The art of food

(photo)

This weekend I watched the documentary El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, which follows the chefs at El Bulli for a year. [If you're not familiar with the restaurant El Bulli and its super-star chef, Ferran Adria, you might want to have a look here. But please note that it's not a working restaurant any more] They spend six months of the year in a test kitchen preparing new ideas for the upcoming season while the restaurant is closed, and then they integrate their new dishes into the menu over the following months. The movie has no narration and doesn't really tell a story. It's just a look into the process that ends up making this amazing avant-garde food. Two things struck me as I watched that remind me of the creative process and the visual arts that we're studying in class.

1. It's highly organized. The chefs aren't just throwing ingredients around and playing to see what happens. The first half of the movie is dominated by charts, photos, and binders. Lots of binders. They take an ingredient--sweet potatoes, for example--and then run an exhaustive system of tests and experiments. What happens when we cut it this way, and then fry it in oil? When we cut it that way, and dehydrate it? Or if we cut it this way, and vacuum seal it? And once they've run those tests, they start combining ingredients and all the combinations of techniques. Each test is noted in a database with a photo, and the database is printed, copied, and organized into binders. The only time in the movie when we see Adria get really angry and throw the kind of fit that chefs are known for? When one of the sous chefs has his hard drive die on him. But, explains the assistant, that's why we have it in binder and copied. We've lost nothing. I don't want papers! the executive chef yells, I don't need more paper! I want it on the computer! Even though I was already fairly familiar with El Bulli and the kind of revolutionary food they serve, I was still surprised to learn that in the six months when the restaurant is closed they don't actually create new dishes. They simply run all these tests and experiments to give them ideas when they actually open the restaurant and start creating dishes based on the ingredients available at the time.

2. The professional kitchen is run exactly like the old studio system. Ferran Adria is the celebrity chef who owns and runs the restaurant. It's his vision and his ethos the restaurant promotes. And yet, at least in the movie, we hardly ever see him cook. He tastes and organizes and gives feedback and talks on the phone a lot, but it's his four head and sous chefs who do most of the groundwork. And then, when the restaurant opens, they have about 40 interns come in to learn and do the day-to-day preparation. At one point Adria tells a group of apprentices that his job is the creative aspect, and that production is up to them. This is no different than the artist's workshop from medieval Europe up to the 19th century. The master gets the commissions, organizes the composition, and puts on the final and difficult touches. A workshop of journeymen and apprentices do the groundwork. This is true, even today, of many non-visual arts, like fashion. The notion that a single artist does all the work that bears his name is actually a fairly new and Romantic ideal. Andy Warhol and his Factory system was much more traditional than it may have seemed, as is the system several major artists use today where much of the basic work is done by underpaid or unpaid workers.

If you're interested in super-high-end food, check out El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, and also watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi.