by comparison.
"Does the product taste good?" should probably be the chef's primary concern. To insist, to demand, that all food be regional, seasonal, directly connected to time and place can—in the case of some of the more fervent advocates—invite the kind of return-to-the-soil thinking evocative of the Khmer Rouge.
Not long ago, watching perhaps the greatest of the Blood chefs (a man with only the faintest and best-intentioned Crip tendencies), Thomas Keller, yanking fresh garlic and baby leeks out of the ground at a nearby farm in the Napa Valley, I felt a powerful, bittersweet frisson, a yearning for how things might, in the best of all possible worlds, be. On the other hand, standing in Tokyo's Tsukiji market, gaping at the daily spoils of Japan's relentless rape of the world's oceans, I thought: "Jesus! Look at all this incredible fish! Damn, that toro looks good! That monkfish liver is amazing! I want some." Fully conscious of the evil that men do in the name of food, I have a very hard time caring when confronted with an impeccably fresh piece of codfish.
So I guess I won't be stocking my restaurant's larder with exclusively Hudson Valley products anytime soon. When my customers want strawberries, I'll have them flown in from warmer climes. Though I use the New York foie gras for pan-seared, I will continue to order the French for terrine. My Arborio rice will come from Italy, my beans for cassoulet from Tarbes. Because they're better. When those cute little baby eels from Portugal are available again, I'll be ordering them; who cares if there'll be none left for the Portuguese? I will continue to occasionally drink caipirinhas with my sashimi at Sushi Samba in New York—and I'll try to not feel silly about it.
Perhaps the best thing chefs can do is to cook, whenever possible, with heart. Where poorer nations have a tradition of cooking well because they have to, we have choices. If we can take something lasting from the Blood cause, it is that it is always better to make the most of what's available, to cook well. If a chef's unique vision and identity is associated closely with a particular area or local culture, great. He's doing God's work. If there is good, local skate available, then there is no reason to fly in the endangered, mushy, and oft-frozen Chilean sea bass. A good chef imports an ingredient from the other side of the globe because it makes sense—not for its novelty value or its rarity. Why bother to make Mexican food in London if the end result is nothing but soulless sour-tasting caulking compound? Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating a fashionable ersatz dim-sum emporium and then bleed out all the happy sloppy informality that makes the dim-sum experience so much fun?
However horrifying it might be to see some young, fresh-out-of-culinary-school novice bombarding his guests with dende oil, Thai basil, yuzu, and chipotles, it's nice to know that others for whom those ingredients are more familiar can find them at will.
But I'm not giving up my white Italian truffles until the last one is gone. Show me a bootleg ortolan and I'm there, crunching bones with only a minimum of guilt. I'll just be sure to not overcook it.
VIVA MEXICO! VIVA ECUADOR!
let's be honest, let's be really, painfully honest: Who is cooking?
Who is the backbone of the American restaurant business? Whose sudden departure could shut down nearly every good restaurant, nightclub, and banquet facility in every major city in the country? Whose sweat and toil allows annoyingly well-known white-boy chefs like me to go around the country flogging books, appearing on TV, writing obnoxious magazine articles, and baiting their peers? Who, pound for pound, are the best French and Italian cooks in New York?
If you're a chef, manager, or owner, you know the answer: Mexicans. Ecuadorans. Salvadoran guys (and women) from south of the border, many of them with green cards they bought on Queens Boulevard for thirty
"Does the product taste good?" should probably be the chef's primary concern. To insist, to demand, that all food be regional, seasonal, directly connected to time and place can—in the case of some of the more fervent advocates—invite the kind of return-to-the-soil thinking evocative of the Khmer Rouge.
Not long ago, watching perhaps the greatest of the Blood chefs (a man with only the faintest and best-intentioned Crip tendencies), Thomas Keller, yanking fresh garlic and baby leeks out of the ground at a nearby farm in the Napa Valley, I felt a powerful, bittersweet frisson, a yearning for how things might, in the best of all possible worlds, be. On the other hand, standing in Tokyo's Tsukiji market, gaping at the daily spoils of Japan's relentless rape of the world's oceans, I thought: "Jesus! Look at all this incredible fish! Damn, that toro looks good! That monkfish liver is amazing! I want some." Fully conscious of the evil that men do in the name of food, I have a very hard time caring when confronted with an impeccably fresh piece of codfish.
So I guess I won't be stocking my restaurant's larder with exclusively Hudson Valley products anytime soon. When my customers want strawberries, I'll have them flown in from warmer climes. Though I use the New York foie gras for pan-seared, I will continue to order the French for terrine. My Arborio rice will come from Italy, my beans for cassoulet from Tarbes. Because they're better. When those cute little baby eels from Portugal are available again, I'll be ordering them; who cares if there'll be none left for the Portuguese? I will continue to occasionally drink caipirinhas with my sashimi at Sushi Samba in New York—and I'll try to not feel silly about it.
Perhaps the best thing chefs can do is to cook, whenever possible, with heart. Where poorer nations have a tradition of cooking well because they have to, we have choices. If we can take something lasting from the Blood cause, it is that it is always better to make the most of what's available, to cook well. If a chef's unique vision and identity is associated closely with a particular area or local culture, great. He's doing God's work. If there is good, local skate available, then there is no reason to fly in the endangered, mushy, and oft-frozen Chilean sea bass. A good chef imports an ingredient from the other side of the globe because it makes sense—not for its novelty value or its rarity. Why bother to make Mexican food in London if the end result is nothing but soulless sour-tasting caulking compound? Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating a fashionable ersatz dim-sum emporium and then bleed out all the happy sloppy informality that makes the dim-sum experience so much fun?
However horrifying it might be to see some young, fresh-out-of-culinary-school novice bombarding his guests with dende oil, Thai basil, yuzu, and chipotles, it's nice to know that others for whom those ingredients are more familiar can find them at will.
But I'm not giving up my white Italian truffles until the last one is gone. Show me a bootleg ortolan and I'm there, crunching bones with only a minimum of guilt. I'll just be sure to not overcook it.
VIVA MEXICO! VIVA ECUADOR!
let's be honest, let's be really, painfully honest: Who is cooking?
Who is the backbone of the American restaurant business? Whose sudden departure could shut down nearly every good restaurant, nightclub, and banquet facility in every major city in the country? Whose sweat and toil allows annoyingly well-known white-boy chefs like me to go around the country flogging books, appearing on TV, writing obnoxious magazine articles, and baiting their peers? Who, pound for pound, are the best French and Italian cooks in New York?
If you're a chef, manager, or owner, you know the answer: Mexicans. Ecuadorans. Salvadoran guys (and women) from south of the border, many of them with green cards they bought on Queens Boulevard for thirty
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