A couple Sundays ago my wife and I spent the evening at some friend’s house where they cooked dinner for us and four other people. I don’t get invited over to dinner very often. It’s something about being to intimated or some bullshit like that, but when I am it is always a treat for me. I truly love eating food made by passionate home cooks and I am often amazed at the skill level of many of these cooks. When I am eating dinner at someone else’s house I don’t spend time critiquing the food, not even to myself. It’s just a joy to finally have someone else cook for me.
So there we were sitting at the dinner table all adorned so tastefully. Our hosts announced they had four courses planned for us. I was getting excited, four courses? Cool. The first course was a carrot soup with a nice chiffonade of romaine lettuce. Soups are not as easy to make as one might think. There is a lot that can go wrong and you end up with a watery bowl of goo. Not that night; the soup was fantastic. What was really nice was they seasoned it correctly. It had salt! Also not something that happens often, even amongst professional chefs. It says a lot to me when a dish has the right amount of salt in it. It’s an art that is difficult to learn. The flavor of the soup was…wait for it…carrot! Yes, carrot. They made a carrot soup that tasted like carrot. Again, not something one often sees. I don’t know how many times I have tasted a dish that tastes nothing like what is should, but these guys pegged it. This was going to be a fine dinner.
OK, cool, the soup was good, but wouldn’t you know it, they managed to produce three more equally impressive courses. I truly believe amateur cooks are often much better then they realize and these two proved my point a little to well. When we hit the main course I had had enough. I was a bit peeved. Who do these guys think they are?! Cooking food this good. If word of this gets out, I’ll be out of a job. No home cook should be able to produce restaurant quality food. PERIOD. I had enough. I needed more wine to calm me down, which when Monday morning rolled around no longer sounded like such a good idea.
Dinner that Sunday evening got me to thinking: What makes a great chef? And as I’m typing this now I’m still thinking hard about it. What makes me any different than a passionate home cook? This is an existential question for me. I charge people to eat my food. What makes it any different than what they can cook at home? Of course there are matters of experience, technique, more refined palate, a practiced finesse that comes into play, but deep down I feel there is something more.
Every great chef, and I cannot think of an exception (Julia Child doesn’t count since she never ran a professional kitchen and never considered herself a chef), is always paired with a restaurant. Think about it, name a great chef, note I don’t say famous, and you automatically think of the restaurant he/she is affiliated with. So, does the restaurant make the chef or the chef the restaurant. I think it could be equally argued from both sides. The French Laundry will be forever linked to Chef Thomas Keller. It is a magnificent restaurant, but with out Chef Keller, I have to wonder if it would be what it is. On the other side of the coin is the famous Parisian restaurant, Taillevent, which opened in 1946 and has had many of Frances most renowned chefs command it’s stoves. While the restaurant has been amazing for 65 years, no one identifies one chef with it. In the case of Taillevent, it is the persona of the restaurant that comes through. So, what is it? The restaurant or the chef? I would say yes to both.
It seems to me that there is a symbiotic relationship going on between chef and restaurant. The chef, or in our case, chefs, pour their souls into the restaurant to the point where the restaurant takes on a life of it’s own and there after embodies both it’s life and the life of the chef(s). The greatness of the chef is found in the greatness of her/his restaurant. So I guess in the end, my question isn’t so much what makes a great chef but what makes a great restaurant? I think this is important because a great restaurant, by definition, has a great chef behind it’s stoves. But, I don’t think one can be a great chef without having a restaurant. So, it is the idea of “restaurant” that is the key to this whole question.
What makes a great restaurant? Honestly, I have no idea. I suspect it is a feeling of place. I suspect it is just something about the restaurant that rings authentic. That the restaurant just comes across as genuine. There is just “something” that makes the restaurant special. In my mind this specialness can only be derived organically; it can’t be forced. It has to come from the inner life of the those who make that restaurant home, not only those who may own the restaurant or work in it, but also from those who frequent it; and I think this is an important point to be made. The guest, in any great restaurant, has just as important role to play in it’s greatness as the food or atmosphere or whatever else may seem important. You!! You play a role. Which brings me to my final observation: Community.
A chef is a great chef because that chef creates community through his/her food using the restaurant as the medium. And I answer my own question. Chefs become great not because of fame, but because of the community that naturally grows up around the restaurant they inhabit. One of the definitions of community is, “practicing common ownership”. I can’t think of a better definition of restaurant than that one. A great restaurant is a place where everyone who comes has a common ownership. Where everyone is on equal grounds and of equal importance. A great chef is, therefore, one who creates that commonality with his/her food. Someone who brings a part of the world together in community. Someone whose job it is to build solidarity and cohesion among her/his neighbors through their craft. While I can never dismiss the skill and dedication it takes to cook great food day in and day out, I have to wonder if this doesn’t take back seat to the creation of community. Or, perhaps it is a delicate combination of both.