Smart Casual: The Transformation of Gourmet Restaurant Style in America by Alison Pearlman

Author:Alison Pearlman [Pearlman, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2013-04-15T07:00:00+00:00

13. “DB Burger” at DB Bistro Moderne, New York City, 2010. Photo by author.

making it pure

Given the stunning price tags sometimes associated with it, it’s easy to see why the deluxe approach has gotten the attention it has. Yet it’s not the dominant style of gourmandizing humble foods. More pervasive has been a sort of material and ethical purification of them. What I call the pure style has emphasized expressions of unadulterated nature and the chef’s true self.

To glorify the naturalness of their ingredients, chefs working in the purist style have made them seem relatively unrefined. They’ve maintained enough of the original structure of featured plants or animals for ready identification. They’ve then presented ingredients in loose, uncontrived arrangements. In some cases, they’ve offered dishes family style, on platters or in cooking vessels—likewise indicating minimal interference in the transfer of earthly bounty from chef to diner. When it comes to cooking methods, purists have emphasized the time-honored—roasting, braising, grilling—thereby stoking primitivistic ideals of hearth and fire.

When I traveled to the Bay Area, I visited the purist Zuni Café in San Francisco, where chef Judy Rodgers has run the kitchen to great acclaim since 1987. By the time it had won the James Beard Foundation award for Restaurant of the Year in 2003, Zuni had become especially famous for one dish that I believe epitomizes the pure style. So I made sure to order the “Chicken for Two Roasted in the Brick Oven; Warm Bread Salad with Scallions, Dried Currants, Red Mustard Greens, and Pine Nuts.”

The bird was served almost directly from the wood-burning oven, simply cut into legs, thighs, and breasts and dressed with the leafy bread salad. The rustic toss of bone-in chicken with rough-torn salad on a simple white plate gave the impression that nature and embers had done most of the work.

Pure cuisine often intimates this effect. But the look of straightforwardness can be deceptive. There are hidden reasons why Zuni’s roasted chicken may be the tastiest one could ever eat. The Zuni Café Cookbook (2002) reveals them. To prepare the dish, one must follow four full unillustrated pages of steps. Not only is the process lengthy; for best results, one needs uncommon tools. And before any actual cooking, one must salt the bird for one to three days; moreover, while Rodgers tries to convince readers they can reproduce the dish in their home ovens, even she has to admit they won’t be imparting the distinctive “smoky flavor” contributed by Zuni’s singular brick behemoth.36 Only the appearance of pure cuisine need be simple and spontaneous.

Even so, there’s been a range in chefs’ expressions of connection to nature. Some have invoked back-to-nature ideals in a dish’s service trappings, its situation within a menu, or its environment. I experienced all three while eating the “Chargrilled Lamb Burger with Feta, Cumin Mayo & Thrice Cooked Chips” at Manhattan chef April Bloomfield’s the Breslin. This has been a popular item on the menu since the place opened in 2009.37

To set the

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