I'm eating crow today. Ever since I had a showy but bad meal of molecular gastronomy last year, I've been bashing the movement vociferously. The epitome of this bad bad meal -- which I ate begrudgingly, as it was for a restaurant review and I had to -- was a scallop that had been pureed and extruded into ribbons of fettuccini. Hey chef smartypants (I yammered in my head) what possessed you to fuck with one of the ocean's dreamiest treasures (that needs nothing more than a searing in a mofo hot pan to achieve perfection?!)
So I've had rather a chip on my shoulder about the whole molecular gastronomy thing ever since. Until yesterday. I had the chance to hear and see elBulli chef Ferran Adria, inventor of the new gastronomy. Like elBulli's melon globules which (allegedly) burst on the tongue, his eloquence and philosophy took me by surprise.
The guy's a genius, simply enough. He's an artist and an innovator and whether or not his style of cuisine floats my boat, he has revolutionised my craft. When you hear an artist (a true one, in any field) speak about his passion it's hard not to be persuaded.
I won't even try to explain the cuisine. It is to cuisine what Picasso is to Impressionism: a revolutionary change. As Adria explained, he invented a new alphabet. It's hard to imagine anything new -- truly NEW -- in cuisine, but he did it. And yet, his goal is still what chefs have been attempting this whole time: to be provocative and to cause happiness and even laughter.
His insights included that chefs rarely eat their own food as their customers do -- sitting down, not just tasting it off a spoon standing over the pot. (Guilty as charged); that mine is the best generation of chefs in the history of cuisine because we do it out of passion, not out of necessity; and that it doesn't matter how the food is made -- what matters is how it tastes. Now how can I be pissed off at that?
I celebrated with too much Champagne and so spent tonight at home nursing a headache and a stock pot.
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