Food as Art

I gave a lecture and demonstration at a local high school today about my journey into the making of Bistro Les Gras.  I must say I was very surprised at how progressive vocational programs have become.  This high school even had a restaurant on property, granted it was for faculty and students, but still a restaurant run by people that cannot drive yet.  It makes me think of what the industry will be like in a few years.  Exciting to think about.

I think the most interesting part of my lecture, at least for the high school students, was my demonstration about plating.  It was pretty basic stuff but I hope it was nice for them.  I attempted to show a progression of of the same dish through different styles of restaurants.  I showed how a simple and basic steak dish could be plated at a diner, a gastropub and at a place like ours.  All the same ingredients yet a drastically different feel to the finished dish.

At the end of the lecture, an instructor gave a closing thank you and during his closing he mentioned the art that exists in plating food.  Oddly, it really took me by surprise.  I was like a deer caught in the headlights.  I completely lost track of what I was doing and stumbled through my goodbyes.  Why did this catch me so off guard?  A while back, well before I was a decision maker in the kitchen I remember adamantly arguing that cooking is a craft in the "craft versus art" issue.  If you aren't familiar, there is (or was) an ongoing debate of sorts between chefs and other culinary professionals who believe that our job is solely a craft, a service if you will, and then there are those who believe that it is art.  I stood firm that we were craftsmen providing a service to our customers, nothing less and nothing more.  It has probably been five or six years since the "great debate" has even danced in my mind.

Things have changed.  Now that I am the one designing the dishes my perspective is different.  Seeing the path that my industry is heading has been influential.  Customers are no longer just customers, but a critics of sort and these critics demand beauty.  I now believe that food is art, absolutely.  My food as I cook it and as I plate it represents me.  It represents my thoughts, my emotion and my life at that moment.  If you look back at all the menus I have designed you can see my evolution from simply putting things on a plate to using the plate as a canvas, a carefully thought out arrangement of food.    That is my art, it may only be visible  through my eyes but it is there...