Yeah, it gets the best of me.
I receive some cool comments and emails on both sides of the fence concerning the 'how do I eat this?' question. If my sarcasm helped to evoke stronger response than usual, then at least it's finally come as good use for something. Conversations are very important with modern food. Being open-minded and willing to share are at the heart of what drives this thing forward.
We love food. We work very hard on our food. There are a hundred other things going on in our hotel at any given moment, and the plates or ideas or playtime experiments that you see on this blog represent of very small fraction of our day-to-day. It's our funtime, and we want it to be funtime for others as well. We love to eat. When we eat, it's personal and we don't want instructions as to what should be the first bite and what should be the last. We do not want to dictate your enjoyment.
Freedom with food. Crossing this line seems really counter-productive to the modern food movement. There is such an open-mindedness and desire to share ideas and thoughts that we never want to rob the guest of their freedom to simply eat. Every experience is personal. It should be casual as well. We want you to keep that side of yourself alive when eating a dish we plated. When we put the elements of a dish together, we simply think of the relationships between the flavors and textures. It's the same as viewing a painting. Many colors come together simultaneously. Eating is more than just a physiological phenomenon. There are a life-time of personal references that each and every diner brings along with him everytime they eat. That is the glorious part of your dining experience and no chef in the world can control that. You experience is your alone. Eat the dish as fate would have it.
Seriously, we rarely create anything that involves eating one thing then another then another in dictated order. That's what the courses of a meal are for. That order is already laid out such as the verse, chorus, guitar solo in a song. The way you hear the song, or the way that you express the rhythm by either bobbing your head or throwing your hands up is your own personal experience with that song. You are not altering the soundwaves coming from the CD player in your car, but your experience is unique to that precise moment in time. We could easily say the same thing about a dish. Eating it one day, then again a week later will not give you the same experience. Just enjoy the moment and stop trying to analyze it so much. Let life flow. Bacchus would not be told how to eat and drink, but he would simply relish the indulgence of the moment. Seriously, if we don't take this spirit with us when we eat, then we are discrediting everything that modern food stands for.
Also, I like the idea of creating a "How Would Jesus Eat This?" t-shirt. Anyone else interested in promoting these? What would be a cool image to accompany it? A variation of DaVinci's 'Last Supper?' It could be the next big thing.