The Art is in the Spoonful

In defense of our taste buds and why culinary artistry doesn't need billionaires, projections, or a scriptwriter.

Credit: Bob Carlos Clarke

At the recent Convergence Festival symposium organized by Alchemist, the speakers wrestled with the question: Is gastronomy an art form?

I left the symposium with great interest, and my curiosity was sparked, having wrestled with that same question, deliberatively or not, for my entire culinary career. After a few weeks of reflection, I personally find the answer to be quite clear: of course it is.

I had the sense that something was off with the entire premise, but it took me a while to get there. Professor Anne-Claire Yemsi Paillissé went on stage with by far the most interesting talk of the day, presenting her ideas and studies on “Avant garde gastronomy”.

The hierarchy of the Senses

She put forward the problem created by the “troublemakers” of philosophy (Plato, Aristoteles, Kant) that had pushed taste and smell far down to the bottom of the Hierarchy of the Senses and that current “Avant-Garde”, performative, “holistic” cuisines were redeeming the wrongs done and bringing taste and smell back up the ladder to where they belong - at level with sight and hearing. See, the old buggers believed that taste, touch, and smell were almost animal senses. If storytelling, conversation, and the intellect are what made us human and set us apart from the animal kingdom, then speech, hearing, and sight are the tools we use to set us apart. In Western philosophy, that is the case, whereas in Eastern philosophy, it seems far more nuanced.

It started the tradition of separating the mind from the body, the intellect from the instincts. The sense of taste and smell were there to satisfy our desires and our needs, not to heighten our state of consciousness. The professor did not touch much on that, but in my mind, it is exactly between the two, in that tension, that the culinary arts have a special role to play. Where cooking can appeal to both mind and body, in a way that no other art form can.

I sensed the room scrolling their Insta-feeds at this point; the crowd of young chef students did, after all, choose a profession supposedly meant to spare them from lectures. But I have participated in hundreds of this type of cheffy TED Talk, and many seem to be a little unprepared, with chefs expecting to walk out and wing it, just like in a busy service. The format is made for lectures–no, the format IS a lecture–a professor has that format down, and this one had something to say about our industry that I found extremely fascinating. I was at the edge of my seat.

When Theatrics Overshadow Taste

She was referring to the “gastroturgy”, the dramaturgy and performance of restaurants like Alchemist and Ultraviolet, both well known for going well beyond the plate to create a culinary experience, as what really elevated cooking to an art form worthy of recognition and all the accolades. Chefs were performance actors, script writers, and directors of a show that can at times become intellectual and provoking–just like real art. This is where I start to disagree with the premise and where I think we have been asking the wrong questions all along.

The False Choice Between Mind and Body

We seem to have made the question of “is cooking an art form?” into a choice between artistic vision (the mind) and nourishment (the body). So much so that whoever is on the fringes completely denounces the opposite. The very creative seem to believe that there is no art in cooking steak and potatoes (wrong), and the traditionalists believe that challenging, provoking, and experimenting with foods is wrong, almost unethical, and the only purpose of food is to fill bellies, at best, while providing pleasure.

I find that the art of the chef is to insert the right amount of thought, creativity, ideas, visions, and even provocations in the vessel of a spoonful in just the right proportion. Balancing that tension and creating a unique and soon-digested piece of art. When the focus of the guest ends up being everywhere else, in the setting, the stage, the script, the storytelling, I find the experience to become a mere distraction from the bodily senses and on to the intellect. The same goes when spoon-feeding “provocative” art with supposedly ethical messaging, no pun intended. They seem to be off-balance conceptually.

The Instagram era of cooking

Today, high-end cooking serves as much as, if not even more, as a broadcasted experience (Instagram, social media, etc. - sight and intellect) as it does as a lived experience (presence, taste, smell, vision). That is a reality that we cannot escape, but while the professor seemed exhilarated by the movement of “holistic cuisine” championed by Alchemist, I am less of an optimist: When the greatest proponents of the culinary arts are qualified by the level of distraction and the bombardment of senses they propose, I believe we are losing something: The true culinary arts.

The greatest price is paid by the young talent out there who might come to believe that to achieve the opportunity of artistic expression, you must hire builders, scriptwriters, graphic designers, scientists, sound designers, and, more than anything, find a billionaire to sustain your vision. That is wrong. Very wrong. You need just a spoonful to make your mark.

Peter Lodahl, the opera singer who started off the symposium, coined it in one phrase: “The outside world sees me as an artist, but I see myself as a craftsman.”

Mastering the craft is how you master the art.

This piece comes from a talk I had with myself on YouTube, feel free to watch it here and subscribe to the channel if you want more.