Food for aliens

It seems that the French are everywhere lately in the culinary world. Currently, there are several very famous French chefs and numerous others hoping to give French Gastronomy UNESCO humanity heritage status. In case you are unfamiliar with UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), they are—to put it simply—an organization intent on preserving things that need preserving. This refers to both physical objects such as monuments, buildings and other structures, and not-so-physical-things such as cultural events, festivals, dances, and songs. A tour guide in Spain once told me that the idea behind UNESCO is that in case aliens come down to visit the earth, we have a running list of things we need to show them. I guess the French want to feed our intergalactic visitors some beouf bourignon.

This past weekend I attended an interesting discussion held by FIAF (French Institute: Alliance Francaise). The topic was—of course—food. The discussion consisted of a French chef, a French artist and the American chef-with-French-roots Wylie Dufresne of the restaurant WD-50. The guests were there to discuss the future of food with a heavy emphasis on molecular gastronomy.

Molecular gastronomy is not a new idea by any stretch, but recently it has been getting a lot of attention. Mister Dufresne is by no means the first to dabble in molecular gastronomy and has nowhere near the fame status as Spain’s Ferran Adrian, but since his restaurant won a Michelin star he has been on the forefront of the scene in the States.

The assembly was brought together to discuss whether or no molecular gastronomy is here to stay, or it is just a fashionable fad that chefs use to get attention and gain publicity. One big argument against molecular gastronomy is pretty simple: why mess with something that tastes good? Dufrense and David Zuddas (the French chef) both agree that food is an ever-expanding art and as long as you don’t lose sight of food’s main purpose (to taste delicious) then what is wrong with a little experimentation. If a bagel with lox and cream cheese tastes good, then why not make bagel ice cream, roll it in poppy seeds, dry cream cheese to a peanut brittle consistency and serve it with salmon sashimi? These are exactly the kinds of question Dufrense asks and exactly the kind of food he creates.

There is a lot to be said about our correlation between visual references and taste references. If we close our eyes an eat a bagel and cream cheese, but then open them to see we were actually eating ice cream, will our outlook on food change? These playful recipes are what Dufrense, Zuddas and scores of other chefs are trying to introduce to their customers. Food can be playful, intelligent and delicious at the same time. Just because popcorn shrimp tastes good, does that mean we can’t make popcorn soup and garnish it with fried shrimp?


This little gem is a spoonful of Parmesan cheese, an orb of risotto with tomato and basil. The risotto was made traditionally, calcium was added and then blops of it were tossed into a pool of some sort of seaweed liquid which reacts with calcium and molds the risotto into light little globs. Pretty neat, eh?