Pilot Light
1988—2008: The Food Arts Generation
Michael and Ariane Batterberry report.
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| More 'Food Arts Turns 20' articles in this issue |
| Over the Foaming Wave No one would dispute that this culinary era could easily be called the Age of Adrià. Spanish gastronomic sage Gerry Dawes revisits and reconsiders Ferran Adrià at El Bulli nearly 11 years after first illuminating his revolutionary cuisine for Food Arts. |
| Beef à la Mode Since colonial times, a beefsteak's origins, quality, and flavor could make or break a tavern's reputation. As tastes and fashions change, the same holds true across today's chef-stampeded steakhouse scene. |
| Talk About Breakthroughs! Yes, time marches on, but who could have envisioned how much technology and equipment advances over the last 20 years rearranged everything from food preparation to reservations. Dave Arnold, Food Arts contributing editor for equipment and the director of culinary technology at The French Culinary Institute, and Nils Norén, vice president of culinary arts at The French Culinary Institute and A Food Arts Contributing Authority, look at innovations that have shaped restaurants since 1988. |
Two decades, to statisticians, add up to "a generation." That said, we can now celebrate the official coming of age of the Food Arts generation, collective generators of America's golden age of food and drink.
It was for this nascent generation we created the magazine at a time when so much ground had been broken by the American Food Revolution of the 1970s and early '80s that for most it was difficult to imagine the pace wouldn't slow. Betting otherwise, we'd exult in watching it accelerate in all directions. What had coalesced into a food world was to explode into a universe.
Before launching Food Arts in 1988, defined in the trade as a "B-to-B" (Business-to-Business) periodical, our magazine experience had been confined to consumer publications, a field in which second guessing the average subscriber's degree of interest and expertise could stump a Mensa meeting.
A few years ago, a well-known food magazine editor remarked to us over dinner, "What you do is much harder. I have to tell the public what they don't know. You have to tell professionals what they don't know." One could hardly respond to such an unexpectedly generous observation by saying that based on accumulated experience we wouldn't change places for a certified blank check. And for one overriding reason. Whereas the readers of a consumer food magazine may—or more likely may not—be interested in insider coverage of the ongoing food movement, Food Arts readers are the movement. To gather compelling reportage all we have to do is keep the swinging door between their work worlds and ours wide open. This one-on-one approach has instilled a sense of ownership in our readers, as if Food Arts were their clubhouse.
The long-term prospects of a movement depend on successful passage through endurance-testing series of pilgrims' progress stages. More or less in the following order: Birth. Early euphoria. Growing pains (acquired strengths or threatened survival). Maturity. Expansion and offshoots. Reinvention or reinvigoration (if not, decline or calcification). Institutionalization. World Player Status.
Inarguably, America's food movement has passed through all of these with energy and talent to spare.
America's Food Revolution has been defined, quite rightly, as "a revolution of awareness." Gathering force, it opened up vistas of creativity and competitive quality previously the turf of a tiny elite of high-end restaurateurs, hoteliers, and caterers.
If we had to pick the most resonant achievement of the past 20 years, it would be the constant elevation of quality levels across the breadth of foodservice. A term new to food industry parlance, "trickle-down effect," was evidenced everywhere from wholesale "borrowing" of top ranked independent restaurant menu entries and flavor strategies by budget-friendly chains (guess where they read about them), to top ranked chefs signing on as consultants to improve the flavors and nutritional values of meals for the masses.
In response to the trickle-down times, CHAIN REACTION would be introduced into our editorial mix, as would other new departmental "slugs" reflecting the industry's evolution. Such as HEALTH & NUTRITION, LEARNING, TECH TALK, chef-challenging MYSTERY BASKET, AGRICULTURE, F&B, PASTRY PRO, DRINK ARTS, pairings-centric WINE & FOOD, DESIGN NOTEBOOK, Ask Dr. KNÜTZENBOLTZ, GREENOVATIONS, BREAD UPON THE WATERS (f&b updates from the booming cruise industry), and, no way least significant, DOING WELL DOING GOOD, a mantra for the many readers concerned with sustainability, diversity, and similar social and ethical issues.
Without letup, there's always been growth in one form or other to report, as with any wide movement on the upsurge comes rapid multiplication of leadership, of job and learning categories, of regional allegiances, and more.
Among the more profound food world phenomena of the past two decades has been a volcanic flow of new alliances and group agendas where few had been counted before. To give an idea of their scope, consider the births since 1988 of the Research Chefs Association (Food Arts would become their official media partner); Women Chefs & Restaurateurs (on whose board the taller of us early served as the sole male); DiRoNA (Distinguished Restaurants of North America) (at whose movable feast conference we conduct an annual panel); Southern Foodways Alliance; Women's Foodservice Forum; The Bread Bakers Guild of America; C-CAP (Careers through Culinary Arts Program); Chefs Collaborative; International Corporate Chefs Association (ICCA); Slow Food and Slow Food U.S.A.; Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture; Women and Wine; Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School; PastryScoop.com; COPIA, the American Center for Wine, Food, and the Arts; and the American Personal and Private Chef Association.
Along parallel lines, the Food Arts generation would become engaged in unprecedented culinary cross-pollination, both here and abroad, largely attributable to rampant proliferations of wine and food festivals, gastronomic summits, panel programs, industry roundtables, academic seminars, chef-stoked charity fund-raisers, and demo-fueled trade shows (sometimes directly connected to chef associations like ACF and RCA) or wherever else the participation of city and globe-trotting chefs might be aggressively solicited. The collective message sent by these exchanges was that the food world, sails flap ping, had powerful cross-currents to navigate: regional versus global, traditional versus inventive, natural versus scientifically transformed.
Back in 1992 we staged our first Food Arts round table presentation for the International Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show at the still sparkling Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, gathering noted panelists from various points on the map to air their diverse generational and cultural perspectives. From New Orleans, Ella Brennan, doyenne of the city's restaurant establishment, dynastic matriarch, and a cofounder of DiRoNA; from Arizona, young restaurateur/chef Mark Tarbell, then precocious f&b director of The Boulders resort hotel; from Venezuela, irrepressible French-Canadian Jean-Paul Coupal, then Caracas' top restaurateur, now a single estate coffee impresario with cafe/restaurants in California; and from New York City, Dorothy Cann Hamilton, founding director and CEO of the illustrious French Culinary Institute (FCI) and variously the guiding light of the AIWF and James Beard Foundation. Observing the audience enrapt, we caught a glimpse of the future.
Looking back a decade later, we'd write that "while only a foursome, they managed to embody the decisive elements that have delivered us into America's golden age of food and drink: the simultaneous championing of sound traditions and the pursuit of new culinary, wine, and spirits frontiers; an openness to dawning technology, revitalized regionalism, global cuisines, the farmer/chef connection, and artisanal endeavors; an acute sense of style; a commitment to education, community needs, and ethical behavior. And always, a generosity of spirit radically at odds with the jealous guarding of trade and culinary secrets that characterized the past."
But while a new era of productive networking and sharing of knowledge had fully matured, no one had come up with a program to connect the dots of sectarian activities on common meeting ground.
So we proposed a solution: "Food Arts Power Circles," a periodic invitational convening of disparate "Masters of the Future, Keepers of the Flame" made up of the directors of the nation's top culinary institutions (the CIA, FCI, and Johnson & Wales), council and association chieftains, activist chefs and restaurateurs, and visionaries in the fields of agriculture, sustainability, food science, technology, and the like.
The first Power Circles forums, sequentially staged in 2004 at the FCI and the IH/M&R show, drew full houses, and reconfirmed Food Arts' snowballing reputation throughout the industry as a collaborative player as well as scoop-delivering chronicler of dawning trends and talent.
Early each year, in Accolades, we publish a long roundup of who won what in the past 12 months. If allowed, by this point it could take over the entire issue. And we're not talking about Iron Chef (oh, did we mention that the media had transformed chefs into rock stars?). True stars of the Food Arts generation, to our minds, were young Americans who succeeded in breaking through invisible barricades erected along international wine and food awards circuits. In 1988, 26 year old David Burke became the first American, and one of the youngest chefs on record, to be awarded France's coveted Meilleur Ouvrier de France Diplôme d'Honneur, an award given to the chef who shows unparalleled skill and creativity with his native cuisine. Concurrently, against all odds, Burke claimed Japan's Nippon Award of Excellence for, among other things, triumphing in a mystery basket joust employing esoteric Asian ingredients. Next, Larry Stone became the first of only two Americans to earn the title International Best Sommellier in French Wines, and the only American to be named French Master Sommelier from the Union de la Sommellerie Française. And in a staggering upset in 2005, The Bread Bakers Guild Team USA went on to win the World Cup of Baking.
As American chefs sprinted to World Player Status, we were personally involved in certain milestone happenings along the way, Food Arts having gained early recognition on the international stage. A Godzilla of playing field levelers was the marathon 70th birthday bash in Monte Carlo in 1990 to honor Mississippian Craig Claiborne, pioneer New York Times food editor and restaurant critic who, almost single-handedly, had invented modern (i.e., honest, informed, and far-reaching) food journalism.
With Claiborne's input, party mastermind and marketing diva Yanou Collart (she herself had invented chef-as-international-star PR, starting with Paul Bocuse) assembled a guest list of extraordinary transatlantic wattage. Intermingled on equal footing for the first time ever were not only 18 galactic European chefs, more than half Michelin three-starred, but, from America—sacre bleu!—over 30 era-defining New World chefs and restaurateurs, among them Jasper White, Paul Prudhomme, Alfred Portale, Sirio Maccioni, Daniel Boulud, Mark Miller, Zarela Martinez, George and Jenifer Harvey Lang, Patrick O'Connell, and Robert McGrath, some bearing pot luck contributions of regional American foods. Throughout the nonstop gastronomic festivities, orchestrated by young host-chef Alain Ducasse, the prevailing sound was of culinary bonhomie and shattering ceilings.
Enter the age of the international "Gastronomic Summit," and with it milestone tributes to America's Food Revolution. When in 2003, Madrid Fusión: The International Summit of Gastronomy made its tour-de-force debut, its success was so extreme that it was immediately designated the first in an open-ended annual series. As Barcelona's avatar chef Ferran Adri&agrav; publicly put it, "We all had a dream, we struggled for years. To have these wonderful chefs here, five years ago we would have thought it impossible. A dream!"
Three years later, another impossible dream became reality when Madrid Fusi&ograv;n chose to honor the American Food Revolution with a program of American chef turns climaxed by a ceremony in which Madrid's mayor handed awards to a number of us considered responsible for fomenting and supporting the revolution over the years, a group that included chefs Mark Miller, Paul Prudhomme, and Norman Van Aken, cookbook editor Judith Jones, educator Dorothy Cann Hamilton, plus ourselves.
But in saluting the American food world abroad, the gun had been jumped in 2004 in Oxfordshire, England, where, in an extraordinary demonstration of leadership, courage, diplomacy, and fervor, French born chef Raymond Blanc staged "The American Food Revolution," a weeklong summit-cum-festival at his 15th century Relais & Châteaux hotel property Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons.
As we later reported, "In his opening remarks before an international assemblage of press, food and wine formidables, policy wonks and foundation directors, diplomats, scientists, agricultural gurus and conservationists, educators, media personalities, and the like, Blanc had this to say: 'It is first a gastronomic extravaganza involving some of the best chefs working in America, whose arms I've twisted to come and cook both lunches and dinners at Le Manoir. Their challenge will be to cook for British, U.S., and French critics and colleagues alike—so I'm glad it's them doing it and not me.' The top-heavy lineup could easily have blown all the circuits of Vegas' mightiest electric marquee: Charlie Palmer, Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, Patrick O'Connell, Charlie Trotter, Alice Waters, Nobu Matsuhisa, Wylie Dufresne, and to do demos, pastry chef Gale Gand. Larry Stone spent months choosing and assembling all-American wines, chef/restaurateur Steve Schimoler, in league with Sysco, engineered food transport, "Farmer Lee" Jones of The Chef's Garden in Huron, Ohio, amazed with his farmstand of dazzling produce, and the taller of us served as the sole American moderator of two of some equally dazzling panels.
H.R.H. Prince Charles bestowed an official blessing: "As Patron of the Academy of Culinary Arts, I could not be more pleased to support this international food conference, bringing together some of the finest chefs from the Unites States of America, France, and of course of the United Kingdom. I cannot think of another time in history when so much attention has been paid to the food we eat, the future of agriculture, and the health of the general population, so this conference could not come at a more timely moment." Indeed.
All movements and revolutions represent impassioned group effort. And without the unflagging dedication of all who produce Food Arts—issue after issue, year after year—there would be no rousing 20th anniversary celebratory issue, replete with "20/20 Visions" from some of our most valued regular contributors, the evidence of which you hold in your hand. We'd like first to thank Marvin Shanken and M. Shanken Communications, with whom we've been united since late 1989, not only for sharing a vision of quality and vitality whatever the climate, but for their unbroken trust and support. Next we'd like to thank our loyal advertisers, who in this challenging year have boosted our ad page count to a number far exceeding the same months in 2007. But most of all we'd like to thank what's accurately known as the Food Arts family for their talent, devotion, and—noted everywhere—their matchless warmth and camaraderie.
So raise a toast to the masthead, and blessings on you all.
Michael Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher
Ariane Batterberry, Founding Editor/Publisher
