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.
