Buenos Aires – It’s been raining a lot this week, so I’ve been in, catching up on lots of reading and writing. I just saw a great post over on eGullet, where I occasionally pop in to see if anyone is saying anything witty, brilliant, or amusing.
Back in August of 2004 I wrote a short piece for Outlet Radio Network where I talked about my aversion to some of the wildly deconstructed versions of food that are being presented as “cutting edge cuisine.” However, I couldn’t top the following, written by Ya-Roo Yang, the New York forum host for the website [emphasis mine]:
As much as I believe in innovation and experimentation when it comes to food, and perhaps most aspects of life, there are a few things I hold sacred — my notions of what constitutes good sex being among them. Like good food, sex should never be a three-ring circus. After many years of eating at the best dining establishments in the world, I have concluded that fancy gadgets, chemically enhanced foams and latest scientific techniques are, quite often, ways to disguise a chef’s inability to engage the diner on a simple level. The same goes for sex, if only for the reason that simplicity can sometimes be one of the hardest things to manage. While all this may sound terribly vanilla to many thrill-seekers out there, just remember how extraordinary vanilla can be, especially when it’s a lovely Tahitian vanilla that recalls the breeze of a warm summer night.”
And speaking of vanilla, well actually chocolate, well even more actually, cocoa, there was this sad piece in the New York Times a couple of days ago…
Sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning, a barge laden with freight containers began to list badly while docked at the pier. One by one, the 10 freight containers slid off. At least two of them were filled with raw cocoa beans – about 800,000 pounds, altogether.
[…] Much as I’m not a fan of the movement over the last few years to change the physical structure of food by using various technological gimmicks, which to me turn dinner into some sort of culinary acrobatic exercise as opposed to just sitting down and enjoying, I find myself fascinated on nearly a daily basis by the goings on over at Ideas in Food, where two chefs stuck in the middle of the boonies (something about which they seem to gripe about more than celebrate – very strange given that they chose to be there), are constantly trying out anything and everything that pops to mind. While much of what they come up with strikes me as odd, and at times downright appalling, here and there they hit on some truly exciting ideas. And truthfully, that part of the world of experimentation is something that makes the other stuff worth it – I just wouldn’t want to be the one presenting the “other stuff” as dinner to customers. They have a great fan base of folks who travel from far and wide to try their creations, so who knows? (Then again, so do chefs at other restaurants of this sort that I’d prefer, after having tried, to avoid.) […]