Experimental Dining

Paul Geary

Description

Experimental Dining examines the work of four of the world’s leading creative restaurants: Noma, elBulli, The Fat Duck and Alinea.

Using ideas from performance studies, cultural studies, philosophy and economics, the book explores the creation of the dining experience as a form of multisensory performance.

It examines the construction of the world of the restaurants and their creative methods, the experience of dining and the broader ideological frames within which the work takes place. Experimental Dining brings together ideas around food, philosophy, performance and cultural politics to offer an interdisciplinary understanding of the practice and experience of creative restaurants.

The author contends that the work of the experimental restaurant, while operating explicitly within an economy of experiences, is not absolutely determined by that political or economic context. Its practice has the potential to appeal to more than idle curiosity for novelty. It can be unsettling and revealing, provocative and evocative, personal and political, experimental and considered, thoughtful and sensual. Or in other words, that the food event can be art.

Primary readership will be academics, researchers and scholars in the fields of food studies, performance studies and those with interests in the philosophy of everyday life, cognitive science and sensory studies. It will be a useful resource as supplementary reading on courses on Food and Performance. It may also have interest for chefs, gastronomes, restaurateurs and artists

Introduction                                                                                                            

            The Restaurants: elBulli, The Fat Duck, Noma and Alinea               

            Philosophical Approach                                                                            

            Food, Art and Performance                                                                      

            Arguments and Structure of the Book                                                    

 

Chapter 1 Preparation: The Creative World of the Restaurants                   

1.1 Restaurant Philosophy            

1.2 Constructing the World                        

1.3 Creative Methods and Approaches

1.4 Technoemotional Cuisine            

 

Interlude 1 Progression: Italian Futurism and Technoemotional Cuisine 

 

Chapter 2 Presentation: Performances of the Restaurants                          

            2.1 Performing Front of House                                                                

            2.2 Reading the Menu                                                                               

            2.3 Food Forms                                                                                          

 

Interlude 2 Produced: Mediated Dining                                                             

 

Chapter 3 Perception: Sensory and Sensual Experiences                           

            3.1 Immediacy                                                                                            

            3.2 Orality: Language                                                                                

            3.3 Orality: Sex                                                                                            

            3.4 Culinary Deconstruction                                                                     

 

Interlude 3 Pop-Up: Food, Performance, Philosophy                                     

 

Chapter 4 Processing: Making Sense                                                               

            4.1 Making Sense                                                                                      

            4.2 Food Narratives                                                                                               

            4.3 Aesthetic Processing                                                              

 

Interlude 4 Posterity: Documenting Experiences                                            

 

Chapter 5 Payoff: Political and Economic Frames of Experience                

            5.1 Enjoyment and Excess                                                                                   

            5.2 Politics of the Seasonal and the Local                                            

            5.3 Experiences                                                                                          

 

Conclusion                                                                                                              

References

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Movements
• Senses
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Restaurante
• Sense
• Phenomenology
• Ideology
• Food
• Restaurant
• Feed
• Cultural Studies
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789383454
• Langue: English

Extrait

Experimental Dining
Experimental Dining
Performance, Experience and Ideology in Contemporary Creative Restaurants
Paul Geary
First published in the UK in 2022 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2022 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2022 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copy editor: MPS Limited
Cover designer: Aleksandra Szumlas
Cover image: Bombas amp; Parr/Nathan Pask
Production manager: Georgia Earl, Debora Nicosia
Typesetter: MPS Limited
Hardback ISBN 978-1-78938-343-0
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78938-344-7
ePUB ISBN 978-1-78938-345-4
Printed and bound by Lightning Source
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This is a peer-reviewed publication.
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Restaurants: elBulli, The Fat Duck, Noma and Alinea
Philosophical Approach
Food, Art and Performance
Arguments and Structure of the Book
1. Preparation: The Creative World of the Restaurants
Restaurant Philosophy
Constructing the World
Creative Methods and Approaches
Technoemotional Cuisine
Interlude 1 Progression: Italian Futurism and Technoemotional Cuisine
2. Presentation: Performances of the Restaurant
Performing Front of House
Reading the Menu
Food Forms
Interlude 2 Produced: Mediated Dining
3. Perception: Sensory and Sensual Experiences
Immediacy
Orality: Language
Orality: Sex
Culinary Deconstruction
Interlude 3 Pop-Up: Food, Performance, Philosophy
4. Processing: Making Sense
Making Sense
Food Narratives
Aesthetic Processing
Interlude 4 Posterity: Documenting Experiences
5. Payoff: Political and Economic Frames of Experience
Enjoyment and Excess
Politics of the Seasonal and the Local
Experiences
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Figures Figure 1: Anatomical Whisky Tasting (2015), Bompas Parr. Photo by Nathan Pask. Figure 2: Tea Party including Mock Turtle Soup (2013), The Fat Duck. Photo by Romas Foord. Figure 3: Nitro-Poached Aperitif (2001), The Fat Duck. Photo courtesy of The Fat Duck. Figure 4: Agathon: The Poet (2015), Zuppa Theatre Company. Photo by Mel Hattie. Figure 5: Chocolate Box (2009), elBulli archive. Photo by Francesc Guillamet. Figure 6: Burnt Earth (2007), elBulli archive. Photo by Francesc Guillamet.
Acknowledgements
There are a number of people without whom I would not have been able to complete this book. First, I offer thanks to those artists who have given me their time to discuss their work: Mike Knowlden of Blanch & Shock, Sam Bompas of Bompas & Parr, Olivia Winteringham of KILN, Siân Tonkin of Companis and Kaye Winwood. I also offer my gratitude to Jamie Desogus of Harborne Kitchen, with whom I have had a number of fruitful conversations and the chance to try out some of the ideas of the book in practice. I want to extend my gratitude to the restaurants I visited for this project: the staff at The Fat Duck, Noma and Alinea were very welcoming and generous with their time. I particularly want to thank Jonny Lake, James Winter and Otto Romer at The Fat Duck.
I am exceptionally grateful for the patience, diligence and friendly professionalism of the staff at Intellect and offer especial thanks to Aimée Bates, Georgia Earl, Tim Mitchell, Debora Nicosia and Jelena Stanovnik.
I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss my work as part of the ‘How To Do Things With Food(s): Food as Research/Food in Performance’ working group at ASTR in 2014 and the ‘Documenting Performance’ working group at TaPRA in 2016, as well as at the ‘Digesting Ritual’ conference at the University of Surrey in 2018 and at the Performance Philosophy Biennial in Amsterdam in 2019. To the convenors of those groups and conferences – Joshua Abrams, Kristin Hunt, Georgina Guy, Johanna Linsley, Adam Alston and the team running Performance Philosophy – I offer my thanks. I am also grateful to the University of Bristol and the University of Birmingham who provided funding for research trips. This book is an extension of my doctoral thesis, and I wish to offer my gratitude to Paul Clarke and Josephine Machon for their reflections during the examination process.
No work happens in a vacuum. In both direct and indirect ways, we are supported and encouraged by many people around us. Sometimes there are reflections on work, other times there are conversations about ideas and sometimes we are buoyed up by the love and solidarity of friendship and care. There are a number of colleagues and friends who have helped me and shaped my work over the last few years. In particular, I want to thank Cara Davies, Cristina Delgado-García, Panayiota Demetriou, Eleftheria Ioannidou and Caroline Radcliffe. On a personal note, I want to thank my family for their continual support and encouragement throughout the process of researching and writing. Over the time of working on this project, I received a great deal of care and sustenance from Emily Gent, Annabell Allen and Maya Krishnan and to them all I offer my sincere gratitude.
Finally, there are two friends who have offered me considerable mentorship, support and guidance: Liz Tomlin, who has been incredibly supportive and the kind of mentor who inspires and nurtures, and Simon Jones, who has shaped my work and thinking in so many ways. To Liz and Simon, the greatest of thanks.
Introduction
Early in the afternoon of Sunday 19 August 2012, I was presented with the final course of a meal at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, the Michelin-starred restaurant in London where each of the dishes is a contemporary reimagining of a historical recipe. The dish was a dessert called Tarte of Strawberries ( c. 1591) . The dessert was served on a white circular plate and consisted of, on one side of the plate, a quenelle of vibrant red strawberry sorbet resting on a bed of crumbled, golden brown biscuit. On the other side of the plate was a rectangle of the same biscuit topped with macerated strawberries, pearly white cream, wild strawberries, crystallised violets and mint, honey cress and a light-pink and lacy strawberry tuile. Eating this dish was the first time I had been overtaken and overwhelmed by food, struck by something that I could not articulate. I felt unsettled and unnerved. I felt tangential to my own body, as though cleaved apart from my own sensory experience, forced to encounter it as estranged. I experienced a kind of nostalgia, but could not say exactly for what. I was affected, awakened and agitated by the food, to the point where I called on the waiter to tell me exactly of what the dish consisted, in the hope of regaining some control.
I begin this book with this moment because, for me, it was a personal experience of the potential of food to operate according to an artistic or aesthetic logic. It went beyond an everyday appreciation of dining as sustenance or maintaining the body and was seemingly operating outside of my everyday modes of appreciating food. I can articulate some of the various ideas and contexts that intersected in that experience: that it creatively reworked a historical recipe in a way that appealed to my palate and tastes; that it mixed together different tastes, flavours, textures and temperatures in such a way that the whole seemed to exceed the combination of its constituent parts; that from the restrained order of the visual presentation on the plate burst a series of intense sensations; that the crystallised violets triggered an emotionally infused nostalgia for a sweet I had eaten as a child; and that I dined with a partner with whom I was relaxed, comfortable and able to share my experience.
Experimental Dining offers an interrogation of the artistic work of experimental restaurants. Working predominantly from an experiential perspective, the book investigates the work of four Michelin-starred experimental, technoemotional restaurants (a term to which I will return). It is not uncommon to encounter terms like theatre , theatrical and artistic in relation to haute cuisine, especially in restaurant reviews and in television food programmes, where the terms are used loosely and often as a way of articulating the spectacular . This book focuses on creative, experimental restaurants in relation to performance in order to move beyond spectacle and to consider both how performance unlocks a way of thinking about creative food practice and how this practice with food can, vice versa, open space for reflections on the embodied, experiential and reflective experience of performance. The opening example of Tarte of Strawberries ( c. 1591) , while personal, opens up some of the complexity of an artistic dining experience - some of the various factors, contexts and sensations that intersect in the experience to produce something artistic. Experimental Dining examines not only how the restaurants and their practice deploy sensations, embodiment, contexts and discourses as constitutive elements of the work but also how they use the experience to trouble itself; in other words, to make the experience an issue for itself.
Experimental Dining takes as its focus four of the world s most highly rated restaurants: Ferran Adri s elBulli (Cala Montjoi, Spain), Heston Blumenthal s The Fat Duck (Bray, UK), Ren Redzepi s Noma (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Grant Achatz s Alinea (Chicago, USA). The restaurants are understood as engaging in modes of performance practice, considering the design and setting of the restaurants,