THE ART OF THE PLATE From tongue-in-cheek optical illusions to avant-garde homages to abstract paintings, Bill Knott chronicles the table-top theatrics of the world’s most innovative chefs 74 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
PHOTOS THE HISTORY COLLECTION / ALAMY; OPPOSITE PAGE: MARIE-PIERRE-MOREL W hen does food become art? Never, according to some critics on both sides of the divide, who maintain that – however outré and avant-garde a chef ’s creation might be – restaurant dishes are meant to be eaten, not pored over for significance. They are no more works of art than Cézanne’s oranges, Dalí’s lobster or Warhol’s soup cans might be considered lunch. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Italian founder of Futurism, begged to disagree. His theories of dining – outlined in The Futurist Cookbook (1932) – were based on the notion that art and life should be completely intertwined, so that even the basic act of eating would hold artistic merit. Many of his ideas seem eerily prescient. Some dishes would merely be passed under diners’ noses (Ferran Adrià used to serve a box of smoke as one of the courses at El Bulli); a raft of scientific equipment – vacuum stills, electrolysers, centrifuges – would be used to prepare the food (similar gadgets are now de rigueur in any kitchen worth its fleur de sel); and perfumes would waft into the dining room to enhance the tasting experience, recalling Heston Blumenthal’s version of Black Forest gâteau, which arrived with a kirsch-filled atomiser. Marinetti’s recipes are as satirical as those in Mike Leigh’s film Life Is Sweet, in which Timothy Spall’s indomitable chef serves “liver in lager” and “saveloy with lychees”; perhaps exalting originality more highly than taste, the Futurist recipes include hare cooked in sparkling wine with cocoa, and trout stuffed with nuts, then wrapped in calves’ liver. What really upset Marinetti’s fellow Italians, however, were not his recipes (or indeed his espousal of fascism, racism and misogyny), but his hatred of pasta, which he thought made its consumers heavy, brutish and deluded. He proposed its abolition, to be replaced by patriotic and nutritious rice, but even diehard Futurists, it transpired, were reluctant to forego their bowls of linguine. Marinetti died in 1944, unaware that, 50 years later, some acolytes of molecular gastronomy would hail him as a prophet. Perhaps the most significant gastronomic movement of the 20th century was spearheaded by a group of French writers and chefs, among them Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Jean and Pierre Troisgros and Michel Guérard. The nouvelle cuisine, as it became known, redefined classic French cooking. Cooking times for meat, fish and vegetables were slashed, heavy sauces and marinades were abandoned, menus were shortened, while new techniques and equipment were embraced. At their Roanne restaurant, the Troisgros brothers’ saumon à l’oseille – barely cooked salmon with fresh sorrel, prepared in a revolutionary, Tefloncoated non-stick pan – became totemic of the movement, both for the freshness of its ingredients and the startling simplicity of its plating. Many of the chefs who embraced nouvelle cuisine had – in an echo of the Japonisme art movement a century earlier – visited Japan, where many elements of their new style of cooking were already present, especially in kaiseki, a highly seasonal form of cuisine served in numerous courses. While evidence is scant, it seems highly likely that Bocuse et al were at least › Marinetti believed that art and life should be completely intertwined, so that even the basic act of eating would hold artistic merit Left: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Italian founder of Futurism; opposite: Michel Troisgros’ lait fontana, with milk and truffle pesto, inspired by a torn painting by Argentine-Italian painter Lucio Fontana CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 75
