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My pet theory is that the rise in the "Japanese" style of fine dining -- which to me is characterized by pristine ingredients and a sort of atomized style, wher
by majos 9y ago
My pet theory is that the rise in the "Japanese" style of fine dining -- which to me is characterized by pristine ingredients and a sort of atomized style, where most dishes appear as a combination of elements -- is in part explained by a roughly concomitant growth in the weight of reviews in determining a restaurant's place in a hierarchy. Maybe I'm underrating the influence of professional reviews before the 60s, or overrating the influence of professional and amateur reviews now, but it does seem to me that "Japanese" style cooking is easier to justify intellectually, and for that reason more likely to earn the Michelin etc. plaudits that make these restaurants' names.
An audience can pretty easily grasp an account of the right grower/forager/fisher supply chains that produce really nice ingredients, and they're fun to write and read about too. And being able to discuss a dish as a sum of constituent parts (how many "nice" menus these days describe dishes as just a list of ingredients, one of which are unexpected?) makes the task even clearer. The built in diversity and, sometimes, narrative of a tasting menu also helps.
Compare this to the difficulty of explaining why a single curry or mole tastes good, where it's hard not to fall back on hand-waving terms like "complex", or "haunting" or something. These dishes are, at least to me, far harder to pick apart and analyze in a convincing way, and that sort of analysis seems necessary to justify "fine dining", from what I can tell. Last I checked this was reflected in the allocation of Michelin stars, for which there are close to zero Indian, African, or Mexican (to name a few huge cuisines) last I checked, (though I think Mexico may have made some headway recently.)
- justicezyx 9y agoAgreed, Chinese dish, on the other hand, always appears as stir fry, no matter how different things are actually made...
- Mikeb85 9y agoThat's ignoring things like Chinese BBQ and dim sum, which are about as far from stir fried as it's possible to get.
- justicezyx 9y agoThose 2 things are <1% of what we Chinese thought as "Chinese cooking".
- Mikeb85 9y agoFair, but that's a significant portion of Chinese cuisine in restaurants around here.
- justicezyx 9y agoExactly, right? And they are not Chinese cooking...
- Mikeb85 9y ago> And they are not Chinese cooking... Lol, there's a huge Chinese population here, and Chinese restaurants only have Chinese cooks... And it's mostly Chinese who go to them.
- meric 9y agoWell there's that Sichuan style fish in chilli oil.
- dyim 9y agoIf you're into that sort of thing (and you live in SF), I highly recommend Chili House in the Inner Richmond.
- mason55 9y agoFWIW Campton Place in SF is a two star Indian restaurant
- Declanomous 9y agoTopolobampo in Chicago is a Michelin starred restaurant by Rick Bayless. There is actually a ton of Mexican fine dining in Chicago, and tons of excellent standard-fare Mexican in Chicago. I've had fine-dining Mexican in other cities, and I'm not surprised that it's hard to find Michelin-starred Mexican establishments. I'd describe the fine dining Mexican I've had elsewhere as overpriced garbage, and I personally think that is being generous. One of my friends brought me to a fine-dining Mexican place in NYC that was so obviously massacred for American tastes that I literally could burst out laughing merely by thinking about it for a month afterwards. I think you are on to something though -- the 'bad' Mexican I've had is always fussed with too much, whereas Mexican I'd generally describe Mexican food as pretty straightforward. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case across the board. I think the places that fuss with food too much stay in business because there is a certain segment of the population that judges value based on complexity and 'moreness'. That measure is kind of backwards in the same way that measuring productivity of a developer solely by lines of code written is backwards. The best code is often succinct.