Food

FOOD 2017

October 25, 2017

I’VE HAD IT WITH THE FOOD FADS! I was reading a critic’s take on Vespertine, a recently opened LA restaurant where the tasting menu is $250 without wines, service or tax, and my fumes of anger and spite that have been rising for the past year, from the simmering stew of irritation and ire in the cauldron of my brain, finally splattered all over the stove. Pete Wells, the New York Times critic refers to the restaurant as “a steaming pile of pretentious nonsense” and if you do not believe it, suffice it to quote the Chef, whose name I will not honor by writing it, who spouts garbage like, {the restaurant} “is dedicated to exploring a dimension of cuisine that is neither rooted in tradition nor culture;” “it is a spirit that exists between worlds”;  and describes the building as “a machine artifact from an extraterrestrial planet that was left here like a billion years ago by a species that were moon worshippers.” I am dead serious about these quotes. What has this guy been smoking? “A cuisine neither rooted in tradition nor in culture” OK. What is it rooted on? Air? Fumes? According to Wells, “the servers acted less like ancient space aliens than like monks running a monastic retreat for stressed-out nonbelievers. They glided around in black slippers and flowing black tunics, quiet as ninjas.” Are we in a restaurant, or in some mystical Game of Thrones fantasy land?

So, what is happening? Is this, as they say, “for real”? The first course is a spinach leaf, yes, a spinach leaf, one leaf, that has little granules of lime, tiny flowers and some sort of individual caviar eggs, as shown in this photograph. Are you fucking kidding me?

Oh! And there is more; it is served on an oblique black clay slab that looks like a burned tortilla. As if this were not enough, another course is a paper-thin strip of white asparagus. And on, and on. Plus, the chef, with super long hair, does not wear a cap or a toque, so his loose hairs in the dishes are an added ingredient, I guess. If you care to read the review, . The food doesn’t look at all what you are eating, which is not new, and the visual is better than the tasting, which is a shame. Basically, you go to a restaurant to eat and, maybe, additionally, to smell and see wonderfully designs on dishes. But not vice versa. The distressing part? This is not a fad, nor a trend. These are actually state-of-the-art gastronomical experiences in our contemporary world. And looked at and talked about with oohs and aahs by the dilettanti that would make Escoffier, Curnonsky and company turn in their graves and chefs like Jacques Pepin or Jacques Torres look for the shortest way to the Roman vomitorium, which is where the ancient Romans went when they could not stand one more gram of orgy.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am all for food presented in a way that makes it look great and flavors that throw you off balance because you are not quite sure what’s in the dish. But all these constant attempts at out-creating the creatives has gone off the deep end. For instance, last night we were looking at a competition to name the best new chef pâtissier in France. The average age of the five competitors was around 23 and their years of experience went from around 6 to 11. The desserts they were preparing had, for the most part, 15 to 17 different ingredients in one dish. I accept the fact that the combination of many ingredients provides different perceptions, but I really wonder if all these additions of aromatics truly enhance the experience, or is it the reading about the list of ingredients in the menu that becomes a road to an imagined exciting adventure.

At any rate the judges – world class chefs pâtissiers themselves - could only talk about two or three sensations they perceived from the tastings and their comments were “it has a nice texture”; or “you surprised me with the use of cinnamon”; or “the fondant was too soft.” So much for the use of 17 ingredients! Another part of the competition consisted of making a dessert that was a trompe l’oeil. The contestants came up with dishes that looked like Petit Suisse containers or Nespresso capsules or a Japanese pagoda that was a lantern as well. And the comments were: “Ah! This looks like a Petit Suisse” or “The bottom of the capsule is not perfect” or” I never imagined it was a candle.” Perhaps because it was a cake in the shape of a candle? Really? Oh! Did I mention that they used only 16 ingredients in these desserts? And that no judge mentioned any of them, except to say; “This is chocolate” Maybe because it was dark chocolate-colored brown, hard and looked like a chocolate pagoda?

NICE FOOD HAS ALWAYS BEEN PART OF MY LIFE because my grandmothers either cooked or had their cooks prepare some extraordinary dishes in my childhood. I write Nice Food with initial capitals since food is always a part of anybody’s life, even in famine. The sensations of this Nice Food stuck with me throughout the years. The flavors of my childhood were basic; frijoles negros con hoja de ahuacate, (simmered beans with the aroma of charred avocado leaves), sopa de fideos con aceite de oliva (capellini soup with a thread of olive oil), Cecina de Yecapixtla con gotas de limón (Air dried salty thin flank steak with drops of lime juice); Salsa de queso frito (fried cheese in tomato sauce); Chicharrón en salsa verde (crackly fried pork rinds in sour tomatillo sauce); agua de Jamaica con chia (hibiscus flower water with chia seeds); hueva de lisa frita con salsa de tomatillo (fried mullet eggs with green sauce); mezcal (when my grandfather Papá Leo was around) con sal de gusanito (mezcal with ground worm salt); escamoles con ahuacate (ant eggs with avocado); pancita rellena (lamb stomach stuffed with organ meats and spices); and marvelous, fragrant, steaming tamales of all sorts and types from fresh corn uchepos, to chicken, pork, mole negro, fish, hoja santa, chipilín, and even pineapple, wrapped in either fresh or dried corn husks or banana leaves. One of the characteristics of these meals was that they were made with three or four ingredients, very basically treated, that were local and fresh.

I then graduated to other foods when I ate at the table of my elementary school principal and teacher, Madame Tron, where the French “cuisine de campagne” prevailed: fried brains in brown butter, fried liver with onion marmalade; lentil soup; French fries and steak; carrots in sweet butter. Again, three or four, local, fresh ingredients, basically treated. My next step was Memé’s cooking with croquettes; cannelloni; pot au feu; pastas with gruyère cheese; fried cod in olive oil; three color mayonnaise; and a great variety of cured meats from France and Spain: Fuet, Sobreasada, Saucisson Sec, Jambon de Bayonne; and a supreme dish of Cassoulet de Toulouse. And baguettes, of course!

Until then my understanding of food had been: local ingredients (even if they came smuggled from Spain via the Mercado de San Juan), simply prepared, served promptly and with limited size portions. A meal in Mexico was never more that an appetizer (soup or rice), a main course ( a basic stew with vegetables), a desert (flan) and a salad (lettuce with vinaigrette). Fancy occasions at Memé’s or with Michel brought with them also French cheese.

IN MY LATE TEENS MICHEL INTRODUCED ME TO FANCY French and Spanish dishes in Mexico, like Tournedos Henri IV; Escargots au Beurre Persillé; Corderillo Asado; Favas con Chistorra. This was also the time when Mamita was experimenting with new dishes like Tomato Aspic; Timbal Azteca; Melon Coulis with ground almonds. This was my lot with food, with side trips to Germany surviving on Linsentopf (lentil soup) or on Semmelknödeln. (Crumb Dumplings) Then a few years later came a trip to Greece and the amazing discovery of Horiatiki (Farmer’s salad) and the great mezze until I discovered the food critic of L’Exprèss, Claude Lebey, right around when I started travelling frequently to Europe at the time of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, always trying to go via Paris. And when Michel Guérard appeared globally on the cover of TIME with the Nouvelle Cuisine, where butter was replaced by great bouillons and heavy cream with great sauces made of reductions, I was hooked into restaurants and food discoveries. Welcome to Ciboulette near Beaubourg!

Living in Europe also brought a new discovery of Italian and German foods, some Indonesian fare in Holland and Greek dishes. Spain was also a wonderful point of discovery, particularly the incredible seafood and the oven roasts. But it was always the same principle: simple local food, freshly prepared and promptly served at affordable prices

WE ALWAYS ENJOYED FOOD AS A COMPLEMENT to good conversation and family enjoyment; it was never an end unto itself. I do not remember a single silent meal in all my childhood and young adulthood at home or in a restaurant when there was no conversation or, most of the time, good natured smiles and laughter and, although we always celebrated the food, it was because we admired the cook’s efforts to make something great out of a simple dish. This was the case, for instance, when the Corzos - my parents and aunts and uncles – got together as a clan every few years and celebrated their conflicts and their hard beginnings with joshing and loving memories and rowdy carcajadas (peals of laughter)! And it continues in my adult lives (since I have many!)

WHEN THE POTATO ARRIVED IN EUROPE there was a great discussion if this was a vegetable fit for human consumption. Great arguments ensued. Even the French Parliament forbade the potato to be eaten by humans until 1772. The more enlightened leaders knew it was an important staple for a hungry Europe. Not the priests, though. They had their wafers for Communion made with wheat and they were not about to change. It took several decades to impose the potato. One of the great saviors of Europe was Parmentier, who was also a botanist and a gardener. He received permission form the King, Louis XVI to plant potatoes in a heavily guarded parcel that was in downtown Paris. Guarded, that is, except at night. Then, people came to steal the potatoes, which must have been very precious since they were guarded, right? And slowly the use of potatoes prevailed. And Praise be the Lord, because where would we be without French Fries? Since then, all dishes that have Parmentier in their name are attributed to this great innovator. Hachis Parmentier and Potage Parmentier are some of these potato-based dishes. One ingredient, local, fresh easily prepared. By the way, in his spare time, he also managed to establish mandatory small pox vaccinations, under Napoleon.

ALTHOUGH THE FRENCH HAD ALWAYS CELEBRATED THE GREAT cuisine and the great chefs of the past 19th century, Câreme and Escoffier. much of the rest of the world kept to itself, including China and India, Thailand and Mexico. I remember seeing later in life the Gala menus of the Don Porfirio Celebration of the Mexican Centenary of Independence and being impressed with the abundance of dishes but not with the elaborate presentations or preparations, because there were none that I did not recognize.

THE WHOLE FOOD CULTURE STARTED EVOLVING IN MY LIFE in the 80s, following the pattern of evolution in the world. Suddenly I discovered that there were new restaurants in Europe where the prices were beyond the reach of common folk, or even of well-to-do professionals, let alone, me. I was lucky enough to have a series of projects that allowed for expense accounts and to travel with individuals whose pockets, by far, were not as limited as mine, who were looking for new experiences and turned to me to point them in the right direction. This I how, throughout the years, I was able to go to Lucas Carton, La Tour d’Argent, Taillevent, Chiberta, Aubergine, L’Auberge de l’Ill among many, many others. What all of these had were exceptional chefs who extracted new flavors from all the traditional dishes and recreated the palette and the palate of French cuisine. Then there were Gerard Pangaud, Arpège, l’Archestrate, PIerre Gaganaire, Le Bernardin, Aurore, La Grenouille, Café des Artistes, who were delving into the new forms of Nouvelle Cuisine and were truly breaking the limits of the traditions and preparing lighter meals with great flavors.

BUT SUDDENLY THE WHOLE GASTRONOMICAL WORLD started turning awry. Globalization meant that rich Japanese did not have to go to Paris to eat great French restaurants; they brought the chefs and their team for months at a time to Tokyo hotels. The American chefs who trained in France started opening up their restaurants in the United States and pushing the boundaries. The Chinese started travelling in hordes in Europe, with more money than the economy could absorb, so the prices in restaurants, particularly sea food, went sky high. French chefs in the US started going to Asia and drawing from the bottomless wells of the extraordinary Chinese and Thai cuisines began modifying the use of the ingredients and giving them new applications. And the chemical processes of marinating, and direct or indirect heat were not enough. New chemicals were brought into use: molecular gastronomy was born, Ferrán Adriá being the foremost proponent. The cuisine that had been at the base of creation and savoir faire of the chefs was not enough. And this was a good thing. Creativity and invention prevailed. Exploration of flavors and of textures, combinations of cuisines (incorrectly called fusion, since, in fusion, everything melts into one glob), new cooking techniques, new ingredients eaten raw, stunning new presentations, and behind all these innovations, the classic techniques and the basic preparations to build up the flavors. As we discovered more and more of these ultra-creative results, the field became even more competitive, the bars were raised evermore and, soon, it was not an effort to see what could be done to enhance the quality of flavors, but what could be done to “épater les bourgeois”, pejoratively, to shock and amaze a complacent know-nothing middle class. It was not innovation for improvement, it was innovation to show off.

A MASSIVE GLOBAL COMPETITION BEGAN, to see what dish could be prepared that did not look like its name implied, such as an “English Breakfast” served in a Martini glass where the bacon, egg, tomato, mushroom and potato flavors were all there, but in a deconstructed, liquid form; where a white jelly sphere burst in your mouth to provide the exact flavor of a Sevilla olive; where the paper on your plate describing the dessert was a part of the edible dessert, to be eaten after reading it; where the lamb was served on a cotton cushion filled with lavender-scented smoke that leaked soft plumes as you ate the meat. Where four, six, eight, ten, twelve or sixteen courses were not enough.

The tasting menu at Manhattan’s Per Se consisted of 20 dishes plus the “amuse” (the speed-of-sound US culture waiter could not complete the whole name: amuse bouche), courtesy of the chef before the meal. And there were four to six of these. Then, at the end of the meal, the chef sent mignardises before the official three desserts of the tasting menu. And these mignardises were another four to six tastes. You could not eat in two or three hours. At least four or five were needed. And then the wines: Wine Flights, Wine Pairings, Wine Tastings; six, eight, ten wines with the menus, plus a champagne aperitif, plus a very pricey digestif (1864 Madeira at $200 per 5 cl, anyone?). How could you keep track of all this? How do you remember or even differentiate after three or four dishes amongst the 30 different plates served? All with one mouth, one tongue and five or six tastes in the papillae!

SO FAR THERE IS AGREEMENT THAT WE CAN DETECT FIVE TASTES: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. That is what the papillae do. But what about, for instance, the taste of mint? The taste of freshness is being discussed as another taste; as is the taste of calcium (like in spinach); of kokumi, which is fullness; piquance (chiles, please? or Szechuan pepper); metallicity, which you can taste sometimes in salmon; fat, which mice can detect as a taste; and carbon dioxide, which we feel as bubbles but, maybe, we can also taste. Maybe there are more than five tastes. Then you add the aromas that you smell, and you have the complete sense of flavor. If you add the feel of the food, such as crunchy or soft, smooth or gritty, juicy or unctuous; the sound of food, as bubbling, hissing, crackling, exploding; the look of the food and its esthetic and surprising presentations, then you enter a universe where the “food experience” can be one of perhaps 100,000 different sensations. But shouldn’t the main point of the food be: the food?

When you need a three-line description of a dish in the menu, how do you integrate these words into a mouth and nose sensation? And the effort to get the right critic review, hire the right chef, buy the right plates and cutlery, hire the right decorator and get the right financing leads all too often to restaurant openings with great hoopla crashing with great strident noise in under three weeks.

THE LAST PLACE ONE WOULD LOOK FOR A FINE DINING EXPERIENCE is in Las Vegas, where all the super global chefs have opened their branches. The reason is not that the finest gourmets in the world go to Las Vegas for a dégustation to end all dégustations. It is because the people who go to these restaurants do not mind paying astronomical prices for food or for wine. They have gone to Las Vegas to have a good time spending their money and by golly, little lady, we are going to do the French place, honey, no matter the cost. That’s what money is for, sweetie buns. And the great chefs benefit from this. Where else can the great chefs afford to use $3,000 per pound. black truffles?

QUO USQUE TANDEM ABUTERE, CATILINA, PATIENTIA NOSTRA? Cicero, the great Roman leader and orator, lawyer and writer of the first century BCE had had it with Catilina, a patrician ambitious man. Catilina had tried by all means to get the power of Rome. He had run for office, bought politicians, waged war, lied, connived, hired an assassin to kill Cicero, created a conspiracy, invented machinations about Julius Cesar, even raised an army, and yet could not get the power. Cicero had had it. One day he rose in the Forum and gave one of the most famous speeches of his life: “When, Catilina, will you cease to abuse our patience” And he went on to say: “How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?”

ALL THESE CONTEMPORARY GASTRONOMICAL ROMAN CIRCUSES grate me the wrong way. They are the Catilina to my Cicero. I have lost patience. I have lost respect for these trendy chefs, these trendy restaurants, these trendy styles. I am tired of reading about the seven layers of the exotic leaves from the Amazon that are charred in three types of wood, that have been dried for two years, under a thatched roof, after being cut at full moon and that are added, individually at the top of the Iquitos Salad, prepared by the Inca chef. I am tired of reading reviews of how the basil leaves are harvested in the rain forest of Thailand, at the end of the monsoon, to be used with the green papaya that comes from Kenya, grown under coconut trees, as the base for the salsa that accompanies the $300 per ounce Wagyu beef, slightly seared. I have had enough of the 18 course tasting menus; and the 12 glasses Wine Flights from the same grape varietal; I have had enough of the service that does not allow me to sprinkle salt in my soup, because, really, Chef, your soup is flat!

And, personally, I have had enough of the thirteen types of salt, from the Himalayas to Hawaii, that I have in each of my shelves in three pantries in two continents. I am done with looking for micro cilantro and organic papaya sprouts at Ralphs. I do not care if I cannot detect more than a great flavor in a dish and not 14. I only aim for what our friend, René Redzepi, calls deliciousness. That’s the only goal I care about: deliciousness. So, I am off the tracks. I have seen the light. I have repented. I have done my contrition. I have given my heart to fine fresh, local food, simply prepared.

IF ANYONE CAN HAVE ONE OF THE BEST CHEFS IN THE WORLD at home, that would be President Mitterrand who, when he arrived at the Elysée Palace after his re-election, promptly called his Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, and asked that a wonderful cook come to be his personal cook at the Presidential House. When consulted by Lang, Joel Robuchon recommended Madame Danièle Delpeuch. The president told her that what he was asking her to do was to prepare simple dishes, like boiled ham with potatoes, or a hearty vegetable soup, or an earthy ratatouille, as long as he was president. And she did. And the Head Chef of the Elysée could not stand the fact that the president did not eat his food. Zut, alors! Mitterrand preferred stuffed cabbage with salmon and lardons. He was in favor of deliciousness. And he was a happy president. So much so that he moved Madame Delpeuch to an apartment near the apartment he kept with his longtime mistress Anne Pingeot and their daughter Mazarine, and where he spent most of the nights. Deliciousness.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE FRENCH BISTROS where the Hareng pommes à l’huile, l'oeuf mayo and les poireaux au vinaigre are served before the blanquette de veau or the entrecôte frites with a salade verte on top of the nappes à carreaux Vichy, sitting in the chaises Thonet while looking at the zinc Nextoux? Or to the fondas in the mercados in Mexico where the tortas ahogadas, or the cochinita pibil or the ensalada de nopales with fresh tomato slices, thin raw onion rings and scattered queso fresco remind me of the colors of the Mexican flag? All this is “para chuparse los dedos.” And you do not need three-week advance reservation or spend $250 to have a meal with as many courses as you want, freshly prepared, local origins and promptly served.

In the same way that we are going back to walking and cycling and eliminating oil- and coal-based energy, we should be going back to simple, local, freshly prepared food and rescue our cultural traditions and enhance our identities. All these new fad restaurants have the same feel whether in Lyon, London or Los Angeles. The chefs are playing on our snobbishness, our keeping up with the Jones, on our insecurities and our egos. Let’s put a stop to this and take back our creativity and our new flavors and present them with panache and pride but without pomposity or supercilious, condescending pontification. After all, wouldn’t you like to try the Chef’s Special?

A thin dough disk of finely ground prehispanic grain, grown in the highlands of North America, under natural rain irrigation, kissed by the sun, mixed with calcareous rock slaked with spring water, milled in a basalt stone, heated over a clay plate fired by three-year dried conifer branches, stuffed with organic, range free, grain-fed, one-year old fowl, boiled with pungent herbs and simmered for two days in a native grown green fruit sauce spiced with wild herbs, served on a platter with broiled capsicum and germinating allium

I would. It’s a great taco de pollo con salsa verde, chile serrano y cebollita asada.

Vale