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¨Considerable personal sacrifice for the benefit of others?¨ It´s his restaurant. You knew it coming in. He´s not an asshole, he cares about how his food taste

¨Considerable personal sacrifice for the benefit of others?¨ It´s his restaurant. You knew it coming in. He´s not an asshole, he cares about how his food tastes. If you´re not willing to accomodate his wishes, maybe make another considerable personal sacrifice and not go into his restaurant to be served in the way you want. Last I checked, his restaurants are always full. Why would he want your business?

analog31 10y ago
My take from the article was that he actually cares about how people experience the food that he makes. Still, vegetarian cooking is hard. Doing justice to vegetables within a restaurant workflow is hard. Very few restaurants can pull it off. If he simply feels that he can't do it justice, he's probably right. Those things might be regarded as the province of home cooking.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  Yep. In order to make a vegan dish that matches the complexity of a meat dish, you essentially have to recreate the entire life of an animal in a kitchen in a single day. You need to create the same complexity with heat, knife, and diversity of ingredients that the animal would've created over months and months of metabolism and grazing. It's extremely difficult, and there is a reason people prefer to just throw a piece of meat on the grill rather than risk their hand at plant-based cooking. An entire falafel sandwich begins to approach the complexity of a simple fried egg, but doesn't even quite get there. And a chicken can create an egg in a day. I say all of this lovingly, as a long time vegan. I have a lot of respect for animals.
  - Pamar 10y ago
    I am vegetarian (leaning mostly toward veganism) myself and this seems a bit of an overkill... Would you mind explain this a bit more or posting a link to some resource explaining this? I am curious.
    - erikpukinskis 10y ago
      Happy to explain more. Let me know what part seems unclear. An example: The cow chews grain. The vegan chef grinds it. The cow ferments plants and seeds in its stomach. The vegan chef ferments in her crock. The cow extracts sugars, fats and proteins, via her metabolism. The vegan chef uses presses and filters. The cow measures salt with her thirst, and integrates proteins and sugars in her mammaries. The vegan chef measures with a teaspoon and integrates ingredients in a blender. The cow tills seeds under the earth with her hoof. The vegan chef presses them into the garden with a finger. Meat and animal products are the output of the lives of animals. The inputs are plants. Vegan cooking is recreating this work in a consensual way.
      - Pamar 10y ago
        Yeah, ok - excepts that, first of all, non-vegan cooking has more or less the same steps. I.e. you can still decide that your steak needs some more salt, or spices, I never heard of people eating their beef "unflavoured" because the cow measured salt by thirst. So what triggered my curiosity was that you were presenting this like extra work needed for vegan dishes only. Maybe I misunderstood.
        erikpukinskis 10y ago
        Sure, you can do things to meat to make it taste better. But just applying heat and salt to a nice piece of meat gets you pretty close to the most delicious possible thing you could put in your mouth. Maybe I can put it this way: Meat starts at an 8, and you can add complexity to get it up to a 10. But a dry soybean starts at a 0. You can get it up to an 8 by doing a lot of vegan chef work. Or you can get it up to an 8 by letting an animal turn it into meat. My point is that someone has to do the work to get it to an 8. If it's not an animal, it's got to be the chef.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  I think a good takeaway is "within a restaurant workflow". Once you start allowing people to customize dishes, it throws service off and makes things exponentially harder to coordinate. "This dish is vegetarian, going to table 6, along with the gluten free entree." Removes the fungibility from the dishes - with the volumes he's doing, it's a lot easier to say "3 pastas ready" and not give special instructions to the line chefs.
  - analog31 10y ago
    I hadn't thought of that, but it's a good point. I was thinking more in terms of the vegetables being palatable by the time they reach the table. It's a rare restaurant that can pull it off.

analog31 10y ago

My take from the article was that he actually cares about how people experience the food that he makes. Still, vegetarian cooking is hard. Doing justice to vegetables within a restaurant workflow is hard. Very few restaurants can pull it off. If he simply feels that he can't do it justice, he's probably right. Those things might be regarded as the province of home cooking.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
Yep. In order to make a vegan dish that matches the complexity of a meat dish, you essentially have to recreate the entire life of an animal in a kitchen in a single day. You need to create the same complexity with heat, knife, and diversity of ingredients that the animal would've created over months and months of metabolism and grazing. It's extremely difficult, and there is a reason people prefer to just throw a piece of meat on the grill rather than risk their hand at plant-based cooking. An entire falafel sandwich begins to approach the complexity of a simple fried egg, but doesn't even quite get there. And a chicken can create an egg in a day. I say all of this lovingly, as a long time vegan. I have a lot of respect for animals.
- Pamar 10y ago
  I am vegetarian (leaning mostly toward veganism) myself and this seems a bit of an overkill... Would you mind explain this a bit more or posting a link to some resource explaining this? I am curious.
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    Happy to explain more. Let me know what part seems unclear. An example: The cow chews grain. The vegan chef grinds it. The cow ferments plants and seeds in its stomach. The vegan chef ferments in her crock. The cow extracts sugars, fats and proteins, via her metabolism. The vegan chef uses presses and filters. The cow measures salt with her thirst, and integrates proteins and sugars in her mammaries. The vegan chef measures with a teaspoon and integrates ingredients in a blender. The cow tills seeds under the earth with her hoof. The vegan chef presses them into the garden with a finger. Meat and animal products are the output of the lives of animals. The inputs are plants. Vegan cooking is recreating this work in a consensual way.
    - Pamar 10y ago
      Yeah, ok - excepts that, first of all, non-vegan cooking has more or less the same steps. I.e. you can still decide that your steak needs some more salt, or spices, I never heard of people eating their beef "unflavoured" because the cow measured salt by thirst. So what triggered my curiosity was that you were presenting this like extra work needed for vegan dishes only. Maybe I misunderstood.
      - erikpukinskis 10y ago
        Sure, you can do things to meat to make it taste better. But just applying heat and salt to a nice piece of meat gets you pretty close to the most delicious possible thing you could put in your mouth. Maybe I can put it this way: Meat starts at an 8, and you can add complexity to get it up to a 10. But a dry soybean starts at a 0. You can get it up to an 8 by doing a lot of vegan chef work. Or you can get it up to an 8 by letting an animal turn it into meat. My point is that someone has to do the work to get it to an 8. If it's not an animal, it's got to be the chef.
jimmywanger 10y ago
I think a good takeaway is "within a restaurant workflow". Once you start allowing people to customize dishes, it throws service off and makes things exponentially harder to coordinate. "This dish is vegetarian, going to table 6, along with the gluten free entree." Removes the fungibility from the dishes - with the volumes he's doing, it's a lot easier to say "3 pastas ready" and not give special instructions to the line chefs.
- analog31 10y ago
  I hadn't thought of that, but it's a good point. I was thinking more in terms of the vegetables being palatable by the time they reach the table. It's a rare restaurant that can pull it off.