I wrote this piece for the Sommelier Journal. 

 

A Grown up Restaurant and a Restaurant for Grownups

 

About a month ago I went with friends to a hot new restaurant. It opened to great press and good word of mouth on the blogosphere. The place is in a rather off the beaten track neighborhood and run by a young and energetic staff. After reading all those glowing reviews, we were looking forward to our dinner.

 

I arrived five minutes early and they would not seat me until my party was complete, which is sort of inhospitable. The bar was full so I waited in the doorway. The room was a bit noisy but it was not impossible to hear ourselves talk during dinner. Service was very casual. The wine was opened and left on the table for us to pour, as is “their style.” Our waitress was well informed and charming. Although the pizza was a bit flabby, the pastas and salads were excellent. We enjoyed our dinner and said we would return

 

A month later a dear mutual friend came to town.  He is hard of hearing, so for ease of conversation, I cooked dinner the first night of his visit.  The second night we decided to take him to this restaurant as our meal had been very tasty and he is a discerning diner and very good cook.  We remembered the place as being a bit noisy but as we had been able to converse, we figured that the good food would outweigh some hearing difficulties. Besides it is almost impossible to find a really quiet place these days.

 

We were seated when only two of the four of us were there, some progress on that front. The restaurant is very dimly lit and the menu is printed on brown paper in a small font. It’s rather hard to read unless you carry a small flashlight or a miner’s lamp.

The room was even noisier than the first time because the music was blasting. Not just loud, ear splitting loud. We asked our waiter if they could please turn it down a bit as our guest was hard of hearing. He said, no, that the sound level was set by a manager. Fortunately a manager stopped by our table to say hello. She had waited on our table the first time and at a cook book signing event where I was a panelist, introduced herself to me as a manager and said to call her if I needed to get in. So I asked her to please lower the music. She did, but ten minutes later the staff had cranked it up to the maximum. It felt like a pretty hostile response.

 

So we got the message. You older folks are not really welcome here. We are so hot and so busy with a young and hip clientele that we don’t need your business. This place is just not for you and we will not go out of our way to make it comfortable or easy for you.  The young staff thinks that older guests are “difficult” diners and too much work: They want more lighting to be able to read the menu. They want us to lower our hip music. And they even want us to pour their wine. Hey, no great loss.

 

In other words it is not a grown up restaurant, nor is it a restaurant for grownups.

It is a place for the young who don’t care about noise or unreadable menus.  The waiter will tell them what’s hot and what to order anyway. They don’t care that much about service refinements, but just want the food and trendy drinks carried to the table.

 

 

However, the restaurant staff is misguided. Many older people dine out often and have more disposable income than twenty somethings. Even more important, once older diners bond with a place, they are very loyal, and will show up with regularity as long as they are recognized and treated with some modicum of manners and warmth. These mature diners do not feel the need to try every hot new place in town. They find a place they like and keep coming back. So if they are treated with disdain, they will not return. 

 

What this new establishment does not realize is that they will not always be the brightest star in the local restaurant firmament. After a year or so, when the next round of hot new places opens, and the fickle food groupies move on, the staff may be sorry they did not build a more mature and experienced clientele. Those loyal diners would still be filling the seats if they had not been treated like excess baggage  

I have been silent here for too long but have been buried in my book project. It is a history of California cuisine for the University of California Press, due to be published in Spring of 2012. It has taken me a long time to complete this project as it was massive.  I interviewed 188 chefs, artisans, farmers, designers, front of house people, wine makers , critics, writers, in other words people who were here for this revolutionary time in California's culinary development. The interviews had to be transcribed and then I had to organize all of the material into the proper chapters . Now the manuscript is with my editors who will probably have to do some cutting as it is too long. But I did not want to leave any major gaps in this complicated story.  I pray that they do not shrink it  too much. So I hope to have more time to keep up with this blog.  Enjoy the summer produce. This weekend I am putting up preserves with ym grandkids. What fun!

The Power of Change   

 

Every January the press calls chefs, restaurateurs, and wine and food professionals to ask what the new food and wine trends for 2009 will be, as if we know.  This annual routine of predicting what’s going to be “hot,” and instantly discarding what’s past and now “cold,” grows tiresome. I recently participated in the Eleventh annual World of Flavors Conference at the CIA in the Napa Valley. This year’s theme was A Mediterranean Flavor Odyssey:  Preserving and Inventing Traditions for Modern Palates. Instead of predicting and discarding, signs of a disposable culture, the key words are preserving and inventing traditions, for a culture of endurance and continuity.  

 

At the conference Sicilian superstar chef, Ciccio Sultano, used an Italian play on words to describe what he was doing in the kitchen.  In Italian, tradizione is tradition. And the verb tradire means to betray. He said that he had to betray tradition when creating his unique and modern food. An older, wiser Italian saw change from another perspective. In the classic historic novel, The Leopard, author Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s nobleman Don Francisco says” if we want things to stay the same, things will have to change.” Most change is a reaction to current events and an attempt to restore equilibrium. (Only a small proportion of change is truly innovative.) To progress and prosper we must study past events, respect and preserve valuable traditions, and still feel free to invent the new.

 

There were over 700 participants at the Worlds of Flavor conference, an educational, stimulating, highly enjoyable dine, drink, and think session. Food historians, cookbook authors and wine experts talked about tradition and the history of the Mediterranean as well as current culinary and cultural changes. Chefs from Spain, Greece, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Israel and the Italian regions of Apulia and Sicily, cooked alongside American chefs whose cuisine is inspired by Mediterranean kitchens. The chefs demonstrated both traditional and contemporary interpretations of dishes from their homelands. The kitchen was a hub of activity and spoons were dipped into bubbling pots by smiling chefs and attendees, nodding, talking, and tasting together. There were wine and food pairings where chefs re-created their regional dishes to pair with sommeliers’ selected wines.

 

Conference attendees reveled in the opportunity to taste new dishes and sample unfamiliar wines. They learned that healthy food is not deadly dull – in fact it is delicious and economical, and probably the ideal role model for our present time. In 2009 as we find ourselves on the brink of exciting change coupled with nail-biting economic stress, it is to our benefit to revisit the Mediterranean diet which is timeless, healthy, delicious, and good for the bottom line. In the Mediterranean wine and food have always been in harmony and a part of daily life, sensual pleasures to be savored.

 

Today we talk about foods using the buzzwords “fresh, seasonal, local, and sustainable.” These seemingly new concepts are ancient. In the days before refrigeration and interstate and international transport of food, before government and common market regulations, people in the Mediterranean went out into the vegetable garden, or caught a fish or slaughtered an animal that they raised responsibly, and every day they cooked their meals from scratch. They baked bread, cured salumi and cheeses and made their wine. The food always was fresh, seasonal, local and sustainable. It was the traditional Mediterranean way of life.   

 

A blast from the past still has relevance today. In 1971 Harvard professor Richard Alpert, turned guru named Baba Ram Dass and wrote a book called Be Here Now. He called it a “cookbook for a sacred life.” It was about mindfulness. We will always have a foot in the past because that is where our culinary traditions come from. And we’ll need to have an eye on the future if we want our businesses to be sustainable. But we need to be here now and pay attention to what is going on in our city, our nation, our world wide community so we can be appropriately reflective of our time and embrace meaningful change, not change for change’s sake 

 

What we learned at the conference can be our prescription for 2009, to be taken daily with a glass of wine. 

 

Find the balance between time-tested techniques and established traditions, and the hopes and goals for the future, in order to take meaningful action.

 

Temper our current reality with the enduring values of the past and apply them with skill and sensitivity. Aspire to be creative and inventive but not disrespectful of tradition.

 

Keep informed and open minded. Read trade publications, magazines and newspapers to learn what is going on, but don’t be seduced by fads that promise success and often turn out to have a very short shelf life 

 

Embrace a way of life that supports our environment, our community, our financial picture and our fondest aspirations.

 

Choose and promulgate a healthy diet that tastes good without turning diners off when they hear it is healthy. Healthy should not be a dirty word or an enthusiasm dampener.

Eat and drink in moderation.  

 

Don’t eat in the car or at your desk or in front of the television set and expect a culinary epiphany. Be mindful. Take time to taste as you eat your meal. Be conscious as you drink your wine, and savor each sip. Enjoy the company of those with whom you dine. Treasure your time at the table with friends and family. Create your own traditions for your family to build on in years to come.  

 

Watching chefs from Lebanon share tastes with chefs from Israel reminded me that the potential for peace is present in the kitchen and at the dinner table. Let’s lift a glass to that.

 

Scholarship versus Seduction

 

I confess that I share most authors’ secret vice. Every once in a while I go on Amazon to see what readers are saying about my books. There is one particular cookbook reviewer who fancies himself an expert. In an often ostentatious display of being in the know, he compares other cookbooks to the book he is supposed to be reviewing. Sometimes this comparison is relevant. And sometimes it is just showing off. He has his favorite authors whose work he uses as a benchmark. But often he misses the point or rationale behind the book on hand.  Anyway, I was reading his review of my first cookbook, The Mediterranean Kitchen, a classic since 1989. These recipes were top sellers at my Square One Restaurant and the most requested by guests. He said the book was not as scholarly as Claudia Roden or Paula Wolfert, but conceded that that the recipes were written with clear and practical cooking instructions because I was a chef.  Paula and Claudia are friends of mine and we occasionally have traveled together. We cook many of the same classic Mediterranean recipes, but as a restaurateur I have another challenge besides historical or cultural accuracy. I have to sell the food! It has to be sufficiently full flavored and dynamic for guests to remember the dish and to ask for it again. Often a classic recipe when cooked correctly may be memorable in the cultural sense, but not in the mouth. As a chef I will take a few liberties to punch up the flavors, and will pair the item with the right (but maybe not traditional) sides to sell it.  Instead of being scholarly, I have to seduce.

 

The same holds for wine and food pairing. There is a danger in being too cerebral.

Reading this review on Amazon brought to mind a similar situation. At an industry food and wine pairing seminar I attended, the sommelier and the chef outdid each other in offering obscurities. For example, by serving a fish caught off one tiny Pacific island and in season only three weeks of the year, and imported just for them. Paired with a wine of which there were only a few bottles available, just for them. Already the audience was behind the eight ball. They could not get either the fish or the wines. There was no way for the attendees to apply the information to the reality that was their life in the restaurant business.    

 

Coming from their rather rarified background, the chef and sommelier made these choices to impress, to show how special their place of business was, and to justify the cost of their dinners and their reputation. But for most in attendance (except for a few groupies muttering “brilliant, brilliant”) it was an exercise in futility. The audience gamely soldiered on and to make the best of their time in the seminar, asked questions about balancing the wines with the food. How did they adjust a sauce to fit a wine selected by the guest?  Now, I pride myself on having a well stocked pantry and a good assortment of culinary tricks up my sleeve, but their solutions were rather esoteric and really amusing. Who has pork puree or parsnip puree always at the ready in the kitchen to be whipped into a sauce at a moments notice for balancing with the wine?  Olive oil and butter or cream, yes; pork puree, less likely. Flour, arrowroot, beurre manie, mashed potatoes, yes; parsnip puree, not likely.  I can imagine them thinking hard about these obscure solutions and saying they’ll never guess how we did it. Really!

 

When people pay to attend a conference, they hope to be able to bring home some information or experience they can use when they return to their every day life. Here was a situation where chefs, cooks and sommeliers came expecting a lesson in the perfect pairing of wine and food and got intellectual stimulation and a display of culinary machismo instead.  What knowledge could they take back to their own restaurants? They had to make do with fish available from their local fish monger, and wines that they could sell. And they had to make the diner’s experience sensually pleasing as well as affordable. Could genius have stooped to conquer and have offered a pairing that the attendees could come close to replicating at home?  Intellectual stimulation is wonderful in cooking and food and wine pairing but for the whole package to be a success it needs to be accompanied by sensual delight and a dose of reality. . 

 

 

 

What Grows Together Goes Together

 

 

It is an expression used by chefs and wine lovers alike. “What grows together, goes together.” The phrase can be interpreted in three ways.

 

First consider seasonality. Foods that appear at the market at the same time give rise to many classic dishes. In the spring we have the confluence of strawberries and rhubarb. It does not take culinary genius to combine them in a pie or compote. Peas and asparagus are part of the spring time bounty so it’s not surprising to find them harmoniously paired in risotto. Corn and shell beans are at their flavor peak in August so it is logical to pair them in succotash. The late summer and early fall gives rise to an abundance of peppers, tomatoes and eggplant, all at their best. Thus many Mediterranean countries combine this vegetable trio in a signature dish, ratatouille in France, escalibada in Spain, briam in Greece, turlu in Turkey and mishwiya in North Africa. Winter pumpkin and greens are paired in Moroccan tagines, in gratins in Provence and in tortas and pastas in Italy. These foods that grow together seasonally go together beautifully. Nature is the chef to help the harmony happen 

 

The second interpretation of the phrase leads us to terroir: the way foods and wines express the soil, climate and topography of a region. Not only wine but even food makes claims to terroir. Does Vermont maple syrup taste different than the syrups from Canada? The folks in Vermont think so. To those that grow them, a Vidalia onion does not taste like a Maui onion. And a New Jersey tomato does not taste like one from California.

 

But to continue the analogy let’s consider foods and wines with a sense of place, the same place. What Matt Kramer calls “somewhereness.” One can safely assume that in Piedmont, dishes such as agnolotti del plin or tajarin al sugo were designed to be served with Barolo and Barbaresco, the wines of the region. Chianti is the natural choice for bistecca alla fiorentina. If you were in Marseilles in the summer, eating a rich seafood stew with tomatoes and saffron, you would be served a glass of Provencal rose. And if you were in Spain in Aragon or Navarre and eating a lamb stew al chilindron prepared with local peppers, a glass of Rioja would most likely be on the table. It’s not surprising that Oregon pinot Noir goes well with its local salmon or Cattail Creek lamb. .

Finally there is the matter of culinary tradition. Certain wines are always paired with certain dishes because they come from the same “paese” or region, and therefore have traditionally been served together. You see the food on the plate and your mind goes to the wine that you have tasted with that food for as long as you can remember. 

In my previous wine and salumi column, you may have noticed that Spanish wine lovers automatically pair fino sherry with serrano ham, a symphony of sweetness and nuttiness. The French wine lovers serve their rich pates with wines from the Beaujolais region and have foie gras with Sauternes. Folks in Friuli serve Tocai to accompany slices of the local Prosciutto San Daniele while those in Emilia Romagna drink the local Lambrusco with their salumi.  These are pairings based on tradition and regionality, firmly imprinted on the countries’ collective taste memory.  

 

So what does this mean for those of us here in this land of abbondanza and whose chef’s mantra is creativity and freedom of culinary expression.? What if we live in a part of the country that has no great local wines, nor a strong food and wine pairing tradition and where the notion of terroir is but a pipe dream? What if the chef does not cook any traditional food, only original creations? Or if he feels the need to combine many different cultures on one plate? ( Maybe that is why the martini is so popular.)

 

But if we live in a wine crazy community like California, should we drink only California wine? Even the Slow Food mother ship Chez Panisse has, along with it California wine selections, many French and some Italian wines on its list to pair with its California fresh, local and seasonal food. Gruner Veltliner is not grown in Vietnam but that does not stop it from going well with Charles Phan’s food at the Vietnamese restaurant Slanted Door.  

 

The analogy of “what grows together, goes together” holds true in those wine growing regions of the old world, where chefs and families still cook classic cuisine. Even though an International Modern style is making inroads, European countries like France, Spain, Italy and Germany still have strong local wine and food traditions. I like to think that “what grows together, goes together” can be a fall-back position for a sommelier working in a restaurant with traditional dishes on the menu. For most other countries and cuisines all bets are off and the sommelier must take over and make the pairings with the chef’s cuisine without the anchor of collective taste memory or strong culinary tradition to lean on.  If you are a sommelier in a contemporary restaurant, one with a menu that may combine the foods of many cultures, you will have to do your homework and taste the dishes along with a variety of wines on the list to create the restaurant’s own terroir.  

 

Cleaning the Cupboards for the New Year

 

The evening started innocently. I was having the family over for my grandson’s birthday dinner when a small grey mouse was spotted skittering across the floor from the pantry and under the fridge. There had been a huge rainstorm and I imagined that a lone mouse had come in out of the rain. The next morning I went out and bought some mouse traps.

I was advised that peanut butter was an aphrodisiac for mice so I baited the traps with the stuff. Nothing happened. At night I could hear the mouse rustling around in the pantry and under my stove and even saw it dash down under a burner.

 

I have lived in this house for 25 years but have never had a mouse. While I am proud of my ideal temperature wine cellar built into a corner of the garage, my source of greatest pride as a chef is my kitchen pantry.  I love to open the folding doors and look at all of the contents just for culinary inspiration. If we had another big earthquake I could feed the family for weeks! I have two immense sections with five very deep shelves, loaded with jars of beans, grains, pasta, canned tomatoes, dried fruits, spices that are often refreshed, crackers for cheese, flour, sugars, cereal, home made jams, chutneys, mostardas and other condiments. On the lowest shelves I keep bottles of olive oils, vinegars, club soda, tonic, ginger ale, and assorted liquors used in cooking.   

 

When I finally gathered the courage to explore the depths of the lower shelves, I could see torn napkins, gnawed salt boxes, labels shredded off club soda bottles and just enough organic debris to let me know that there had to be more than one critter. Sufficiently freaked out, I called a pest control company and the man arrived the next morning and set 20 traps. After two days six of the critters were caught. Naturally, I had to take everything out of the pantry to clean up the mess. While removing the bottles, jars, and packages from the lower shelves I could see my culinary life flash before my eyes. Most revealing were the old liquor bottles. There was kaoliang from my Chinese cooking days, sake and mirin for making teriyaki sauce. Also framboise, Rainwater Madeira, ouzo, Cachaca, brandy, sherry, Marsala, and white vermouth.  The bottles in the front were recent and still in use; others were ancient and had not been touched in years. In fact, I had forgotten about them as they were way back in the deep shelves. I no longer cooked many of those recipes that called for these libations.

 

Like most chefs, my style of cooking has evolved over the years. I started thinking about the days when I would have to venture into Chinatown to get kaoliang for marinades. There were two brands available. Years ago when I went to the Japanese market there were maybe three or four brands of sake to choose from. Now there are shelves full of sake of varying styles. It’s just like going to the wine shop or supermarket today and seeing 40 Pinot Noirs where there used to be 10. You can be overwhelmed by options.

 

Too many choices can be a burden on the shopper and also on the restaurant diner. Voluminous wine lists intimidate most people, even those who know something about wine. It is mentally exhausting to plow though those lists when all you want to do is settle in for a relaxing evening, a nice dinner and good bottle of wine. Instead you are presented with the Oxford Dictionary.  

 

Perhaps, like most of us after the holidays, the wine list could be put on a diet. In a time of lowered expectations but still with a need for pleasure, instead of presenting a list with an ostentatious display of trophy wines and esoteric obscurities, the sommelier might cull the list and select wines to fit the food and the mood of the restaurant today.   

I wrote this for the Sommelier Journal a while ago and would like to share it with you/  

Service and The Third Place  

 

In the restaurant business there is service and then there is Service. Basic service is the polite greeting at the door and the party seated on time. The menu and the wine list are presented. The table is set appropriately and the silver wiped to a shine. The glasses are polished. The order is taken accurately. The food is served to the person who ordered it. The wine is at the perfect temperature. The label is presented and the wine poured correctly. The glasses are refilled as needed, and never over poured. Plates are cleared only when everyone is through dining. The check is presented in a timely fashion and the host says a warm think you and goodnight. That is service.

 

And then there is Service. 

The greeting at the door is warm. If the guest is a regular he or she is recognized by the host and seated at a preferred table with a long time waiter that the guest probably knows.  In fact, most of the staff is as regular as the guests. They don’t move around because they like the place where they work.

Then there are the small things that count. Are the menu and wine list free of misspelling? Are the wines in the cellar as listed, correct vintage and in stock? At the right temperature? That is Service.

Was the wine list presented to the right person at the table, even if it was a woman? That is Service.

Did the waiter or sommelier refrain from obviously correcting the guest’s mispronunciation of the wine’s name? Did the sommelier offer a taste to the person who ordered the wine? That is Service. 

If the guest did not like the wine did the sommelier refrain from arguing with the guest even if the wine is perfect, and quickly suggest another? That is Service. 

 

In other words service is more than being right or correct. Service is being in charge, but with a smile. It means serving with grace as well as confidence.  A restaurant with great service is one where guests are treated with dignity and warmth and where they want to come back to repeatedly. That last word is the key. Everyone can be a good first date. But do you want to establish a lasting relationship? 

 

In this day and age where the restaurant business is so competitive and the economy is tighter than we all would like, correct service will no longer suffice. It is important to deliver Service. You need to establish and maintain a real, not just technological, relationship with the guest. Computer programs keeping track of birthdays and anniversaries are a convenient way to show you remember them, but, really, any place can do that now. How do you go the extra mile in forging that bond with the guest? If you are the sommelier do you remember your guests’ preferences in wine? Do you stock a few special wines that are not on the regular list for preferred guests?  Do you call them to let them know of a rare bottle that has come into your cellar or some really cool close-outs  that you may have but are not on the list? Do you have carefully chosen bargain wines for those regulars who are not Titans of Industry? Or who are no longer Titans of Industry? 

 

In 1989, sociology Professor Ray Oldenburg wrote a book called The Great Good Place. It talked about the three places that are an integral part of our lives. The first place is home. The second place is work where we may spend most of our time. The third place, like the third leg of a stool, is equally important for our well-being and stability. It is in the Third Place where we connect with others of our community. (And if we telecommute, we are even more isolated and in need of contact with others on a three dimensional plane.) It is an informal social space that brings people of diverse backgrounds together. A place where old friends can gather and new friendships are formed. It is a welcoming, comfortable place we return to regularly because it completes this societal triad essential for our equanimity. The Third Place does not have to be expensive or exclusive. It can be a wine bar, a café, or casual dining spot. It provides comfort, familiarity, and delivers Service in its best sense. It takes care of guests, not just waits on them.

 

I met Professor Oldenburg when I had Square One Restaurant in San Francisco. While doing research for a follow up book on Third Places, he heard about us, visited the restaurant and we started a long correspondence. Square One is long gone but I constantly run into people who say “we really miss your restaurant.”  Why? Because we were their Third Place. Yes, we had great food and an award winning wine list. We actively supported community events and participated in local fund raisers. But most important, we had a loyal staff who delivered on Service. Most of them, kitchen and front of the house, were there for ten to twelve years and were an integral part of the Square One community. We didn’t need computer programs to jog our memories. We knew our guests and they knew us. And we enjoyed each other’s company. This is especially important in this day and age where people are increasingly isolated by the technological aspects of their work, the pressures on their family, and worries about the future. To succeed and survive in this business it will be necessary to learn how to make real contact with guests. We must embrace service and community and strive to create a Third Place.  

 

I worte this for Food arts and hope you like it.

There Will Be Blood: Butchering as Performance Art

 

The scene was quite surreal. A 650 pound spit roasted steer was on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  Members of the OPEN restaurant collective, among them some chefs from Chez Panisse, organized this happening. They paraded the giant beast through the city streets on a trailer truck, a long journey from Alemany Farm where the fennel stuffed steer had been roasting for 20 hours over an elaborate fire pit. Once they arrived at SFMOMA, they removed the specially woven tapestry that covered the animal, which was later hung in the room. Then they extricated the two giant spits that held the animal over the fire. One had to be tapped out with a sledgehammer! Talk about virility and power!  Next they un-wrapped the foil that had encased the animal. (Like Woody Allen in Sleeper but on a much larger scale.)  After dumping the beast on a giant butcher block, a group of white jacketed female chefs and butchers proceeded to carve up the animal, accompanied by a live overhead video projection in order to bring the action even closer to the audience of carnivores who had paid to attend. After the women had made the initial foray into the giant beast, the large slabs of meat were sent back to male chefs who cut them into smaller pieces and covered them with fanciful sauces and foams, and, as it was San Francisco, the beef was served with local artisan bread and wild arugula. Even a grappa was made from the roasted heart and tongue of the steer. All this was accompanied by video projections, cacaphonic music and sounds and dramatic lighting effects, sort of a flashback to the heady days of the Fillmore Auditorium.  When the event was over, only the picked-over carcass remained, smelling faintly of fennel and blood.  

 

But it wasn’t Surrealism the Museum was commemorating; it was the Italian Futurist movement. This dramatic carnal display was part of series of events at the museum entitled “ Metal+ Machine+ Manifesto = Futurism’s  First 100 Years “ The chefs  used Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s 1932 bizarre Futurist  Cookbook for inspiration for this orgy of meat cooking and butchery. Marinetti had advised the Italians to give up on its classical past and its iconic pasta which makes people “heavy, brutish…slow, pessimistic”,  and is “a debased  and suburban form of pleasure.” He invited them to plunge into the active future by eating meat. To eat meat is to ingest energy in its most immediate form and increases virility. Oh, those Italians! 

 

All of this was proudly reported in Meatpaper, a new publication in the Bay area that focuses on all meat centric events here in the City by the Bay. Meatpaper’s   role as they describe it, “is an investigation into the growing cultural trend of meat consciousness.…about meat as a provocative cultural symbol and phenomenon.”

 

Hey! What’s going on? It seems like only yesterday that foodies and the media were obsessed with celebrity chefs, aspiring top chefs, and famous restaurateurs. Now the focus has shifted to the more humble and earthy artisans, giving them their turn at 15 minutes of fame. This transition of attention has its roots in the Locavore and Slow Food movements with their veneration of the artisan and farm-to-table eating. The spotlight alternately moves from the farmer, the cheese maker, the baker, and now it shines on the butcher and salumi maker. And when you get a celebrity chef who can butcher and also make salumi, you have hit the trifecta!

 

 The cutting up of animals is now public performance art. Events are widely held, not just in San Francisco. In Atlanta, Brooklyn, the Hudson Valley, Virginia there are similar carnal knowledge opportunities. People can enroll in a hog butchering class, with wine. (Wear your raincoat and rain boots, it gets messy!) Or taste salumi and charcuterie made from responsibly raised animals. Or attend an event called Primal, held both in San Francisco and Atlanta, described as “a celebration of the culinary arts’ appreciation of wood fired cooking methods, and to honor the art of the butcher while promoting heritage breeds and whole animal utilization within the foodie community.” Enlightened carnivores, also known as paying guests, watch butchers and chefs cook a whole pig, a goat and a cow over open fires and then demonstrate cutting them up. Naturally, boutique wines and craft beers are served.

 

Surrealism and Futurism are giving way to enterprising Capitalism. It is no longer surprising to find a crowd of foodies who’ll gladly shell out $175 per person to watch a now famous Florentine butcher, Dario Cecchini, cut up half a pig and half a cow and get to taste a sliver of bistecca alla fiorentina cooked by the hosting restaurant. The butcher is now a celebrity by osmosis because he is mentioned in a book about a celebrity chef.  That’s real show business!

 

I am not an animal rights activist, and I do eat meat judiciously, but I do think butchering as performance art smacks of press fodder. Trendy photo ops of brawny chefs hefting giant carcasses and wielding sharp knives, surrounded by people who never cook but, like Peter Sellers in Being There, they just want to watch. Those macho tattooed dudes, cutting up meat really turn some folk on in a big way. 

 

Now I do understand that this comes from a place of well meaning and education: to demonstrate that meat does not originate in plastic wrap covered packages but comes from an animal. And that avoiding factory raised animals in favor of those from small farms, raised responsibly and locally is a good thing. But maybe we can carry this a bit too far, when to feel righteous about eating meat, you have to kill the animal yourself. (Thank you, Michael Pollan, for glamorizing our inner hunter.) Or you have to raise the animal yourself. Or failing that you have no room for livestock at home, you need to learn to butcher meat and connect primally with your food before you have the right to enjoy it. Even celebrity bloggers now turned authors have embraced ( temporarily ) their inner butcher.

 

Seriously, folks. What’s next?  Stomping grapes in the dining room?  Keeping chickens in the restaurant’s garden or on the green roof and wringing their necks to order? Who will be next on the road to culinary stardom? Watch out. It could be the guys who make the knives.  

 

 

Buy Soma Online Without Prescription, I know. I've been silent for way too long.   It's not that I have forgotten to write on my blog, buy generic Soma, Order Soma from mexican pharmacy, it is just that I have embarked on a huge new book project and it it taking most of my time and occupying my every waking and even sleeping thoughts.

I have been asked by University of California Press to write the history of what has come to be known as the California Cuisine movement.   Over the past 5 months  I have just completed 170 interviews with chefs, where can i order Soma without prescription, Buy Soma from mexico, artisans, farmers, rx free Soma, Soma from canadian pharmacy, writers, winemakers, where can i buy cheapest Soma online, Buy no prescription Soma online, restaurant designers, food retailers, buy cheap Soma no rx, Purchase Soma online,  press, and front of the house managers, order Soma online c.o.d, Online buying Soma, trying to leave no stone unturned in my quest to report the story.  The path is not linear or clear. The story varies between Northern and Southern California, Soma for sale. Order Soma no prescription, And I am drowning in information that I must now sort and place into into the appropriate chapters. Yes, there is a chapter outline but sequence  is not yet clear.This is a book that will evolve in the writing.  I am a hermit at my desk most of the time, Buy Soma Online Without Prescription.

I know that last time I posted I had just set out on a cruise on the Mediterranean for Lindblad and National Geographic. I was in Sicily, australia, uk, us, usa, canada, mexico, india, craiglist, ebay, Where can i buy Soma online,   Sardinia, Corsica, order Soma, Online buy Soma without a prescription, Menorca and Southern Spain. It seems like a dream today.The food was good, Soma pharmacy. Buy Soma in canada, I did not have any major new culinary discoveries but being back in the Mediterranean is always satisfaction enough.

 Last month I received the Silver Spoon award in Food Arts and was thrilled to be recognized for my  many years of work, buy Soma online cod. Buy Soma Online Without Prescription, And I have been working at Yale University to improve the salad stations at all twelve  colleges . Buy Soma without a prescription, It has been challenging and I will be writing about it in Food Arts. Yale University Food Service Director Rai Taherian and I gave a presentation  at NACUFS about our work, where can i find Soma online. Buy Soma online no prescription, I am still writing for the Sommelier Journal and participating on conferences at the Culinary Insitute of America at Greystone in St . Helena.  So I have not been loafing, Soma price. Buy cheapest Soma, Just too busy to post. I know this should be a habit but I often don't have the time, buy Soma no prescription. Soma over the counter, Sorry, I will try to do better, Soma samples. Purchase Soma online no prescription.

Similar posts: Buy Lasix Online Without Prescription. Buy Propecia Online Without Prescription. Buy Elavil Online Without Prescription.
Trackbacks from: Buy Soma Online Without Prescription. Buy Soma Online Without Prescription. Buy Soma Online Without Prescription. Buy Soma Online Without Prescription. Buy Soma Online Without Prescription. Buy Soma Online Without Prescription. Buy Soma Online Without Prescription. Buy Soma online no prescription. Buy Soma in canada. Where can i buy Soma online. Rx free Soma. Where can i order Soma without prescription.

 

Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription, Recently I attended a public conversation between famed Noma chef Rene Redzepi and local chef Daniel Patterson. The well attended event was held in conjunction with a book tour for the magnificent Phaidon publication  about NOMA, Amoxicillin for sale, Buy Amoxicillin in canada, Redzepi’s restaurant in Denmark, named top restaurant in the world, buy cheapest Amoxicillin. Amoxicillin pharmacy,  The audience  was filled with young chefs waiting for revelations and revolutionary ideas.  

Redzepi is a charmer, buy Amoxicillin online no prescription, Order Amoxicillin from mexican pharmacy, articulate, upbeat and unpretentious, order Amoxicillin no prescription. Buy no prescription Amoxicillin online, I was interested in his decisions and thought processes. Yes, it must be very difficult to cultivate ingredients in such a challenging climate and environment, especially if you want to serve great food all year long.  So you have to be resourceful and become a forager, Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription. This expands the repertoire of what you have to cook with and creates new and unusual harmonies on the plate, Amoxicillin over the counter. Amoxicillin from canadian pharmacy,  

Those expecting radical ideas may have been surprised with how un-radical many of his practices were.  First he followed the old Mediterranean tenet that says “what grows together, where can i find Amoxicillin online, Purchase Amoxicillin online no prescription, goes together.”  So oysters are paired on the plate with greens that grow near the shore and sea water used in the cooking. If spruce trees hover above the ground where asparagus grow, rx free Amoxicillin, Purchase Amoxicillin online, they are cooked together. Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription, Not a new concept but with such a limited larder, now see4mingly revelatory. His terroir is not our terroir, online buy Amoxicillin without a prescription. Buy Amoxicillin without a prescription,  

Next Redzepi talked about how important it was to set up relationships with local farmers. Again, order Amoxicillin online c.o.d, Where can i buy Amoxicillin online, hardly a new concept here.  In California we have been doing that for over thirty years. But we have it relatively easy, where can i order Amoxicillin without prescription. Unlike Denmark, California has a Mediterranean climate, Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription. Buy generic Amoxicillin, We have a long growing seasons and a vast selection of ingredients at our culinary disposal. In fact some might say it has become a bit too easy and that there is danger of similarity of menu concept and all of the food tasting the same, buy Amoxicillin from mexico. Online buying Amoxicillin, Our chefs can source pretty much everything they need to create delicious food.  To distinguish themselves from the pack some have started their own gardens so they can customize their produce. Even that may not be enough to get noticed, australia, uk, us, usa, canada, mexico, india, craiglist, ebay.   Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription, Other to seek differentiate themselves by making a show of adding foraged nuts, berries, native  plants and roots on their menu, acting as if they too were stuck in the wilds of Denmark with not much to cook. Where can i buy cheapest Amoxicillin online, Some might consider this sort of an affectation to get attentions.   

Redzepi talked about involving his chefs in farming and foraging, Amoxicillin price. Buy Amoxicillin no prescription, We have restaurants doing that now. He talked of the practice of having the cooks come up with ideas for new dishes, buy Amoxicillin online cod. This seemingly revolutionary concept is not new, except maybe to the men who have trained in the traditional European style hierarchical kitchen, Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription. Amoxicillin samples, Women chefs started doing this over thirty years ago.  Now this idea of letting the cooks have a say in the food has trickled down to such formerly hierarchical chefs as Thomas Keller and Michael Chiarello, order Amoxicillin. Buy cheap Amoxicillin no rx, They learned it was lonely at the top and that collaboration promoted creativity.

After poking fun at excessive mechanical techniques like gelling, he got around to talking about the importance of a personal cuisine. Making traditional dishes as crème brulee with local wild berries did not make a new cuisine. Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription, It was still derivative of a Mediterranean culture.  But what about those chefs in California living in a Mediterranean terroir .  Are they to throw it all away to be new.  What about all of the melting pot cultural influences of Asia and Latin America.   Are these to be disregarded as derivative, too.  Do chefs have to imagine or pretend that they are living in the tundra or desert to create an original cuisine. This was the most provocative part of the evening and one that we will have time to ponder as we cook our way into the Twenty first century.   

.

Similar posts: Buy Zyban Online Without Prescription. Buy VPXL Online Without Prescription. Buy Nexium Online Without Prescription.
Trackbacks from: Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription. Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription. Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription. Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription. Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription. Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription. Buy Amoxicillin Online Without Prescription. Order Amoxicillin online c.o.d. Buy Amoxicillin from mexico. Purchase Amoxicillin online. Amoxicillin for sale. Amoxicillin samples.