Shrink in the Kitchen

A friend from NYC writes that her husband feels as if she came into the marriage with, “A lot of baggage.”   Makes sense: No baggage, no voyage.  Plenty of people never leave home.

I mention this by way of saying that many of the world’s great chefs have a lot of baggage, too.  Lucky us, that they left home.  Found new cuisines, new flavors, new techniques, new ways of seeing and feeling and, indeed, expressing love.

I think of an interview I did with Jean Georges about his initial arrival  in Thailand: “I made the taxi driver stop at least eight times on the way to the hotel just to taste the food at the markets we drove by.”

Or a conversation with Eric Ripert.  Why he was traveling to Scandinavia: “To explore–to taste new things.”

I loved Lutece, who didn’t, and it was unfortunate that Soltner did not leave his kitchen enough.

Nowadays, our great chefs are peripatetic, having left their homes where the horizon was visible at a hillock or colline: Boulud, Ducasse, Robuchon are a few who took to the road.

Certainly there are chefs who remained rooted and great depth is evident in their cooking.  And yet, the globalization of consciousness in cooking is a kind of revolt of the senses.