Art for art's sake? Food for food's sake.

I’d like to get a little theoretical for a moment. I know, thus far, my posts have been light and recipe centered, focused on specific foods and how they immerge from my life. I do hope, however, that you’ve been able to pick up on my dirty little secret. While my tales are actual occurrences from my life as a not-as-young-as-most-of-my–classmates, culinary student living and loving in New York City, they are really about how I think food and life intertwine.

I read something disturbing on Saturday in a book by one of my, dare I say, idols in the culinary-lit world. Michael Ruhlman on page 13 of The Soul of a Chef says, “Poetry is an art form. Cooking is a craft. (Oh, I know how the foodie blowhards – and even a lot of chefs – love to talk about food as art! But I’m sorry, noodles spun into towers and designs on plates with different-colored sauces do not equal art, so don’t talk to me about food as art or chefs as artistes.)”

Well, certainly Mr. Ruhlman is correct, in a way. Plating is not art. It can be a pretty and a sometimes ingenious craft. Anyone who has ever eaten at Grant Achatz’s Alinea (or at his last gig Trio) can confirm that. If you don’t believe me, check out this wackiness: http://www.alinea-restaurant.com/pages/gallery/gallery_cuis.html

Art is not simply arranging things - paint, bits of clay, musical notes, or food - in a pattern pleasing to the eye. Art is how the arrangement and how the items themselves inspire thought, feeling, and even action. How do you like that all you art scholars worldwide?! I figured it out for you! While this may be a facile statement on the oh so complex subject of art, I think there’s something to it for our discussion here. The artistry of cooking, food, chefs, and grandma in her kitchen is not what the food is or even how it tastes, but what it can do to you. What could be more truly artistic than making something that with one glance, one whiff, one tiny taste can send your mind rushing back to October 28, 1984 when you in your red corduroy jumper walked hand-in-hand with your mom along delightfully muddy paths of the Apple Holler orchard in Bristol, Wisconsin. . .your hands sticky with the honeyed-tartness of Macintosh and Red Delicious picked, tasted, and bushelled? I’ve had an apple pie that could do that. What could in one eye and heart opening meal of impossibly pillowy gnocchi and decadently rich and tender osso bucco make you plan a week long trip that leads to a month sojourn, which leads to a new life in a new home with a new purpose? I’ve had a meal, which has made me come close to that, oh so close.

Chefs as artists: clearly not all of them are. Most cooks and chefs would never claim to be artists and would never want to be called such a dirty name. Some believe themselves to be, but really for all the time they spend arranging and all the time they don’t spend thinking, feeling, and remembering, they are really just painting Elvises on velvet. Maybe there aren’t even any chefs that are artists all the time, but there are certainly meals and dishes that are works of art. Some dishes can transport us not just to another place and time in our own past, but allow us to see a future we couldn’t fathom before we sat down at the table. If that’s not art, I sure as heck don’t know what is.