The Japanese Origins of Modern Fine Dining
eater.com
eater.com
An audience can pretty easily grasp an account of the right grower/forager/fisher supply chains that produce really nice ingredients, and they're fun to write and read about too. And being able to discuss a dish as a sum of constituent parts (how many "nice" menus these days describe dishes as just a list of ingredients, one of which are unexpected?) makes the task even clearer. The built in diversity and, sometimes, narrative of a tasting menu also helps.
Compare this to the difficulty of explaining why a single curry or mole tastes good, where it's hard not to fall back on hand-waving terms like "complex", or "haunting" or something. These dishes are, at least to me, far harder to pick apart and analyze in a convincing way, and that sort of analysis seems necessary to justify "fine dining", from what I can tell. Last I checked this was reflected in the allocation of Michelin stars, for which there are close to zero Indian, African, or Mexican (to name a few huge cuisines) last I checked, (though I think Mexico may have made some headway recently.)
I've had fine-dining Mexican in other cities, and I'm not surprised that it's hard to find Michelin-starred Mexican establishments. I'd describe the fine dining Mexican I've had elsewhere as overpriced garbage, and I personally think that is being generous. One of my friends brought me to a fine-dining Mexican place in NYC that was so obviously massacred for American tastes that I literally could burst out laughing merely by thinking about it for a month afterwards.
I think you are on to something though -- the 'bad' Mexican I've had is always fussed with too much, whereas Mexican I'd generally describe Mexican food as pretty straightforward. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case across the board. I think the places that fuss with food too much stay in business because there is a certain segment of the population that judges value based on complexity and 'moreness'. That measure is kind of backwards in the same way that measuring productivity of a developer solely by lines of code written is backwards. The best code is often succinct.
Lol, there's a huge Chinese population here, and Chinese restaurants only have Chinese cooks... And it's mostly Chinese who go to them.
French fine dining comes from the aristocratic courts of Europe, and if you go to one of the old temples of gastronomy in France, it's easier to see the influence. You start with hors d'œuvres, then move to entrées (appetizers), then typically you'll have fish and/or meats, often cooked on the bone then carved tableside. Then you move on to cheese/dessert carts. That's fine dining.
Anyhow, the more modern style of many plated courses is largely a result of the wave of fine dining that came out of Spain, where chefs started serving many tapas in succession. And when the Spanish and French influences mixed, voilà, you have where we are today.
However that's not to say there's nothing similar in other cultures. Kaiseki is of course similar (however also differs in many ways) to Western fine dining. Dim Sum is quite similar to tapas, yet different. Sushi is also similar to tapas in many ways.
Anyhow, while there are similarities between lots of cultures' dining styles, the origin of Western fine dining is without a doubt French fine dining + Spanish tapas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mhAPrBddfM
I learned that adding truffle will make anything better, and that you can make ice cream from anything.
Can't deny that's the dominant narrative and for the scope of the article, totally appropriate, but leaves out the answer to "why France?"
In the 1600s, Marie de' Medici shows up and, (allegedly) appalled by the local cuisine, sends for her Italian cook. Since her son was Louis XIII, that set the standard. Which makes it mystifying that Italian haute cuisine has been pretty much absent on the stage. It's not like you can't get a great meal there!
Italy is steeped in a good tradition that is its own thing. Haute cusine exists there. Look no further than Osteria Francescana. That caused an outrage in the Italian press when opened but is now universally agreed upon that its one of the worlds best restaurants with progressive Italian cooking. A revolution of a restaurant to a place resistant to change from tradition.
Although I love fancy restaurants I prefer the warm, family style approach to food you see throughout Italy.
Which is why Spain is my favorite food place. A great acceptance of super experimental food with a love for the traditional regional cuisine. It's such an open minded but authentic and true to itself good culture.
There have been avantgarde cooks in Italy for decades, e.g. the "cyber egg" from Scabin dates to the '90s, and the "raviolo aperto" or "fish dripping" from Marchesi are from the '80s I think.
As an italian, the only time I remember real outrage about cooking, is when a tv-famous chef mentioned he puts garlic in the amatriciana, but I've been out of the country for a while.
EDIT: I correct myself, seems the "fish dripping" is from 2005.
Was it sensationalizing it? I'm not sure.
Caterina.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_de'_Medici
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_de'_Medici#Culinary_...
And it was earlier, in the 1500's, but is largely a myth, the reality is that there was a continuous exchange between Italy and France in that period.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fine+dining&ye...
If you've got specific evidence of a strong tradition of eating out at fine-service restaurants, I'd be interested. "Coulda been different" doesn't carry a whole lot of weight. Coulda not been different as well.
Investigations of this sort are somewhat fraught as language and tastes (both fashion and gastronomical) change. But this rather matches my own general awareness.
I've run this on a number of concepts -- "democracy", "rugged individualism", various brand-name liquors, a whole slew of more recent political trends and concepts ("school prayer", "right to life" "anti-abortion", "creationism", "gun rights", etc. -- most are quite surprisingly recent), and more.
The most interesting finds to me are concepts which are generally treated as essentially eternal which are not. There are also concepts which I'd have thought more recent, which turn out to be long-lived. In general, though, there's a sharp inflection point where these concepts emerge or break out.
There were establishments that look close to the pictures if one searches the usual search engines, but I observed most food was eaten in the home, or packed in lunch boxes.
Kaiseki ryori is not 'common food' (a good kaiseki meal in a major city is easily 30-50,000 JPY or more) so what the article is writing about and what the average Japanese meal is are two very different things.
This article is backward to me. I’ve lived in New York and Japan long enough to know that the best food in NYC is average in Japan. NYC is stuck on a weird old-fashioned idea that French cuisine is the pinnacle of dining out. I’ll take any 4+ Tabelog rated kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto over Le Bernardin or any other Michelin-rated celebrity chef vanity room every single time.
Not sure what you mean (as a former Tokyo, Paris and New York denizen myself). If you mean midrange and daily meals are better in Tokyo I'd tend to agree, though lukewarmly. Fast food? No way, a greasy katsu is as bad as a crummy slice of pizza,
But for the high end experiences described in this article (typically €1200/$1500/¥20,000 per person -- though Manresa is cheaper!) I'd say country has little to do with it. Though I find those experiences excessively fussy. If I'm going to spend five hours on a meal I'd rather the food and environment fade into the background so I can enjoy the company.
The thing NYC has going for it is variety. But overall, I still prefer Japanese food.
It seems odd to deem the entire culinary culture of an international metropolis as being worth less than the mediocre fare of a country that puts corn and mayonnaise on pizza.
I'm not saying the best food in Japan isn't the best food in the world, but Japan's average is in no way better than the best in NYC. That's just silly.
That's a pretty bold and inaccurate brush you painted on Japanese cuisine. Yes western cuisine in Japan isn't that great, but who's eating western food in Japan? Funny you mention mayonnaise also because white Americans are stereotyped with eating mayonnaise sandwiches.
>Funny you mention mayonnaise also because white Americans are stereotyped with eating mayonnaise sandwiches.
I'm not even going to pretend that I didn't grow up eating fried spam sandwiches with mayonnaise and government cheese, on white bread no less. But that's neither here nor there.
In the US I essentially have a severe discoverability problem - there is great food, but you have to really hunt for it and do research to find it - sites like yelp are no help to me at all, a 5 star rating in the US translates to about a 2 star in Japan on tabelog, i.e. there's not enough resolution. Btw. in Europe the problem is usually the same, so that's not purely an American problem, more like Japan being an exception. There you can condidently walk into any place and get great food with about 70% success rate, and the other 30% is usually still good enough to not bother or even endanger you. A 3 star rating is standard, everything above promises greatness. Also, the accuracy with which Japanese can replicate (and often improve ok) Western food is surprising.
Tokyo is better if you have 2 weeks. NYC is better if you have a year. At least today.
What is missing is the more exotic stuff. Latin American, Middle Eastern and African cuisines are underrepresented compared to Western megacities.
But yeah I think you're touching on my point which is there's just much more breadth in NYC.
From my perspective, I think Japanese people would be impressed by the very, very top restaurants in NY. After all, Masaharu Morimoto (Iron Chef Japan -- as people were talking about Iron Chef...) was head chef at Nobu in Manhattan.
Having said that, restaurants in Japan (especially izakayas) have shockingly good food -- even (especially?) out in the countryside. It's pretty hard for me to think of a (non Michelin star) restaurant in a major North American city that has food as good as the local izakaya in my town (admittedly it is famous in the area). It would cost me a month's salary to eat the same quality of food in a fancy restaurant in the west. But there are factory workers who eat (and mostly drink...) there every day, without going broke.
I think that's probably true of a lot countries, though. I mean, is there a paella restaurant in Valencia that will not blow your mind? Or if you walk into any hole in the wall in Marseille, of course you are expecting one of the best seafood experiences of your life. Maltashen and sauerkraut in any random inn in Bavaria; Fish and chips in an authentic "chippy" on the coast of the UK. And let's face it: coal fired (don't hate me, gas lovers!) pizza shop in Manhattan.
I'll be honest, I don't think this is much to do with Japan. I think its more to do with the move towards glizty chain restaurants with mediocre food - dumbed down both for the audience and the preparers. To open a viable restaurant these days you need $2 million in capital and the risks are enormous. Especially in big centres like NY, London, etc, the costs of running a restaurant are so huge that you can't afford to run just a ridiculously good local pub, filled with local cuisine.
Why are there so many great izakayas and restaurants in Tokyo and (especially) Osaka, then? Because they are 3-4 generations old and the children of the owners are expected to (and groomed to) take over the shop. The shop is the entire life of a family for multiple generations -- no franchises, no sunny holidays in Okinawa, no merchandising, no fancy-pants buildings. Just making amazing yakitori (or whatever) every single day from the time you are 18 until you die. You are a fixture in your community and the people who live and work in that community love you. They visit you for dinner, for special occasions, or even just to chat. If the shop closes down, people practically have a funeral for it.
I think modern day western culture frowns on this kind of life. While I can understand that perspective, it's one the things I like about living in rural Japan. Like I said, though, I don't think it's just Japan. It exists everywhere in every culture -- it's just more obvious in some places than others.
I’ve eaten in so many “Emperor has no clothes” michelin-starred restaurants at this point that I would pass for something truly brilliant but not hyped at all. For example, udon at Kendon in Fushimi Inari, or tanmen at New Tamaya in Nagoya, hanbagu from Tsumugi Kitchen in Nagoya, gyuniku from Kuroushi in Handa, or even Italian from Pepe Rosso in Sancha, Tokyo. These places will melt your brain and I doubt any of them rates above 4 on Tabelog.
In Japan, you have to go out of your way to eat bad food and get bad service. In New York, it’s an effort to find both good food and passing service, even in the Michelin ranks.
I’ll throw a bone to NYC: Marc Forgione has a damn good restaurant in Tribeca, and Sole di Capri (also Tribeca) is amazing and under the radar.
That sounds amazing, and very vaguely like Mexican food.
There's no reason to believe that we in America have the final word on what pizza ought to be.
You might have forgotten an /s there at the end. Regards from Italy.
It turns out some simple, wholesome curry really does the trick.
Japanese or Indian curry? :) I was reading about Japanese cuisine recently, and saw that they have some dishes they call curry. But IIRC it was somewhat different from Indian "curries" [1], which are again very different from what passes for "curry" in the West (generally, though I'm sure there are places that do not use that term generically like that).
[1] There is no such thing as an Indian "curry", though many Westerners seem to think so (being misinformed by whoever, from West or East). It is an umbrella term that means a variety of dishes that are usually somewhat wet or with gravy, that is the only common point. Other than that, a curry can contain anything, be hot or not, veg or non-veg, etc.
Update: Checked the Wikipedia entry for curry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry
That article says something a bit different from what I said above, i.e. that "Curry was adopted and anglicised from the Tamil word kari meaning "sauce", which is usually understood to mean vegetables and/or meat cooked with spices with or without a gravy."
So the article emphasizes the spices, rather than the gravy, as I did. Could be. But the biggest thing to understand about India is that a lot of words / terms (not just in the area of food) are used quite loosely and with sometimes widely different meanings.
Very weird at first for a Westerner to see vegetarian food described as having a gravy!
How is this weird or old fashioned? French food is by far my favorite.
When I have French eating out, it's more likely to be a bistro-style restaurant. (Of course, that's partly because I rarely have really high-end meals in restaurants.
We're probably splitting hairs at this point though. Once you go beyond classic French and bistro food (which do tend to have a fairly specific repertoire), the lines between where French ends and modern European or American begins gets pretty blurry.
The headline doesn't really deliver.