THE GURGLING COD

Name That Chef, REVEALED, Or, WWAGD? OR, Definitely one of the last posts on David Kamp's Trotter piece

Earlier today, I asked you to identify the chef referred to in this quotation: 

"He was once the toast of the culinary world and he just exudes passion and authority."

It is, in fact, not the aforementioned Charlie Trotter,  but none other than Auguste Gusteau, as described by Ratatouille creator Brad Bird. However, the possiblity of confusion suggests something of what distinguishes Trotter from the chefs with more restaurants and more exposure. Gusteau is a Disney version of a French chef -- a betouqued owner-proprietor of one very serious restaurant. His successor, Skinner, is a villain because he wants to extend/dilute the Gusteau brand after Gusteau dies. Like Gusteau, Trotter is perhaps closer to an older and populist notion of what a chef is than the Marios and JGVs of the world? 

Add Trotter, or my kid is a three star Michelin chef

 

 
 
A few more odds and ends on Trotter:

1) Several friends pointed me toward Kamp's post on his NYT piece on Trotter. It offers some useful supplements, in particular: 

The Times article focuses on the extent to which Trotter, whether through stubbornness or the simple passing of time, has been eclipsed by younger, more marketing-savvy chefs. But one conclusion I came to, which didn’t make the article, is that perhaps he is his generation’s version of André Soltner, who ran New York’s Lutèce and couldn’t be bothered with being anything more than the chef-owner of one great restaurant.

2) Another reader points out that this image, which dominates the print version of the Times piece, was taken in 1991 for the New York Times, which did not use color before 1993 in the Sunday sections. I had observerd that "the big B&W pic seems to be laying it on a little thick, considering that it was taken in 1991, when color photography was widely available." It's good know this, though a NYT file foto is not the only way to go to illustrate this article. (See, for instance, the online version, which flips the old B&W and recent color images. It would be interesting to do a study of the layout differences btw the print and online DI/DO -- they frequently feel like different animals.)

3) Yes, I read The Perfectionist. Yes, Trotter has high standards for himself and his crew. However, it seems that not getting three stars in the USA is going to feel different to everyone from Trotter to his dishwashers and purveyors. In France, it seems as if getting into Michelin at all is a big deal. Obvs, three stars are better than two, two are better than one, etc. The notion of a resto being entitled to three stars, to being snubbed if it does not get one, seems to be one that could only come from a country that also retails bumper stickers like the on the right of this graf. I not a Michelin inspector, but in my day job, I do have to do some evaluating, and I see a lot of the sensibility expressed below. In a country that does not have home schooled honor students, getting only two Michelin stars might seem like less of a tragedy. 

Name that chef

"He was once the toast of the culinary world and he just exudes passion and authority."

Answer TK! 

Author tips*

Alice Waters's twitter debut, coupled with this viral author meltdown, reminded me of all the fun we had back in the day with the Cod's review of the Waters bio, and the author's response.** The takeaway? If you get a negative review, respond to it immediately, ideally after a few drinks. 

*An exchange with a reviewer that concludes with you telling the reviewer to fuck off is not likely to help your book. (Unless you are Norman Mailer.)

**The author, evidently, is working on a Craig Claiborne bio, which should make for interesting reading. 

Tails and Trotters

A few odds and ends from the aforementioned Trotter piece. 

1) We read that "Alinea, the standard-bearer of technologically forward** cuisine, got three stars, the guide’s highest rating, as did the modernist seafood restaurant L2O."  I'm not familiar w/ L2O,  but the website** and a recent review suggest some molecularity, if not as Adria-besotted as Alinea. And there is that word again. Evidently America's paper of record feels that Myhrvold's anachronistic concoction to describe avant garde (or "technologically forward"*) food as "modernist" is an example they will emulate. 

2) A more striking indication of how the food world is this sentence: "For while the dining room at Trotter’s is rather staid (has anyone suggested stripping off that beige executive-suite wallpaper?), the kitchen remains marvelously, tweetworthily creative, his admirers say." It is a bit awkward, but "tweetworthy" captures an imperative that more and more chefs seem to be beholden to. (The Cod has been guilty on the odd special occasion, but hypocrically disapproves of livetweeting a meal.) 

*"Technologically forward" sounds like an Aibo humping your leg, but that might just be me.  

**The L2O website is almost heroic in its embrace of bad restaurant website design, right down to the Zoolandery background music. 

Is Charlie Trotter the Norma Desmond of the food world?

If being a has-been who never quite lived up to expectations means two Michelin stars and a host of good works, then sign me up. 

It's always nice to see David "United States of Arugula" Kamp in DI/DO, but this was a curious sort of piece. Charlie Trotter raised the bar for dining in Chicago, and still runs this exellent restaurant. And he brings in utes, cooks them nice food, and tries to motivate them. His former employee, Grant Achatz, has three stars, while Trotter has to content himself with two. Even that is a dis:

Alinea, the standard-bearer of technologically forward cuisine, got three stars, the guide’s highest rating, as did the modernist seafood restaurant L2O. The one-star tier was rife with relative newcomers of gonzo-hipster bent like Longman & Eagle, where the menu features a wild-boar sloppy Joe. In between, at a dutiful but unsexy two stars, was Charlie Trotter’s.

Evidently, a lack of bacon trapezes (Alinea) or wild-boar sloppy Joe (gonzo-hipster)* consigns a chef to the unhappy fate of simply running a really good restaurant.  The bigger knock, however, is Trotter's failure to establish a beachhead in NYC, or to thrive in Vegas. Trotter's absence from  Top Chef Masters goes unmentioned here, but seems of a piece with the larger concerns with what Trotter's done since opening the best restaurant in Chicago at the age of 27. 

What strikes me about  Kamp's piece is not any lack of sympathy on his part, but how much the yardsticks for cheffly success have changed. Not that long ago, holding down two Michelin stars in a relatively out of the way part of the dining world would have been something to celebrate. Indeed, a two-Michelin-star chef who screams at his cooks sounds like MFKF's bread and butter. Put Trotter's in France a generation ago, and it's a Thing. Evidently, Trotter's food is very good:

Mr. Trotter is particularly virtuosic with vegetables. A plate arrives bearing what looks like a cross-section of slab bacon, but it’s really a terrine of three separate beet purées — red, golden and chioggia — that have been set in a mold and then sauced with another purée, of horseradish and roasted parsnips: a root-crop tour of the five taste sensations. A porridge of amaranth is enlivened with green cardamom, toasted pistachios and a slice of raw persimmon: a dish at once vaguely South Asian and satisfyingly Moosewood-y. Charlie Trotter’s offers a more traditional Grand Menu, but it’s the Vegetable Menu — an ever-changing, never-boring meatless dégustation — that is his crowning culinary achievement.

I'll take that over a wild-boar Sloppy Joe, thanks. In general, what Kamp describes -- a chef-proprietor with some love from Mr. Bib, who consistently cooks really good food and yells at his staff -- is what used to be the epitome of Chef. Now, lack of an outpost in Dubai, and failure to hobnob with Padma, put you in the also-ran category. Were I Trotter, I might be saying something to myself about how it's the pictures that got small. (Speaking of pictures, in the print ed of the Times, the big B&W pic seems to be laying it on a little thick, considering that it was taken in 1991, when color photography was widely available. Based on available images, the B&W seems like a reach. 

 

*Achewood fans cannot read the words "gonzo" and "restaurant" in the same sentence without recalling the Sani-Taco story arc. 

King Arthur Fiasco

The King Arthur folks offer evidence that baking can be hit or miss. The Cod would rather party with these folks than with Kimball, for sure. Via cinetrix.

A Beard of beef?

The Cod's corporeal host has had one of those days that feels like goinghard in the paint, and then you realize that the big accomplishment of the day was getting through all of that morning's emails.

 

But anyway. There is beef aplenty if you like that sort of thing over to the Eatocracy column. Bourdain has an epiphany, recognizes central role of the James Beard Foundation in promoting fine dining in the United States, vows to put a beatdown on anyone who talks shit about the JBF. 

 

Or, not. But I wanted to post something up for all of the folks clicking through on Emeril. And, it's an excuse to post the picture at right, which is from the best thing in 2011 on the whole Internet. (I checked!) No, it's not the new Alice Waters Twitter. It's Hipster or Athlete. 

Emeril, you don't have to say you love me.*

Thanks to all for the kind words w/r/t my quixotic struggle w/ a cookbook that weighs as much as a third grader and costs as much as a suite at the W. But we must not neglect the usual Cod business, like finding some dismaying soupcon to start the week. (Rainy Monday on the tail end of spring break means there will certainly be good seats available in the 11:15 class at my day job, y'all come!) 

As I  mentioned last year about this time, the weeks and weeks of Mothers Day hype are a grind if you are recently short a mom. I am not sure if being an orphan makes the following more or less disturbing:

"Good Morning America" is looking for a mom who has done it all...and then some. We're seeking that entry that moves us the most, about a mom who did something extra-special for her family, her community, a friend or loved one. Is there a mom you know who has done something extraordinary or heroic? What makes this mom special?

To enter, please fill out the information below by April 15, 2011, including an essay of 100 words or less explaining why the mom you are nominating deserves Emeril’s Breakfast in Bed. 

I can't imagine a contest where winning is more like a home invasion (well, maybe that Shaqille O'Neal searches your home for kiddie porn contest).  Emeril got his start at a spot that, entre nous is home to a ferociously overrated brunch, and unless your mom is Rebecca Black, and sleeps perfectly coiffed and lipglossed, encountering the GMA crew first thing in the morning might not feel like winning. Also, the whole thing is just creepy. I am bracing myself for:

The Alton Brown shows you how to floss properly contest.

The Guy Fieri just needs to crash on your couch for a couple weeks contest. 

The Rachael Ray hosts your Carlos viewing party contest. 

The Anthony Bourdain crashes your sister's wedding contest. 

Feel free to add you own contests in the comments, if it helps to pass the time on what is most certainly another Guiteau Monday. 

Luckily, Dusty does. 

Modernist Cuisine (slight return) or, two things Americans hate

A bit of further reflection on the Modernist Cuisine kerfuffle suggested two angles that the Cod had overlooked. There are two things Americans hate, it turns out. The larger conversation, which is animated, is about the cost. A commenter "Larry" left this comment both at Eater and on an earlier post here:  

The emperor parades his new clothes. Probably the most self centered epic of our modern times. Wall street was revealed to be greedy and excessive beyond America's wildest dreams. Meanwhile in no where town this guy was working on a cookbook to match. Just a little late getting it out. You know what most Americans want? The want to be able to afford to buy food. They want be able to eat everyday. No one wants a $625.00 cook book filled with equipment and ingredients that are completely out of touch with main stream America.

Meanwhile, Myhrvold's running partner, Paul Allen, has bought himself the Portland Trailblazers, the Seattle Seahawks, and a yacht bid enough for them both to play on. He seems to get less flak than Myhrvold, b/c he's spending his money on yachts and pro sports franchises, like a tycoon should! Conclusion: Americans hate books. More preciseley, Americans hate books that are not produced as fungible commodities, like soap and dental floss. Modernist Cuisine makes a gesture to the age when authors sought patrons, rather than a market,* with the wrinkle that Myhrvold is his own patron.** It says something that cutting a bunch of pots and pans in half in the service of your six volume cookbook that comes in its own Lucite case is more vulgar than, say, a Mercedes 6x6 truck luxed up for wolfhunting is not.

Besides books, the other thing Americans hate is postmodernism. If you hated "molecular gastronomy," popular, but misleading, and wanted a term for the kind of cooking that has happened since Nouvelle and New International, the kind of stuff that Adria and Achatz do, "postmodern cuisine" seems obvious. It has the advantage of being roughly contemporaneous with other art forms, and may, indeed, capture something of the paradigm shift between a cook like Thomas Keller and a cook like Grant Achatz. But "postmodern," with the possible exception of architecture in Miami for a little while in the 1980s, is a thing that people know they don't want. So, we are stuck with "modernist cuisine" which will likely chase "molecular gastronomy" as the term used by people who like this sort of cooking. Being able to buy a word in the dictionary may not be a sexy as a yacht, but it's sexier than a football team coached by Pete Carroll.  

*Ironically, it looks like $625 is a price point where you can sell some cookbooks. (Amazon is sold out.) It's definitely a status symbol, and if you got a Big Green Egg last year, you might the kind of person who would skimp and save and maybe even skip that meal at Per Se you've been planning, so's you can be the first attorney on your block w/ this jawn. 

**Is a return to a patronage system the next step in the corporatization of higher education? Would the Koch brothers be less trouble if they controlled a university press instead of a state legislature?