Modernist-Cuisine-Vol.-1-Small

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expand the business from its small community
(San Bernardino, California) to the world at large.
Similarly, Harland Sanders made fried chicken at
the gas station that he ran in Corbin, Kentucky
and the chicken soon became more popular than
the gasoline. He invented a special pressure fryer
to speed up the cooking (see page 2·120), and at
age 65 he took $105 from his Social Security check
to fund the development of his franchise business.
Dave Thomas, who would later start the
Wendy’s hamburger chain, took over four failing
Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Columbus,
Ohio, and turned them around by radically
simplifying the menu, an idea that soon swept the
budding industry. The era of fast food had begun.
Cuisine Goes Corporate
The concept of quick, ready-to-eat food had been
around for centuries. Many cultures had developed
street food that was sold from stands; it has long
been a staple at open-air markets and in cities.
What was different about the 1950s fast-food trend
is that the individual restaurants were controlled
by what soon became large corporations. This
corporate control afforded a certain assurance of
consistency and provided the resources for advertising,
so the new franchises could establish their
brands with consumers. This coincided with the
ability to advertise and market brands through
newspaper, radio, and later television.
Another important breakthrough that occurred
around the same time was the invention of the
microwave. In 1945, Percy Spencer, an engineer
working for Raytheon building radar sets, noticed
that a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted when
microwaves from the radar unit had heated it up
(see page 2·182). Raytheon immediately patented
the idea of a microwave cooking device and
created the first home microwave oven.
At first, the appliances were clumsy and extremely
expensive, but prices dropped and popularity
grew. In 1970, the company sold 40,000
microwave ovens, but by 1975 sales had increased
to 1 million ovens per year. The rise of the microwave
worked in concert with the new prepared
foods: the microwave was the ideal way to heat
them up. As more people bought microwave
ovens, supermarkets stocked more prepared foods
designed for them. Using a microwave was a way
to get a hot meal without really cooking.
These are just a few of the hundreds of transformations
that took place in the world of food
during the 20th century, providing convenience,
speed, and low price to millions of people. These
changes were profound and far-reaching. For the
first time in history, a large fraction of the things
people ate came from factories. This was true for
ready-to-consume foods and drinks, such as
Coca-Cola, Dannon yogurt, and Spam. In a
slightly different sense, it was also true for fast
foods, such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and
McDonald’s hamburgers. Fast foods may have
been heated or fried at the local franchise outlet,
but the restaurants were owned and operated by
large corporations, and ingredients were provided
by an industrial supply chain.
Saying that the food came from a factory
sounds bad to most food lovers. The rise of fast
food and convenience food (a.k.a. junk food) is
often blamed for the epidemic of obesity and other
diet-related health problems, as we discuss in
chapter 4 on Food and Health, page 211. This
industrialization is also blamed for a general
decline in the quality of the dining experience.
There is plenty of truth in these claims; the rise
of prepared food and fast food did lead to many
negative changes. But we must also recognize the
forces at work. People want food quickly and
cheaply. They prefer national brands they feel they
can trust. Manufacturing on a large scale allows
prices to be low, which further stimulates sales.
This combination of factors virtually guarantees
that large companies will grow to fill the need.
When one decries the evils of fast food and
manufactured food, an important question to ask
T HE HISTORY OF
Slow Food
is “Compared to what?” It would be wonderful if
everyone could afford to sit down to traditionally
cooked meals, but that simply isn’t practical for
many people. And what may be hard for a food
critic, foodie, or chef to understand is that some
people don’t even want a home-cooked meal.
Those of us who love food can scarcely understand
that, but empirically it is the case. The fast food
and convenience food industries exist because
people have voted with their pocketbooks and
their stomachs. It is both unrealistic and elitist not
to recognize this. Although it would be great to
offer the world better food choices, society has
collectively chosen the course we are on today.
When the fast-food revolution spilled over to
France, the home of grand culinary traditions, one
could easily predict there would be trouble, and at
first there was. McDonald’s was viewed as an
agent of American culinary imperialism. Things
came to a head in 1999, when a French farmer
destroyed a McDonald’s restaurant by driving his
tractor through it, as a protest against globalization
and the threat to traditional lifestyles that he
called “Coca-Colonization.”
The slow food movement began in
Italy in 1986, when Italian food writer
Carlo Petrini started an organization
called Arcigola to protest the opening
of a McDonald’s in Rome. Three years later, Arcigola became
Slow Food. The central idea of the movement was to
unite leftist politics and gastronomic pleasure. In 1989,
delegates from 15 countries endorsed the Slow Food Manifesto,
which proclaims that “suitable doses of guaranteed
sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment” are the
only way to save oneself from the frenzy of modern life.
In more practical terms, the Slow Food mission was to
preserve traditional foods and ecofriendly food-production
methods. “I always say a gastronome who isn’t an environmentalist
is just stupid, and I say an environmentalist who
isn’t a gastronome is just sad,” Petrini told The New York Times.
Slow Food came to the United States in 1998. Its philosophy
of “ecogastronomy” coincided with many of the principles
of New American cuisine, which
placed an emphasis on seasonal,
regional ingredients and sustainable
agriculture. Among Slow Food’s adherents
in the U.S. were authors Michael Pollan and Eric
Schlosser. Chef Alice Waters (see page 28) also felt an
immediate connection with Petrini’s values and has since
become one of the leading American figures in the organization.
Many other prominent chefs have participated in
Slow Food events or have been involved with the organization
at some level.
Critics of Slow Food see the movement as elitist and
exclusive, arguing that artisanal food products and organically
grown produce are out of reach economically for most
people and do nothing to solve America’s hunger problems.
By mid-2010, Slow Food claimed more than 100,000
members in 132 countries. It ran its own university and put
on major events around the world.
This early McDonald’s restaurant sign
boasts over 1 million people served. Today
the chain serves about 52 million people
every day. By March 2010, McDonald’s
had, since its founding, served an
estimated 245 billion meals.
22 VOLUME 1 · HISTORY AND FUNDAMENTALS
HISTORY 23