Culinary Assult

I don't enjoy eating out unless the experience is unique in some way and the food is not easy to reproduce at home. If traveling for work, I try to eat at least one meal from a grocery store salad bar. Certainly not the kind of person who would benefit from experiencing the top fifty restaurants in the world. It turns out not be such a great idea even for the experts and food connoisseurs. 

..Today the list is dominated by tasting-menu restaurants, and every year those menus seem to get longer and more unforgiving. There are more courses than any rational person would choose to eat, and more tastes of more wines than anyone can possibly remember the next day. The spiraling, metastasizing length of these meals seems designed to convince you that there’s just no way a mere 10 or 15 courses could contain all the genius in the kitchen.

Food does not have to be about genius. Offering abundant comfort along with a small element of surprise is so much better. The meals I have enjoyed the most have looked deceptively simple but the mastery would be impossible to replicate. There was a vegetable, pork and white bean soup I had in a village once that I will never forget. The chef told me it was her Hungarian grandma's recipe that she had carried with her to Italy and made it faithfully every afternoon. It was the most popular dish and people returned for it. Her other dishes were excellent but her soul was in that soup. She might not have a been a genius chef but she made memorable meals every day.