Trip Planning for November [Paris]

[pilgrim]

(post deleted by author)

[pilgrim]

@Carmenere

I truly had my mind blown by Ferran Adria’s menus, but I loathed the various knockoffs and the trend that followed.

I understand and appreciate what you are saying and how it can be your point of view. But very few of us had the opportunity and luxury of experiencing Adria’s food in situ. To deny legitimacy to all homage to and subsequent derivatives of his concepts is to deny millions of diners access to his ideas, and allow only a privileged few in on his creativity.

I am thankful to all of the young chefs who have cooked incredible plates for us, standing on the shoulders of those who went before them, as they insert their own individualities into iconic dishes. Because a concept can become iconic, there will always be “trends”, since each chef exerts his thinking onto what went before. For me, “new” is greatly overrated and often obscures close assessment of excellence, as we are taken in by what is clever. I am content with food that is simply delicious, “sigh inducing”, regardless of how many other chefs have tried it before.

[Carmenere]

@pilgrim

I understand and appreciate what you are saying and how it can be your point of view. But very few of us had the opportunity and luxury of experiencing Adria’s food in situ. To deny legitimacy to all homage to and subsequent derivatives of his concepts is to deny millions of diners access to his ideas, and allow only a privileged few in on his creativity.

That’s not exactly my point. I meant to say that the style of restaurant cooking that Adria created (with the help of a shady influencer who wished, as in earlier periods of the 20th century, to materialize “the food of the future”, please allow me not to develop on that), was initially a scam of sorts, but a scam in which there were true bursts of genius. It just happened to be so. Like an accident, somehow. Now take out the genius, and you’ve got the scam, and deliciousness definitely wasn’t the matter. Whoever would like to experience what I’m referring to can try the remaining ‘tecnoemocional’ restaurants on either coast of the Iberian peninsula, and see what I mean. At any rate, I’m not going back to any of them. (It never really caught on in France, again I won’t develop on why it never did.)

Of course, no relation whatsoever with the wide-ranged collection of ‘young chefs’ who have cooked 'incredible plates" for you, that is a completely different matter. I am referring to something specific. Not all of these young chef you refer to cooked in that style, or ‘trend’. Very few of them, I’m sure.

(However, the result of inflation and of the terrifying rise of product costs have somehow inspired some of the more recent ones to dive back into the ‘trend’ for cost control reasons, and I’ve seen a bit too much of that in France these last few months. Hopefully it won’t last too long.)