Extending the olive branch: is a new partnership possible?

Ladies and gentlemen of the alternative food community, it’s time I came out of the closet: I love high-tech food. Now, if you haven’t already unfriended me on Facebook, spilled organic Fair Trade coffee on your laptop while doing it, and settled upon shooting me hostile glances for the remainder of human existence – which, at the rate things are going, might not be that long, anyway – let me qualify my confession and try to earn at least something of a purgatorial reprieve.

When I say high-tech, I’m not talking about the squirtable iridescent ‘yogurt’ tubes that would baffle Michael Pollan‘s grandmother (“Is it food or is it toothpaste?”), the magical mangosteen juices and echinacea-infused brownie powders that line functional food aisles, or the corn that’s been cross-bred with rabbits to make it more prolific. What I am talking about is another world of high-tech food, though it may be one that’s equally suspicious. You probably know it as “molecular cuisine”; but I like the more appealing “techno-emotional cuisine” label better (so that’s what I’m going to use.) Regardless, you know what I’m talking about: it’s the style that’s made Arzak, Blumenthal, and Adrià sanctified or damned, depending on what company you’re in.

Let’s clear up a few things straight away. No, I haven’t eaten at El Bulli. But yes, I’d be thrilled if someone invited me to. No, I wouldn’t spend ‘that kind of money’ on a meal, and no, I probably wouldn’t eat ‘that kind of stuff’ every day, even if it were possible to. But yes, I have eaten spherifications and foams, and yes, I have read the Harold McGee bible cover-to-cover; I’d even like to get a siphon for myself. And, emphatic yes, I think this ‘stuff’ is – I’ll worry about properly operationalising the term later – very, very cool.

What I like about techno-emotional cuisine is the creativeness, dedication, personality, and personal investment of the people who practice it. It would be impossible to look at some of the platings and claim credibly that they’re anything short of radically original. The development process for not only the dishes – their flavours, their composition, their structures, their mouth-feels, their temperatures, their platings, their everythings – but also for the methods used to create them is extraordinary, Einsteinian in rigour and Picassan in creativity. I think most of us have an image of ‘molecular cuisine’, but I bet few of us could pair that image with an image of an individual chef; and most of us would likely come up short if asked to describe a dish and how it’s prepared. I think that’s a shame simply from an ‘art appreciation’ perspective, so to speak: the ‘art’ and the ‘artists’ involved in techno-emotional cuisine are both genuinely extraordinary for their originality and quality.

So who cares? Is this, the Purefood website, really the place for an ode to Haute Cuisine? I argue that in fact it is. I see tremendous potential for engagement between the two opposed (often falsely, in my opinion) food communities, and I hereby issue my call: Sandal-wearing alternatives and white-shirted gastro-chefs, put down your veg knifes, meet in the garden, cast aside your presumptions, and get to know your neighbours a bit.

In fact, I’d argue, the alternatives and the technos have much more in common than they think. Here’s my dirty half-dozen most striking similarities:

1. Though the sandal-wearers and bicycle-riders have more or less claimed the label, both groups build much of their identities in their alterity, in their other otherness, in their “alternativeness”: they’re not conventional, and they’re proud of it.
2. Both groups emphasize taste and sensorial acuity and promote it actively with educational outreach. Slow Food runs its “To the origins of Taste” courses worldwide, and the Fundación Alicia runs its sensorial education classes, too. Just as farmers lose out if their would-be clients find rock-hard, store-bought chilean strawberries as enticing as the ones they pulled out of the ground at five this morning, so too do haute cuisine chefs lose out if their would-be clients can’t distinguish between sweet and sour.
3. Both groups emphasize education more broadly. ‘Whole-school approach’ advocates on the sustainable front propose that nutrition courses and gardens be integrated in school meals delivery programs; and on the techno front, flagship Fundacion Alicia offers courses for children and adults ranging from medieval gastronomy to science in the kitchen. In my opinion, the techno include a valuable educational component that the sustainables sometimes neglect by offering a fun, engaging, and modern approach to science; for example, Harvard’s Science and Cooking series, broadcast in entirety on Youtube last year, drew sell-out lecture-hall enthusiasm as well as an extensive internet following. Arguably, letting kids play with with pots and pans is one of the more engaging ways of introducing the heat transfer equation.
4. Both groups look simultaneously to the past and to the future for inspiration. The sustainables appreciate the more integral, closed-loop natures of pre-industrial food systems while working to promote more viable such systems ‘for the future good of humanity’. Meanwhile the technos, while manifestly future-oriented via the importance they give to technology and innovation, often seek to lend traditional taste experiences new vigour precisely by reinterpreting them in new forms. This article, for example, describes how Ferran Adria ‘deconstructs’ the quintessential Spanish tortilla (omelette) and in so doing makes it something new; home cooks, here’s a recipe.
5. Both groups comprise inherently interdisciplinary and inclusive bodies. The sustainable movement often turns to Wendell Berry’s famous line, “If you eat, you’re involved in agriculture,” to express its sense that everyone is, indeed, invested in the food system and should be interested in its viability. But the techno movement so famous for its scientific side is in fact a much bigger community than many think. For example, the Experimental Cuisine Collective describes itself as a group of ‘scholars, scientists, chefs, writers, journalists, performance artists, and food enthusiasts’, though I’d be eager to add a host of other interested folks, as well.
6. Both groups are genuinely interested in ‘doing good.’ The sustainables work for – well, a sustainable future – and it would be hard for anyone to argue against the socially sound motivations of that. But the technos do, too. Andoni Luis Aduriz, for example, is famous for his commitment to sourcing local ingredients, and Jose Andrés for his commitment to promoting sustainable cooking methods in crisis areas via the World Central Kitchen foundation he leads. The Fundación Alicia runs a heritage species garden, and many leading chefs are very much ‘grow-your-own’ advocates.

Will the two ‘alternatives’ ever converge to become a single movement? I doubt it. But it seems to me that there’s an awful lot of room of collaboration and mutual benefit. The sustainables could win the ‘hearts and minds’ of a key demographic if it can get the celebrity firepower of a few star techno-emotional chefs on its side; and project coordination with foundations such as Alicia and WCK seem like no-brainers. Similarly the technos could win the ‘hearts and minds’ of a sector that now largely distrusts it and work more effectively for the values they already believe in by liaising more directly with organizations who work in a more targeted way for those causes.

So, is collaboration possible? I think so: there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain. I bet all we have to do is ask.

What do you think of “techno-emotional cuisine”? Do you think there’s room for the sustainable and techno-emotional movements to collaborate?

No related posts.