Hacker Food
I am a geek. Geekiness is in my blood, so when I hear about the cool things that are going on at elBulli, WD-50, Fat Duck and the like. It's cool, it's intriguing, it's applying the basics of science towards food so that you can do some amazing things. I admit, when Wiley Dufresne was on Iron Chef America, I was intrigued to see what he was going to do.And you know what? My inner geek was satisfied, but the inner chef was not. And not because of his techniques. His techniques were beautiful, flawless. I admired his presentation and his creativity. I just couldn't get behind the whole concept of his food.
A lot of the techniques and ingredients that are being used in this new trend in food science coming to your plate (sorry, I haven't found a commonly used term for this phenomenon) come from the food processing industry. These are the same techniques and ingredients (and in some cases, equipment) that are used to manipulate a set of ingredients into something that will shelf-stabilize a meal for ten years, like an MRE. There's a reason they're packed in survival kits. Food science makes all meals cheap, easy to produce, and consistent. But where's the flavor?
I know I have to hold off judgment completely until I'm able to visit one of these places myself, but one of my friends who recently visited WD-50 said that his favorite items in the meal were the ones that were manipulated the least. Not in the super cool items that had the latest in food science. Nice to look at, but where's the beef?
The real soul can be found in seasonal, local, sustainable food that is manipulated as little as possible to let the natural flavors of the food come through. I know it sounds like an over-used refrain, but in America, where people don't know were their food came from, I think it's very important. We don't need more food science in our diets, we need real food. We need an orange that tastes like an orange, not one that looks great and travels well but tastes like shit. We need to understand that our meat comes from animals that have to be killed in order to eat them, and that these animals deserve to be treated in a humane manner (please, no ground up cow fed to cow ... cows are herbivores). Food science creates frankenfoods, and the only frank I should be eating is a frankfurter.
The new wave food science chefs have their place in coming up with using science to find innovative parings of ingredients. White chocolate and oysters? They have chemical similarities and I thank the food science chefs for finding a delicious combo that, before them, could only be rationalized by pregnancy. But I become skeptical when a piece of food becomes so manipulated beyond its original form that I have no idea what it is. Cool to look at, but what's it taste like? Hopefully, nothing like an MRE.
1 Comments:
Fucking Great Post, Marty! Fantastic writting, along with concise and ultra-valid points.
I agree with you on this topic. My chef ate at the restaurant Modo, in Chicago, and although he said it was one of the funnest meals he has ever had he also said that it left him feeling vacant. Like nothing really had happened. I would compare it to going to see a magic show. You get Wowed all the way through the dining experience but in the end you don't really know what the fuck just happened. As you stated in this post you should know EXACTLY what has happened to your food. E.G. You order a chicken and you know that it was fed grains, ran around freely, was aloud to live 16 weeks, and then was slaughtered and packaged by real hands, not a machine. This is what I like about food. No smoke and mirrors. No Copperfield. I'm not knocking the merger of Science and Food, my point is that they were never seperated to begin with. The above example is just "Natural Science". Food has been taken over by "mad" science. I'm not refering to the kitchen wizards of new but the food marketing industry that has poisened everything natural.
This March I am going to join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)group. Of course in San Antonio it only consists of a husband and wife farmer team, but for $25 a week I recieve a supply of vegetables, true free range chicken, life-long grass fed beef, and eggs. Everything is organic. These are the best chickens you have ever tasted. I'm not even used to the flavor of this beef its so clean, and the eggs look like an easter basket with all the different colors from the different strains of birds. This is how I should eat. And how I want my child to eat. Naturally. Because as you pointed out Marty, natural foods on the plate is the biggest miracle of science in this day n' age. Not edible paper.
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