A couple Mondays ago I was dinking around the restaurant trying my best to avoid more pressing issues. There was a stack of mail to be attended to. The books needed caught up. I had about 10 or so emails I was supposed to respond to. The problem was I had no motivation. I would have rather been at home, but I knew if I avoided all this stuff it would just be there Tuesday when I really didn’t have time to work on it. So prove it by yourself!
Just as I was getting ready to dive in and get things done, the phone rang. It was someone who has a reservation for New Years Eve calling to inquire about the menu. They were excited and just wanted to know what was going to be on it. It was just then I realized I had written it yet.
“Ahhhh, yea, the menu…” I said trying to stall for time all the while saying to myself: Think Patterson! Think! “I…ah…I…yea, I haven’t written it yet.”
“That’s OK,” she said back, “I’m sure what ever you decide on it’s going to be great. See you in a couple weeks.”
I have admit it is a nice realization to know there are 46 people coming in for dinner on New Years Eve and not a one of them know what the menu is going to be. They are just trusting it will be good. Now I had something I really wanted to do: Write the New Years Eve menu.
Like I’ve said before many times, menu writing has always been struggle for me. It can take me a couple hours to write a menu with seven courses. I used to consider this a weakness of mine, but over time I have begun to see my slow menu writing in a better light. Menu writing for me is much more than just jotting down a series of dishes. No, a menu, no matter the length, has to make sense to me. There has to be a thread of life that weaves itself through it. The last course has to be connected to the first course in someway. A menu is not a jumble of unrelated dishes. It has to have order and sense. Every dish on a menu has to justify itself before making it on the final draft. Menu writing is a form of meditation for me.
A few posts ago I spoke of my love of chess and how much I enjoy settling into a nice long game. It was during one of these games I finally understood why I have such a hard time writing menus quickly. It’s not that I lack creativity but it’s that I love the process of menu writing. One of my favorite chess players is the eccentric Ukrainian Grand Master Vassily Ivanchuk. He is forever getting into time trouble because it is said that he loves the game so much he spends so much time trying to make every game he plays, beautiful. I love the beauty of a well written menu. The poetry that goes into weaving each course with the other. I want to feel deeply each dish that finds its way onto a particular menu. I need to be able to identify with a dish before it makes it on. The reason I can’t set down and write a menu in 5 minutes is because for me there is a whole process going on; fertilization, gestation, birth. Menus are very personal to me. I simply cannot take them lightly.
Every menu has a theme. Sometimes it very obvious and I don’t have to look far, it just presents itself and screams, “HERE I AM!”. Other times the theme is quit subtle, perhaps I want to try to capture a color, or a moment. But whenever an event calls for a menu, I first will spend some time thinking about the theme. What do I want to say? Just because a dinner is going to feature wines from a local winery, doesn’t mean the theme is local wines. No, each winery has a thread in their wines that I have to find and then pull. These menus can take hours to put together. A wedding catering menu serving 200 guests has to take on the character of the bride and groom to be successful; which is why we don’t have preset menus and insist on sitting down with the bride and groom to discuss what they want, who they are; we have to get a feel for those we are going to cook for before we can even think of making a menu for them. They are the theme, oftentimes, in this case.
After I’ve identified the theme, the real work begins. First I have to ask myself how many courses. Once that is settled I begin the work of birthing the menu. I will set and set, mulling over the theme in my head until a scrap of something catches my attention. It could be an ingredient; a technique; an idea, or whatever. It might be abstract or quite concrete. But there is always a time when the anchor comes and I am able to pin the menu down to it. Often times this anchor comes in the form of one of the courses, around which I will build the rest of the menu. Each course must be written in such a way that it naturally follows the one before it and precedes the one after it. There has to be rhyme and reason. It could be a flavor profile that the two dishes share, or an idea, or an ingredient, and so on. It always seems to go easier once I have identified at least one course.
Through out the journey I find myself stopping along the way. Often times these little stops will find me researching or contemplating something that has caught my interest; an ingredient; an idea the theme brings up; revisiting a technique I used 1000′s of times. The time spent doing this can be substantial. I might spend a day just this. I really like these little side jaunts. They always serve to bring me closer to the menu; to embodying it. You see, I have a difficult time cooking a menu I don’t feel, and the time I spend at these little stops allow me to have a deeper understanding of the menu.
Every course has to be gently coaxed until it is as it should be. And when each course has taken it rightful place I can proudly serve the menu, knowing that as it is being served course by course it it taking on its own life, if only so briefly. It is the brevity of this life I connect with, and the reason I try so hard to make it shine as brightly as it can.
And it goes course by course. Sometimes a course comes quickly, sometimes I might change a dish up to 1o times before I’m happy with it. I don’t think anyone could tell I spend so much time writing each menu just by looking at it. I don’t spend that much time for them anyway. I spend however long it takes for my own good. In the end it is for me I write a menu. In the end I make sure I come out on the other side with a better understanding of life. Every menu is an exercise of discovery.