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By Wyatt Myers

culinaRyaRTToday’s master chefs have elevated a craft into an art form that

engages the mind while pleasing the palate.

Asolutery ipsum with raspberry sorbet and whipped tart.

BY ABEL DELGADO

Anne-Sophie Pic’s Bluefin Tuna Marinated and Marbled in Colonnata Bacon and Duck Foie Gras

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Ferran Adrià’s Beetroot Ribbons with Vinegar Powder

Joel Robuchon‘s Amadai in Lily Bulb Broth

Dinner service at ElBulli

Anne-Sophie Pic’s Hen’s Egg and Asparagus

THE DEFINITION OF “ART” EXPANDED CONSIDERABLY IN THE 20TH CENTURY.

Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain was basically an inverted urinal that he signed “R.

Mutt” and submitted for an exhibition in 1917. This controversial piece heralded

the arrival of an array of works that forced us to reconsider what could be

considered art. In a general sense, cuisine hasn’t quite made the cut yet. When the prestigious

German art festival Documenta wanted to invite Spanish chef Ferran Adrià to participate,

many objected on the grounds that cuisine, however artfully created, could not be considered

art. Objections included its ephemeral quality—once you eat it, it’s gone—and the fact that

great cuisine is pretty common. As Tim Cebula, associate food editor of Cooking Light,

observes: “A perfectly cooked tranche of striped bass plated with an exquisitely balanced pink

grapefruit beurre blanc and garnished with chives chopped precisely as long as they are wide

only demonstrates expert craftsmanship. The dish might give the fortunate diner paroxysms

of pleasure, but it’s just really good cooking, nothing more.”

SO WHEN DOES A DISH BECOME ART?

According to Cebula, this occurs when virtuosic technique is combined with the purpose of

engaging the diner intellectually, not just pleasing them with a superb meal. “I believe that art

in any medium—e.g., writing, painting, dance—goes farther than reflecting the beauty or pain

of everyday life. It can also challenge us to question our conceptions. This criterion is essential

in identifying and understanding culinary artistry,” says Cebula. Because of this criterion,

explains Cebula, “The culinary artist will take more chances on flavor pairings and cooking

techniques. His presentation will not simply be elegant. The plate may bewilder, astound,

shock, amuse or even insult you.”

CULINARY ART MAY HAVE STARTED WITH THE WORLD’S BEST CHEF.

Ferran Adrià, regarded by many as the top chef on the planet, helms elBulli, a restaurant in

the small town of Roses—about two hours from Barcelona—on Spain’s Gold Coast. What has

distinguished Adrià from other chefs, explains Cebula, is that he “applied scientific methods

and techniques to cooking. He broke dramatically from the classic French culinary methods

and techniques that held sway over Western chefs for centuries.” While Adrià is best known

for using chemicals to create flavored foams, his work is not about fancy gimmicks. He truly

wants to change the way that diners experience food and dining.

“I think he sees a carrot and thinks, ‘How can I recreate that carrot in a different way?’

And so he uses liquid nitrogen to create some kind of effect with it. He wants you to have the

essence of an ingredient but maybe in a form or in a texture that you would never expect to

experience that way,” says Kate Krader, senior editor of Food & Wine magazine.

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Grant Achatz’s Chewy Grape

Joel Robuchon‘s Daurade Fish with Citronella Cream

Ferran Adriá’s Piña Colada, the

Disappearing Barbapapa

Anne-Sophie Pic finishing

a dish

Anne-Sophie Pic’s Pan-Roasted Duck Foie Gras with Candied

Cherries Flavored with Galangal and Mildly Spicy Jus

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A dish that exemplifies this approach is Adrià’s olive sphere. While it looks like a large

green olive, the outside is a casing and when a diner bites into it, they’ll taste a perfect olive

puree created with sodium alginate. The center, explains Krader “is the essence of an olive.”

As such, a diner discovers a whole new way to experience the flavor of an olive. “What Adrià

teaches you,” says Krader, “is not to necessarily trust your eyes. You have to really experience

food with all of your senses.”

Because of this devotion to innovation, elBulli is only open 6 months a year. The other 6

months it’s closed while Adrià and his team work on the new menu. Despite its short season,

Restaurant magazine has ranked elBulli as the number one restaurant in the world for the past

three years in a row.

THE NUMBER TWO RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD IS THE FAT DUCK.

Located in London, it’s owned by the largely self-taught Heston Blumenthal, who shares

Adrià’s adventuresome approach. Like Adrià, Blumenthal uses chemicals with certain dishes

to achieve his goals. He also looks to re-interpret flavors and dishes with an eye towards

challenging—and entertaining—the diners. An example of this would be his bacon and eggs

ice cream. Here, he took a classic flavor pairing and worked it into a completely unexpected

context: dessert. Krader says that Blumenthal manages to strike a balance between innovation

and delivering an unforgettable dining experience.

And unlike his contemporaries, he does this with whimsical touches. For instance, one

of the seafood dishes at The Fat Duck is served with a clam shell that contains an iPod nano

playing sounds of the sea. These playful touches once led an elderly woman to tell Blumenthal,

“I’m so thrilled to meet the real-life Willy Wonka.” It turns out that she was Liccy Dahl, widow of

Roald Dahl, who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

ADRIÀ ALSO INSPIRED GRANT ACHATZ, ONE OF AMERICA’S HOTTEST YOUNG CHEFS.

In fact, he visited elBulli in 2000 to get a firsthand look at Adrià at work. After working his way

through famed kitchens like those of Charlie Trotter and Thomas Keller, among others, Achatz

opened his own restaurant, Alinea, in Chicago in 2005. With no bar or lobby, Alinea seats just

60-odd guests who can choose between a 13- or a 25-course tasting menu.

Like Blumenthal and Adrià, Achatz is also focused on pushing culinary boundaries. One

example would be his Hot Potato, Cold Potato, which consists of a bald potato covered by

a black truffle and skewered on a steel pin along with Parmesan cheese, butter and chives.

Diners slip these ingredients into cold potato soup and enjoy a dish that’s two temperatures at

once. “Achatz is among the top culinary artists,” says Cebula, “providing a dining experience

that is by turns playful, confounding and enigmatic, yet almost always an unqualified success.”

Heston Blumenthal’s Radish Ravioli of Oyster

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CULINARY ART ISN’T ALWAYS AVANT-GARDE.

Just as any representational work by a Velázquez is as aesthetically dazzling as Pollock’s Blue

Poles, chefs produce exquisite culinary art with standard techniques that don’t require mind-

bending deconstructions of dishes.

For instance, Joel Robuchon, dubbed the “Manet of the Ovens” by food writer Andre Gayot,

is a remarkably talented chef who, quite simply, “is obsessed with making food fantastic,” says

Krader. He’s a perfectionist in choosing and utilizing ingredients, and this may well be the secret

to his famous mashed potatoes and quail stuffed with foie gras. “He has a way of taking simple

ingredients and making them super deluxe,” says Krader.

His compatriots Anne-Sophie Pic and Daniel Boulud have distinguished themselves with

their own artistic approaches. Pic is the first female chef in decades to win three Michelin stars

through her signature blends of savory and sweet, including sea bass with caramelized hazelnuts

and crème of chorizo heightened with a touch of peppermint. For his part, Boulud integrates

American and international foods into French-based dishes. But one of his most famous dishes

involved a reinvention of a classic American fast food: The DB Burger, which used short ribs

and foie gras, offering diners a decadent, rich version of an icon. And while Boulud didn’t use

chemically treated ingredients to produce this burger, in the end his food achieves the same goal

of more avant-garde culinary artists. Says Krader, “He’s challenging people’s expectations of

certain foods and dishes and presenting them in a totally new light.”

MARCEL DUCHAMP’S FOUNTAIN WAS NEVER EXHIBITED.

It was hidden away during the exhibition for which it was submitted. In fact, the original work

seems to have been thrown away because it was thought to be an old piece of junk. Duchamp

didn’t create Fountain with his hands, he just inverted an existing urinal and signed it. His goal

was to focus more on the intellectual interpretation of art rather than the physical crafting

involved in creating it.

And intellectual interpretation is precisely what separates the work of culinary artists from

that of talented chefs. They seek not only to provide well-executed dishes but also to engage

us intellectually so as to redefine our perceptions about food, flavors and dining itself. The

experience then transcends mere nourishment or being a component of a pleasant evening out

to become an aesthetic experience like a masterful painting, a groundbreaking novel or a deeply

resonant dance performance.

This may have been why ultimately Ferran Adrià was allowed to participate in Documenta.

He didn’t do a cooking demo like a TV chef, nor did the festival display his cuisine under glass.

Instead, during every day of the event, two attendees were selected to be flown to Spain to

personally experience Adrià’s artistry at elBulli.

Joel Robuchon’s Tomato Mille Feuille with Crab

Pichet Ong’s Foie Gras Taco

Ferran Adrià’s Nitro-Caipirinha with

Tarragon Concentrate

Grant Achatz’s Hot Potato, Cold Potato

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APPLYING KAIZEN TO CUISINEWhat drives all art, culinary or otherwise, is inspiration. Adrià,

Blumenthal and Achatz derive theirs from substances that can

impact a food’s flavor or a dish’s presentation. Boulud and

Robuchon are inspired by ingredients, seeking perfection through simplicity. Marc Ehrler, however,

is inspired by his surroundings. The driving force behind the work of the corporate chef of Loews

Hotels is kaizen, a Japanese philosophy focused on continual improvement. So when he sees a

dish or a food, he thinks less about what it is and more about what it could become. “In my mind

there’s always a constant evolution of the raw product, of the plate, of everything that we do in

food,” he explains.

Ehrler’s personal culinary evolution started where he was born: Antibes, located on the French

Riviera, an area famous for its Niçoise cuisine. His first major culinary influence was his father, who

would take Marc to the local markets and come back with a delicious seasonal ingredient. Then he

“would go into the kitchen and make magic happen,” says Marc. The magic wasn’t necessarily a

refined gourmet dish. In fact, one of the dishes that most impressed Marc was his father’s version

of chapon, a rock fish he seasoned with olive oil and herbs, then roasted in the oven. The dish was

simple but not simplistic, and it taught Marc his first lesson about kaizen as applied to everyday

ingredients.

Marc’s education deepened as he embarked on a culinary career that took him around the

world. Starting in his native Antibes by working at a seafood restaurant at age 16, Marc later

worked with luminaries like Alain Ducasse, Jacques Maximin, Andre Daguin and Boulud, then later

ran hotel restaurants in the Caribbean and Mexico and eventually opened another in Osaka, Japan.

Along the way, he has garnered a slew of accolades, including two AAA Five Diamond awards (for

two different restaurants) and being named a Master Chef of France.

These days, he applies his culinary mastery to overseeing restaurants at Loews Hotels all

over the U.S. and Canada. Wherever he goes, kaizen can often lead to inspiration for both him

and the younger chefs at Loews properties who work under him. “I like to surround myself with

creative people. It requires a lot more of an investment but the gain is tremendous. We do things

out of the ordinary, there is always something happening and everything is always questioned,

which leads us to a constant evolution,” he says. Most recently Marc was inspired by baby blocks,

which have led to “Straight Flavors and Variable Geometry,” a dessert idea involving foods with

different shapes and flavors, such as a red berry cube and a mango cone, all of which will have

separate textures—and possibly temperatures—at the center. This concept isn’t finalized but it

promises to be an inspired yet playful take on the dessert experience. Where will kaizen take Ehrler

next? “I have no idea. That’s why I’m still passionate about food and constantly learning…Like the

Japanese say, you have to take the old and build the future.”

Ferran Adrià’s Steamed Brioche of Mozzarella and False Tartufo of Veal Marrow with Caviar of Mozzarella and Rose Perfume

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