 |
| MaxyM |
Michael Grisanti (of Casa Grisanti and other palaces of dandy dining in Louisville), addressing a bunch of editors and public relations people, tells us that “American cuisine is a distillation of ethnic cookery.” I like that: a not too improbable description which I’ll call—for want of a sillier term—“polyglutinous”: a kind of bread and Babel characterization of our culinary and cultural heritage.
Lawrence Forgione, executive chef of The River Café, Brooklyn pronounces it “as competitive as any cuisine in the world.” I think he means it’s as good as French and Chinese. Forgione, together with Paul Prudhomme, chef-owner of K-Paul’s, New Orleans, constitute today the unofficial north-south axis of American cuisine.
Prudhomme roots for Cajun purity, unearthing original recipes free from the adulterations of meddling chefs who thought they could fool around with them. You want pure Cajun, head for New Orleans and K-Paul’s.
Beard settles his audacious frame into an armchair and, between sips of bourbon, chats quietly, but authoritatively, about American cooking. And so it is we learn from him—in the 45 minutes of give and take with the press—that (ahem) “American cuisine, in the re-creation of regional cuisines (commendable as that may be), is not so impressive as innovation and creativity with available product.” That should give you a pretty good idea of what American cuisine and its definition is up against. Beard is, in effect, non-committal. But let’s be kind: let’s call his opinion an uncluttered oversimplification, an opinion as good as anyone else’s; and let’s admit that today, the idea of American cuisine is so vague, not even Beard can get a fix on it.
Defining American cuisine is like trying to define Reaganomics: we know it’s there, but nobody seems to know what the hell it is.
The current love affair with American cuisine I find somewhat infatuating and overblown, but that’s OK: you don’t christen a new culinary class without a lot of romance and fanfare.
.
Make no mistake, the rise and swell of American cuisine is one of the happiest trends to bubble up from restaurant kitchens ever since America crawled into the sack with nouvelle. Trouble is, unless we stand back and give it some breathing room, we risk suffocating it, adulterating it beyond recognition in much the same way all of those nutty chefs (you know who they are) transformed nouvelle into something insufferable by lacing sauces and garnishing dishes with essences of God only knows what, but mostly with kiwi, turnip, and raspberries.
We came so close to completely screwing it up that its avant garde—chefs in France and Switzerland hiding behind, yet at the same time coveting, their three stars from Michelin—thought for a moment, then discarded the thought, that the time was ripe to disassociate itself from merde Americain and return to the basics of country French.
The irony is that American cuisine wouldn’t be where it is today had America not first discovered (fell in love with?) nouvelle. If nothing else, chefs in America found out there was more to cooking than modifying ever so slightly recipes that had been around for years: they found out about vision and ingenuity; found they could experiment with compatible ingredients to arrive at new tastes, flavors, and textures, but only after studying and understanding fundamentals; learned there were stylish ways to plate and present foods—from appetizers to desserts—that enriched the dining experience, making food a joy to behold as well as to savor.
And so it was that while working with nouvelle that American chefs began to experiment with foods indigenous to the United States (let’s face it, if you’re planning to unleash a cuisine native to a culture, regardless of its diversity, it’s probably best to use sustainable products grown locally rather than imported from, say, Micronesia); and from that experimenting sprang a cuisine that, one of these days, will take its rightful place among the great cuisines of the world.
But not now; not for a while. American cuisine today—with few exceptions—is little more than fad, fad on the edge of greatness. What it lacks is direction and definition, structure and substance.
So, who will give it all of that? Well, maybe the Culinary Institute of America will. At least we’ll give them credit for trying. What the school’s president, Ferdinand Metz, together with his lively band of cheerful chefs, is developing, says Metz, is “An American cuisine curriculum that blends basics and theory into a concept the implementation of which is an actual public restaurant environment, The American Bounty. The curriculum,” he adds, “will change periodically to encourage the continued development and perpetuation of American cuisine.”
In “American Bounty” (August), we wrote that the opening of the restaurant at the C.I.A. “underscores the country’s growing enthusiasm for American food, and adds a new dimension to the training of America’s future chefs . . .The decision to make the new restaurant American was based on the school’s assessment of future needs. ‘There is a great interest in American food and nutrition; consequently, a growing demand for people trained in these specialties,’ says Metz, who was an early advocate of the belief that America has all the ingredients at hand for developing a super cuisine.”
Maybe Metz and company are on to something: to provide the direction, the restraint, the objectivity needed to allow American cuisine to evolve naturally.
There is, however, a real danger that American cuisine will become so influential internationally that the fine distinction that separates one great cuisine from another will blur. I have nightmares about walking into a quote/unquote American restaurant, its décor stunning in stars-and-stripes, shown to my table by a maitre d’ dressed like Mohandas Gandhi and dining on Brisket Linguine in Sweet and Sour Sauce.
