Modernist-Cuisine-Vol.-1-Small

THE MODERNIST REVOLUTION
Bits of a squid ink fluid gel float among dill
spheres and sprigs in an “everything
bagel” broth (above and next page). For
recipes, see page 4·130.
Inspired by a dish at Jacques Maximin’s
restaurant Chantecler, Ferran Adrià began
in 1985 to serve soups in an unusual style.
A shallow soup plate was set with food in
a manner that suggested it was a
complete dish. Then, just before the diner
would tuck in, the waiter would pour in a
soup or broth, drowning the food on the
plate, ruining its careful composition and
arrangement. What appeared to be a dish
in its own right was turned into a garnish
for the soup. The surprising twist was an
early experiment in challenging the
assumptions of the diner. Today you can
find this style of soup service at almost
any restaurant in the world. Photo courtesy
of Francesca Guillamet and elBulli.
As we have seen, the mid-1980s were the beginning
of the most radical revolution in cuisine that
the world has ever seen. Ferran Adrià began to
create a new, intellectually motivated cuisine at
elBulli. Harold McGee, later joined by Hervé This
and others, started a trend toward general appreciation
of the scientific basis for cooking. Researchers
looking to improve institutional and commercial
food developed new technology that expanded
the range of what is possible for chefs to achieve.
And a teenage Heston Blumenthal studied both
culinary classics and McGee’s book On Food and
Cooking in his quest to become a great chef.
These four stories each contributed to the
creation of what we call the Modernist revolution.
There are doubtless other tales that were also
important and whose threads are woven into the
fabric of Modernist cuisine as we know it today.
We have simplified and focused on these threads
to give a flavor of the early days of the new cuisine
and the factors that shaped it.
By the year 2000, the Modernist culinary
movement was well underway, and a new generations
of chefs started to join the revolution. Grant
Achatz, a talented young sous chef working for
Thomas Keller at The French Laundry (see page
68), yearned for something new. Keller arranged
for Achatz to do a stage at elBulli. As luck would
have it, his first night there coincided with the visit
of Wylie Dufresne, another talented young sous
chef who worked for another master of New
International cuisine, Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
Achatz and Dufresne were both enthralled with
what they found that night at elBulli (see page 38),
and the visit helped confirm that the new cuisine
would be their future.
We call this shift the Modernist revolution for
several very specific reasons. Art, architecture, and
other aspects of aesthetic culture went through just
such a revolution nearly 100 years ago. French
Impressionism was among the first wave of artistic
movements in what would become the Modernist
avant-garde. These movements changed painting,
sculpture, photography, architecture, typography,
and just about every other cultural discipline.
The Modernists of those movements received
that name because they were clearly, avidly, and
self-consciously seeking to replace old traditions
with something new. The world was changing in
profound ways. They felt the drumbeat of that
change and sought to channel it into their creative
endeavors. A break from the past was an explicit
part of their goal. The concept of an avant-garde
challenge to the old system was their method to
achieve the goal.
As we have discussed, the Modernist drumbeats
that shook most other cultural institutions
were not felt in the kitchen. The very people who
sought to remake the style of the modern world
somehow sat down to eat totally conventional
foodand thought nothing of doing so. It wasn’t
until nearly a century after the Impressionists held
their first salon that even a glimmer of revolution
occurred within cuisine.
That was when Nouvelle cuisine emerged, but
as we have seen, it was a limited, timid revolution
compared to what would happen next. This is not
to minimize it; Nouvelle was absolutely critical to
the development of all future cuisine, both in
France and in many other places. But the winds of
change brought by Nouvelle soon dissipated, and
most of the edifice of classical cuisine remained
intact. Innovations in flavors and ingredients
created delicious food, but the change was evolutionary
rather than revolutionary. The aesthetics
52 VOLUME 1 · HISTORY AND FUNDAMENTALS