Monday, July 20, 2009

CAPE COD COMMERCIAL HOOK FISHERMAN'S ASSOCIATION: We never did get up a post about last week's Top Chef Masters, but there wasn't that much to say. No superstar chefs or ooh-I've-got-to-learn-this preparations (okay, maybe the Pissed-Off Prawns), and a finish that was tight but not terribly dramatic.

No, I want to talk about judge Jay Rayner, the irascible Tribesman from London, because I'm just about finished reading his The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of a Perfect Dinner and it is surely worthy of your summer reading time. From Vegas to Dubai to Tokyo, Paris and beyond, Rayner travels the world on an unlimited budget (and with a lot of freebies thrown in) to chase down its titular quest at three-star Michelin restaurants, one-on-one sushi sessions, a five-restaurant, one-night trek across Manhattan (Per Se, Le Bernadin, Jean-Georges, Eleven Madison Park, Bouley, and WD-50) and elsewhere. He's an entertaining, opinionated writer -- deeply opposed to what he sees as the cult of authenticity among many foodies, and with much to say about why we -- or, at least, he -- will spend so much on high-end dining:
The fact is I have no problem with the notion of spending large amounts of money on hugely expensive restaurant experiences. I make no apologies for this, even though our puritanical culture so often demands it. £200 ($400) a head for lunch? Yes, please. £50 ($100) for a starter? Seems fair enough to me. £75 ($150) for a main course? Bring it on. In France I would not need to explain myself. There, spending serious volumes of cash on dinner is a national spectator sport.

Elsewhere, behavior like this puts you in the same grim league as politicians and muggers. It’s regarded as an obscenity; an experiment in excess as filthy and reprehensible as snorting cocaine off the flattened bellies of supermodels or slaughtering white Bengal tigers to provide the fur trim for your panda-skin gloves.

There is one reason for this and one reason only: We need food to survive. Therefore it is a necessity, and to crash the plastic until it smolders on a necessity—one that some people don’t have enough of— is regarded as wrong. That is to completely misunderstand the point of restaurants and high- end gastronomy.... [N]obody goes to restaurants for nutritional reasons. Nobody eats hot smoked foie gras with caramelized onion purée to stave off rickets. They go for experiences, and what price a really top experience?...

What does that money buy you? Nothing but memories, and the right to say you were there. Serious gastronomy is no different. ... For the price of a dinner we get to experience life as a wealthy person, only without having to sell our souls as investment bankers, rape and pillage developing nations or exploit downtrodden. It doesn't matter how long it took you to save up (and how low down the wine list you have to shop). If you can pay the bill, you become one of them.
If you are or aspire to be one of them, you'll enjoy Rayner's book.

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