molecular gastronomy

Molecular Gastronomy Gets New Pricey Cookbook

Molecular gastronomy has its new bible, a six-volume, 2,400-word tome titled The Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. The book is a how-to guide by The Cooking Lab's team Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet and will be published December 2010. The book takes chefs through fundamentals and beyond. The text and photographs include not just recipes but in depth discussions of the microbiology and physics necessary to create avant-garde fare. The impressive collection of food scholarship has already earned praise from some of the world's experts in this type of cuisine including Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck, Wylie Dufresne of wd-50 and Ferran Adria of el Bulli. It sells for $625 (but available for $421.87 on Amazon).

Why spend this much for a book? Eater recently published a spirited defense of the price, citing the fact that the equipment and expertise to develop this food is already in the upper echelons. For the food obsessed who are willing to spend hundreds for just one meal at a top restaurant, price should be no object.

Tags: ferran adria, modernist cuisine, molecular gastronomy

Alinea Choosen Best Chicago Restaurant of All Time

by Jonathon Ramsey (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

Grant Achatz, the founding chef behind Chicago's Alinea, has gotten in the habit of taking home at least one big award and getting in the top ten of some big restaurant list every year. Now his gourmet establishment has taken home an award that we might say no one saw coming: Chicago magazine has named the six-year-old Alinea the best restaurant in Chicago, ever. That's right – ever.

For now we'll put that in the "Them's Big Words" file, but the award is out now and there's no taking it back. Second place went to a restaurant that closed three years ago, Le Francais, and third went to Charlie Trotter's. The breadth of the list, however, couldn't be better exemplified than by noting that Pizzeria Uno came in at number ten. Regardless, congratulations to Mr. Achatz and his molecular gastronomy team.

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Tags: alinea, chicago, chicago magazine, chicagos best restaurant ever, grant achatz, molecular gastronomy

Ferran Adria, Harvard Professor

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

The man who many considered the world's best chef has a new gig, Harvard professor. Adria, who announced in January that his El Bulli restaurant in Spain would be closing in 2012, will teach at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences this fall. He will be working with Harvard University on an undergraduate course in culinary physics. The course will use food to explain principles of soft matter physics in which culinary creations like suspensions and gels play a role. Adria is famous for his work in molecular gastronomy, framing food in new ways and new consistencies. The course will also include guest lectures from Wylie Dufresne, chef-owner of New York's wd-50, José Andrés and Dan Barber, co-owner of several restaurants in New York specializing in farm-to-table dining.

Tags: cooking, ferran adria, harvard, Jose Andres, molecular gastronomy, wylie dufresne

French Chef Creates First Totally Synthetic Dish

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

Much of the news we hear about food tilts toward the organic and local but French chef Pierre Gagnaire has taken things in a different direction creating what is called the world's first synthetic dish. Gagnaire, a famed French chef with three Michelin stars worked on the recipe with chemist Hervé This, the founder of molecular gastronomy. The London Times reports that the recipe which contains ascorbic acid, glucose, maltitol and citric acid is called le note à note. It is essentially an appetizer made of jelly balls that taste of apples and lemon and are creamy on the inside and crackling on the outside.

Is the world ready for fake food? Mr. This thinks so. He says that the chefs of the future won't need to rely on plain fruits and vegetables but can instead use the elements of those foods to create new food possibilities and end food shortages. Pierre Gagnaire is more interested in concoctions that combine natural food with new molecular creations much as chefs like Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal and Grant Achatz do in their famous restaurants.

The Times article includes a recipe that sounds more like a chemistry experiment. Most of us consume plenty of chemicals in our foods on a daily basis but still the idea of eating a meal that has no relationship to anything found in nature is still more of a novelty at this point.

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Tags: chef, molecular gastronomy, MolecularGastronomy, pierre gagnaire, PierreGagnaire

The World's Most Unusual Restaurants

by Nicole Weston (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

One of the biggest trends in find dining over the past year has been the continued interest in molecular gastronomy, the food movement in which the chef is recast as a scientist (or the other way around) and prepares familiar flavors in startling forms or creates familiar forms with unexpected flavors. Think foods like hot ice cream and solidified sauces complementing a liquid poached pear. The world's most unusual restaurants include some of the bastions of molecular gastronomy, such as England's Fat Duck, and NYC's WD-50 but also includes Ninja in New York, where ninja servers perform magic while serving you expensive sushi, Dinner in the Sky and Annalakshmi, where you only pay what you feel like paying.