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I think French Fries makes a good point here. And I don't think chowder is a bad example at all.
There are really two questions here. One is whether "molecular gastronomy" means something specific, and that's a fairly debatable point, by which I mean that there are complex arguments on both sides. I'm not, in my own opinion, competent to remark seriously on this one. The other would simply take the term as a general category of contemporary avant-garde cuisine. And in that context, deconstruction is one of many devices to achieve complex aesthetic ends.
What French Fries describes would not, by the usual reading, be deconstructive in a culinary sense. But it's a kind of avant-garde play. The point is to make the diner rethink what a Caesar salad is all about, and to do so in a way that is fun and interesting and novel. Novelty is crucial: if everyone starts serving Caesars that way, it becomes tedious very fast. That's the problem with avant-garde art in any medium.
For me, the problem of avant-garde cuisine as Adria or Redzepi do it (and that's very different) is to drive at the deepest heart of culinary norms: authenticity and simplicity. We have been trained, quite deeply in many cases, to believe that authentic, simple preparations are de facto superior. But what do these words mean?
Authentic: "authentic" Mexican, Indian, or Chinese cooking is nonsense from the get-go. Which region? What context? What period? What season? Consider, as an extreme example, high-end Japanese cuisine, most especially kaiseki. One can quite seriously argue that you cannot eat an authentic kaiseki meal outside Kyoto or its immediate surroundings. That's because being in Kyoto is part of the meal. So now here's me, some terrific chef (this is hypothetical -- I'm neither terrific nor a chef), and I present precisely the same food, in every respect, as some genius like Tanigawa Yoshimi would serve on precisely the same day and occasion, but I do it in Boston. What am I serving? Fraud? Allusion? What am I doing, exactly?
Simple: is jamon Iberico simple? In what sense? How about a great wine? Is it the number of ingredients, or the fact that these ingredients have been around X number of years, or what? Is it simpler to serve sourdough bread than an equally excellent yeast-leavened hearth bread? Is "simple" just a recapitulation of nostalgia? We've all read The Omnivore's Dilemma, or should have, so we all know that behind every steak or chop is a horrendously complicated food chain, natural or farmed or industrial or a mix. So what's "simple" about grilling a lamb chop?
For me, the aim of this kind of avant-garde cuisine should be to drive the diner's thoughts (and I hope the cook's too, but I'm not a pro) toward these kinds of questions, and to cast light on them in novel ways through the medium of the food itself. Do it enough times, in the same way, and it's just ideology; do it new and radical every time, wild and crazy and making us think every time, and it's a leap towards a language of food, in food, through food.
Last but not least: this is food as art. You can like that idea or hate it, think it's brilliant or pretentious or whatever, but in the end it's not susceptible to quite the same criteria as other kinds of cuisine. Not better, not worse, but a different object. And perhaps the greatest vote in favor of such attempts is precisely the fact that so many people, in good conscience and reasonable awareness, without being clueless or stupid or narrow, find the whole idea ludicrous. In a funny way, that's a good thing: it means something really is being challenged. But an aesthetic challenge is not necessarily something that requires submission: if you want to fight back, by rejecting the challenge (and not dismissing it, which is another thing entirely), on the basis of something else you've got in your own aesthetic quiver, you're part of the game and participating and doing something worth doing.
In short, if you hate this, even when it's done very well, I think it's incumbent on you to explain why. If you dislike it because you've seen it done as pretension, it's worthwhile to attack it as nonsense, explaining what you've seen. And then again, if you love it, it's equally important to explain yourself: why are you responding positively, and what makes you think this isn't nonsense? These are serious questions. And I think durangojo has a right to be skeptical --- that's what keeps this sort of art honest, in any medium.
There are really two questions here. One is whether "molecular gastronomy" means something specific, and that's a fairly debatable point, by which I mean that there are complex arguments on both sides. I'm not, in my own opinion, competent to remark seriously on this one. The other would simply take the term as a general category of contemporary avant-garde cuisine. And in that context, deconstruction is one of many devices to achieve complex aesthetic ends.
What French Fries describes would not, by the usual reading, be deconstructive in a culinary sense. But it's a kind of avant-garde play. The point is to make the diner rethink what a Caesar salad is all about, and to do so in a way that is fun and interesting and novel. Novelty is crucial: if everyone starts serving Caesars that way, it becomes tedious very fast. That's the problem with avant-garde art in any medium.
For me, the problem of avant-garde cuisine as Adria or Redzepi do it (and that's very different) is to drive at the deepest heart of culinary norms: authenticity and simplicity. We have been trained, quite deeply in many cases, to believe that authentic, simple preparations are de facto superior. But what do these words mean?
Authentic: "authentic" Mexican, Indian, or Chinese cooking is nonsense from the get-go. Which region? What context? What period? What season? Consider, as an extreme example, high-end Japanese cuisine, most especially kaiseki. One can quite seriously argue that you cannot eat an authentic kaiseki meal outside Kyoto or its immediate surroundings. That's because being in Kyoto is part of the meal. So now here's me, some terrific chef (this is hypothetical -- I'm neither terrific nor a chef), and I present precisely the same food, in every respect, as some genius like Tanigawa Yoshimi would serve on precisely the same day and occasion, but I do it in Boston. What am I serving? Fraud? Allusion? What am I doing, exactly?
Simple: is jamon Iberico simple? In what sense? How about a great wine? Is it the number of ingredients, or the fact that these ingredients have been around X number of years, or what? Is it simpler to serve sourdough bread than an equally excellent yeast-leavened hearth bread? Is "simple" just a recapitulation of nostalgia? We've all read The Omnivore's Dilemma, or should have, so we all know that behind every steak or chop is a horrendously complicated food chain, natural or farmed or industrial or a mix. So what's "simple" about grilling a lamb chop?
For me, the aim of this kind of avant-garde cuisine should be to drive the diner's thoughts (and I hope the cook's too, but I'm not a pro) toward these kinds of questions, and to cast light on them in novel ways through the medium of the food itself. Do it enough times, in the same way, and it's just ideology; do it new and radical every time, wild and crazy and making us think every time, and it's a leap towards a language of food, in food, through food.
Last but not least: this is food as art. You can like that idea or hate it, think it's brilliant or pretentious or whatever, but in the end it's not susceptible to quite the same criteria as other kinds of cuisine. Not better, not worse, but a different object. And perhaps the greatest vote in favor of such attempts is precisely the fact that so many people, in good conscience and reasonable awareness, without being clueless or stupid or narrow, find the whole idea ludicrous. In a funny way, that's a good thing: it means something really is being challenged. But an aesthetic challenge is not necessarily something that requires submission: if you want to fight back, by rejecting the challenge (and not dismissing it, which is another thing entirely), on the basis of something else you've got in your own aesthetic quiver, you're part of the game and participating and doing something worth doing.
In short, if you hate this, even when it's done very well, I think it's incumbent on you to explain why. If you dislike it because you've seen it done as pretension, it's worthwhile to attack it as nonsense, explaining what you've seen. And then again, if you love it, it's equally important to explain yourself: why are you responding positively, and what makes you think this isn't nonsense? These are serious questions. And I think durangojo has a right to be skeptical --- that's what keeps this sort of art honest, in any medium.
