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chefs and kitchen design

Metropolis has a great piece where some of the country's best chefs -- including Alice Waters, Grant Achatz and Wylie Dufresne -- talk about their kitchens. Here's a snippet from Waters on Chez Panisse...

Architects really need to think about all the waste a restaurant creates. That relates completely to an important part of the restaurant -- welcoming the suppliers into the kitchen. I'm obsessed with the fact that the back of the house has to be as beautiful as the front.

And Achatz on the process of designing the Alinea kitchen...

When I had the opportunity to build my own kitchen, I thought, Hey, let's wipe our heads clean of conventional kitchen design. I'd worked at the French Laundry, Charlie Trotter's, Trio, so of course I grew up in kitchens, and it shocked me that they were all kind of designed the same. Everyone followed each other.

I felt like nobody really looked at the food, which was a great irony of kitchen design. No one really looked at the style of cooking they were going to do and designed the kitchen around that. We were like, "Let's really look at the food and decide, based on the style of cooking, what we need. What do we need as far as equipment? What do we need as far as space?"

achatz on the alinea book

Via Alaina Browne, Gourmet has a great conversation between Grant Achatz, the chef at Alinea, and Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck.  A lot of the conversation revolved around the Alinea Book that Achatz and crew are self-publishing through Ten Speed Press. Blumenthal asked Achatz if self-publishing is helping to keep the price of the book down, and the response is worth quoting at length...

GA: Yeah, basically—you are the one controlling costs, and you have the power to hire the photographers you want and the writers you want. But ultimately we wanted it to be approachable on the price scale. If we make less money we make less money, but I wanted people to be able to pick it up. I think it would be great if we could get aggressive amateur cooks, and even people in the industry—it's priced at that point where it might infiltrate the market a bit more. It might educate people on what this cuisine is and why we do what we do. We focus in the book on dispelling some of the myths and some of the negativity that swirl around this type of cuisine. The critics are saying this is emotionless cuisine, it has no soul; so we're trying to combat those kinds of critiques, and when people get their hands on the book and read what we have to say, they might actually understand our cuisine a little better. It's worth the effort.

There's a lot to chew on in this discussion (ed.: seriously? chew on? bad pun), from the economics of publishing to the interpretation of the term "molecular gastronomy." Go read.

clever clever

File under I Wish I'd Thought of That: Vampire Cupcakes.

i want to try

In the Serious Eats Talk section flye3076 posts the simple statement "I want to try ______________." The community's dishing up fantastic responses; from Cabesa tacos to tupelo honey to guedeck clam to this gem: 

Hmmm. Good question. I suppose I'm waiting on someone in the Bay Area to offer fresh, live cobra that they'll pull from a cage, flay, cut the still-beating heart out of and serve to me in a shot glass of rotgut 'whiskey.'

dishing on l.a.

Michael Bauer (SF Chron food critic) visits LA and manages to dismiss an entire city full of restaurants in 500ish words.  "In the Bay Area, food is the driving force of successful restaurants. But in L.A., instead of paying attention to what's on the plate, just about everyone is rubbernecking to see who's in the house."

this is awful

Chef Grant Achatz of Alinea has been diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth.   His statement:

I wanted to personally report that I have been very recently diagnosed with an advanced stage of Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the mouth. I have consulted several prominent physicians and will likely begin aggressive treatment within the next few weeks. I remain, and will remain, actively and optimistically engaged in operations at Alinea to the largest extent possible. Alinea will continue to perform at the level people have come to expect from us -- I insist on that. I have received amazing support from friends, family, and everyone who has thus far been told of the disease, and I look forward to a full, cancer-free, recovery.

michael mina

From the Chronicle pre-opening review of Michael Mina:   "It's as if every other chef has been playing checkers and Mina is playing 3-D chess."

confit byaldi

Thomas Keller's recipe for ratatouille; the one they make in the film.  Would be a great project with the kids after we go see the flick.

like butter

Cholesterol levels be damned:  if you're after that perfect steakhouse crust, what's wrong with a spreading a layer of butter on your steak?

well edited breakfast tacos

Via Ben and Mena, this outtake from the Sin City DVD of Robert Rodriguez cooking breakfast tacos is the most well-edited cooking video I've ever seen. You'll never again want to eat store bought tortillas after this.