum ice cream and cake. Even as a kid I wasn’t a huge bubblegum fan so this didn’t resonate. But that’s just me.

Finally, the only dish that survived from the earlier incarnation of Alinea was the grape-flavored balloon filled with helium that ends the meal. When eaten it does the helium thing to your voice. When I read about this years ago it sounded gimmicky—it was.

So in the end I think Alinea richly deserves its reputation. The dishes are thoughtfully conceived and just delicious. Buoyancy, a delight in surprise, a healthy respect for tradition, and a sensibility for how Asian and European flavors and textures can be combined define Achatz’s current cooking style.

And if you make yourself available for the emotional resonance of the dishes, they do acquire added meaning. If Achatz succeeds at making us more aware of the subtle almost imperceptible feeling states that are continually regulating conscious experience and are expressed by the food we eat, he will have greatly expanded our enjoyment of food and life.

The next time I’m passing through Chicago it will be hard to resist the temptation to discover what’s cooking at Alinea.

Disgusting or Just Unpleasant?

12 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by Dwight Furrow in Contemporary Food Culture

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aesthetics of food, food and emotions

disgustFood culture writer Sara Davis asks an intriguing series of questions (i.e. intriguing if you like thinking about the pleasures of food)

Is there such a thing as a middle zone for taste? Is it possible to taste something that is not enjoyable without feeling something like disgust? When food is lacking in flavor or has a homogenous texture, the words we use to describe those sensations–bland, mealy, tepid, etc.–have negative associations; do those negative sensations define a disgusting experience, or is there some middle space between pleasant and unpleasant tastes?

My intuitive, initial response was of course. I don’t enjoy pasta with no sauce, butter, oil, or seasoning. It’s the very definition of bland. But I wouldn’t say it’s disgusting, and in fact I’m always sampling plain pasta when I cook to see if it’s done without experiencing disgust.

After thinking about it, I think the question involves a conceptual confusion. Disgust is not just a negative taste sensation, a bit of unpleasantness. Disgust is an emotion that consists, in part, of involuntary recoil and at least the beginning stages of nausea. Certainly a taste experience can be unpleasant without inducing the more powerful emotion of disgust. I know we sometimes say of food we don’t enjoy that it’s disgusting but that’s often a bit of hyperbole.

At any rate Sara’s inquisitive nature is commendable, surely beyond the call of duty:

Prison Food Weekend at Eastern State Penitentiary last summer offered an opportunity to explore these questions in an entirely unscientific and anecdotal way: I tasted a few samples of punishment loaf and observed others going through the same process.

Nutraloaf or punishment loaf is a food product used in some U.S. prisons as severe punishment, particularly for inmates who are in solitary confinement as a disciplinary measure. Punishment loaf is not standard cafeteria fare, it’s the modern-day replacement for bread-and-water rations in which most of the major food groups (proteins, starches, veggies) are blended together to meet daily nutritional requirements. The loaf is often served without utensils or a tray, so it must be eaten with the hands or out of a bag.

She describes the experience with the attention to detail of a NY Times food critic. So if you’re curious about what a loaf of nutrients stripped of flavor and context tastes like check out her post.

To be honest I find the fact someone finds it acceptable to deprive prisoners of the simple pleasure of a meal disgusting, and that’s not hyperbole.

But I do agree with her ultimate conclusion.

I don’t have an answer to my question–or if I do, it’s that tolerable blandness can become intolerable with only minor shifts in circumstances.

Foods that we find merely unpleasant can become disgusting. While I don’t find a few forkfuls of plain pasta disgusting, a plateful might be a different matter.

Is Haute Cuisine a False Prophet?

10 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by Dwight Furrow in Contemporary Food Culture, Edible Art, Philosophy of Food and Wine

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aesthetics of food

innovative cuisineDaniel Duane’s story in the NY Times about haute cuisine in Silicon Valley identifies the central paradox of fine dining.

The fabulous, tech-driven wealth floating around the Bay Area drives chefs to produce increasingly elaborate, innovative food.

But this food is so expensive that most food lovers can’t afford it; and the people who can afford are more into IPO’s than heirloom tomatoes anyway.

Downmarket, where most food lovers reside,  the same expectation of innovative cooking doesn’t come with the same ability to charge exorbitant prices, and so mid-level restaurants struggle to survive and their poorly paid employees can’t afford to live within a reasonable commuting distance of their work.

As one restaurateur explained, “The food has never been better and the business climate has never been worse and so we are speeding toward a cliff.”

The community-forming dimension of the food revolution comes apart from the creative dimension and economics strangles art.

I’m not sure what the solution to this is. On the one hand, some of the expense of high end dining is stage setting and the trappings of luxury. As Duane writes:

Like any artisan whose trade depends upon expensive materials and endless work, every chef who plays that elite-level game must cultivate patrons. That means surrounding food with a choreographed theater of luxury in which every course requires a skilled server to set down fresh cutlery and then return with clean wine glasses. A midcareer professional sommelier then must fill those wine glasses and deliver a learned lecture about that next wine’s origin and flavor. Another person on a full-time salary with benefits must then set down art-piece ceramic plates that are perfectly selected to flatter the next two-mouthful course. Yet another midcareer professional must then explain the rare and expensive plants and proteins that have been combined through hours of time-consuming techniques to create the next exquisitely dense compression of value that each diner will devour in moments. Those empty plates and glasses must then be cleared to repeat this cycle again and again, hour after hour.

As enjoyable as all that fuss is, it is no doubt over-the-top and not really about flavor. Innovative food can be prepared without so much choreography but this is what their patrons demand.

On the other hand, innovative cuisine will always be expensive to produce. And because it must be consumed to be appreciated, unlike art, food cannot be preserved in venues for the ordinary public to enjoy.

But perhaps we’re thinking about edible art in the wrong way, in a way that is not really analogous to the art world. For all the rare, fantastically expensive art created by the masters that we find in art museums, there are countless modestly compensated artists, often nearly as skilled and creative as the masters, who toil in relative obscurity making art for their local community or their Internet community at some distance from the glitterati of the art world.

Genuine creativity and vision are not after all measured only by “wow factor”. Meaning often has a subtler appeal.

So perhaps Duane is right to point to Los Angeles as the new beacon of a genuine food culture:

Sang Yoon, the chef and owner of Lukshon in Culver City, sees it as a difference between hyper-glorification of the chef and the farm in Northern California and, in Los Angeles, celebration of middle-class immigrant culture. “Half the restaurants I go to, I don’t know who the chef is! It’s not so personality-driven,” he said. “In L.A., we can celebrate a cuisine and not rouge it up.

In contrast to the wealth driven luxury hounds of Silcon Valley, cooking for the middle class is more closely tied to culture, sustaining a cuisine that while innovative is less concerned with presentation. Perhaps we should look for creativity within the constraints of community not in tension with it.

Tension in the Art of Cooking

01 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by Dwight Furrow in Art and Food, General Aesthetics, Philosophy of Food and Wine

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aesthetics of food

edible artThe art of cooking is peculiar. Cooking, because it supplies us with energy and  nutrition, must fit into the rhythms of daily life. It is constrained by practicalities of all sorts—money, time, personal preferences–that limit what can be done. Within those constraints of course there is ample opportunity for a cook to be creative by playing with ingredients, modifying recipes or trying new techniques all with the aim of making the food taste good.

But that’s not art; that’s life.

Art, by contrast, is the realm of consciously-developed form. Edible art, like any type of art, must have meaning, emotional resonance, and distinctive pattern. To make edible art it is not enough that the food taste good. The flavors must be organized into patterns that allow us to mentally grasp the work and understand it. Art isn’t the realm of pure freedom where creativity goes on a wild bender. Creativity is constrained by the demands or form just as for a novelist an elaborate, subtle plot limits the way characters can be developed.

So for the artistic chef, cooking is not just a matter of making food taste good but of giving the food significant form by displaying flavors in meaningful patterns that provoke a reaction. Art occupies the tensive border between ordinary life and something that transcends the ordinary, and if cooking is an art it too must embody that tension.

I think that is a challenge for cooks or chefs who are accustomed to providing only comfort.

Food Becoming Art

25 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by Dwight Furrow in 3 Quarks Daily Column, General Aesthetics

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aesthetics of food, art and food

In my Three Quarks essay this month food becomes art and art history gets a makeover.

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