4 ms·
From the thread (Nathan's comments). Seems like a real asshole: snip OK, so now I have to keep FG honest by relating two of his classic comments during the me
by d2 15y ago
From the thread (Nathan's comments). Seems like a real asshole:
snip
OK, so now I have to keep FG honest by relating two of his classic comments during the meal.
We were all mesmerized by the black truffle series. After the braised/raw endive dish (which arrive in transparent packages "en papillote"), there was a pause in the conversation. FG broke the silence with a profound observation "I think that the black truffle really helped that dish".
Reallly? The endive wasn't enough by itself? The rest of us didn't know whether to laugh, or quietly tell the server to stop pouring him wine.
But the classic of the whole evening is when we went back out on the terrace to have petit fours. Thierry Rataureau turnes to FG and says "So, Steven what do you think?" It was Thierry's first time at elBulli and he was contemplating the meal.
FG, who had noticed how little light there was on the terrace turned and said "I think I'm going to need flash".
That's the kind of deep culinary insight that we've all come to expect from him
A great time was had by all of it - it was a great group, and a great meal. It is also the end of a era, which made us all a bit sad, but also happy that we had been there to partake in it.
- wallflower 15y agoWhen I spent an hour reading (and salivating on) the whole thread, the context I got was Nathan ribbing his friend Steven A. Shaw a.k.a. "Fat Guy" by highlighting a few instances where he did not appear to be the fearless founder of one of the best food/cooking communities on the web. "Ferran Adria is going to ascend to the ultimate expression of the culinary arts: he's going to become a food blogger. Actually he's going to become more like Nathan M.: head of a kitchen lab and creator of dishes, without a restaurant." -FatGuy
- ecuzzillo 15y agoRelatedly, Myhrvold did actually make a really genuinely huge contribution to cuisine with his gigantic ubercookbook Modernist Cuisine, and so it makes me sad that he turns out to be a bloodsucking asshole by trade.
- tptacek 15y agoDidn't Myrhrvold have a spectacular amount of money prior to founding IV? "Complete T-Rex skeletons in my foyer" money? I don't like IV, but I feel like Myrhrvold probably does believe in what he's doing.
- georgemcbay 15y agoHe may actually believe he's doing the world a great service, but surely you don't believe that just because someone is fantastically wealthy relative to the average person means they automatically stop doing things for the money? At some point it becomes more like watching your Hacker News karma go up than it has to do with having a real impact in your life, but that doesn't mean the wealthy stop caring about it. In other words... well, sure Myrhvold is wealthy... but he's not Helú, Gates or Buffet wealthy. He's just a chump compared to those guys.
- ecuzzillo 15y agoYes, he was billionaire-ish from Microsoft, and I imagine he does believe in what he's doing, so I guess he's not intentionally a bloodsucking asshole, but I don't know that that makes it that much better.
- georgemcbay 15y agoHe's done a lot of great things in software as well, but that doesn't change the fact that his stance on patents is wrong and economically destructive.