American Cuisine Today
Chef Robert N. Corey, B.A., A.O.S., C.E.C.
An Introduction to American Cuisine
Today
Chef Robert N. Corey, B.A., A.O.S., C.E.C.
Spring 2012
“Revolution & Evolution’
The sheer size of our
country, the multitude of cultures within our borders and the breadth of
products we produce make qualifying a ‘definitive American food culture’
extremely difficult. Perhaps that
difficulty actually defines us. We are a
conglomerate of Food Cultures, a Culture of Cultures. America is geographically diverse,
topographically challenged, immigrantic, 50-stated and food opinionated!
America is ethnic and
global. We are what we eat, eats as
Michael pollan has stated. Our roots are
European, mostly Spanish and English and, now, Asian. Our oldest restaurants are standard European
in design and cuisine. Yet, we are more
than restaurants. We are street food and
Farmer’s Markets and Food Trucks.
European food is the blending of flavors and Asian cuisines are the
street parties in our mouths.
The great ethnic food
cultures of the biggest immigrant cities in America are in LA, NYC, Chicago and
Miami. Great food happens here but it
can be found in the smallest hamlets and villages in the country, too. Travel to the upper Midwest lake communities
and to smoky valleys of Appalachia where there are cultural food offerings on
every table. the same is true on the
beaches of Puritan Cape Cod to the Navajo hogans of our native Americans. It is all so bloody good, unique and
real. Travel the country and taste it
from street vendors to michelin freaks – all the while looking over your fork
at someone who hopefully understands and appreciates it as much as you do. Smile.
Sometimes food experiences can be like seeing the sunrise for the very
first time.
‘I hear America cookin’
It’s coming round again
There’s Pork and Corn a growin’
From Kidz to Women and Men.’
-Betty Fussell, ‘I Hear America Cooking’.
We are cooking on the precipice of a new
dawn. The Revolution of American
Gastronomy. The cuisine in America is
like her history – it involves freedom. The
freedom of expression. The freedom to be
creative. The freedom to break
boundaries. The Statue of Liberty,
a.k.a. ‘The New Colossus’, stands in New York Harbor and has beckoned,
since 1886, with the words of Emma Lazarus:
‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’
We Americans are a
multi-cultural epic and ethnic collaboration of all the world’s people. Diversity reigns in America. Thus, our food follows suit. In spite of this grand arrangement, the
cuisine in restaurants must still impart a connection – a connection to the
land, the spirit of its immigration, of the culture and of the season. food must always taste good, make sense, and
sate us in a visceral and physical manner.
We must cook to make people happy.
There are four Evolutions
in the Revolution of American Gastronomy, and undoubtedly there are more to
come. In order to get where we are
today, however, Chefs in America (and not always American chefs) had to join
the movement to the past – the return to the land. The objective was to find and source the best
ingredients and if you couldn’t find them to find someone who would grow
them. The purely American Cuisine began
by cooking those indigenous American products well while breaking the ties to
European traditions of cookery. Getting
away, bit by bit, from the ‘classics’ brought new freedoms which allowed
American Chefs to affect International Cuisine, as well. Now the world comes to America to cook…
American Cuisine today is
about bounty. The bounty from our
gardens. Here lies another evolution in
American cooking. From Farmer’s Markets
in Long Island to farms in the Carolinas, to Mid-western corn behemoths and
fertile California valleys, American Chefs are clamoring for local, organic and
sustainable products. We are embracing
cooking with the seasons and we are revolting against animal proteins
inoculated and modified.
And, glory be! we are learning to cook again. A lost art that began to slip away in the
50’s, has found resurgence. Cooks and
Chefs are entertainment Kings and Queens!
Who will lead us into the middle of the century? An American?
European? Asian? Whoever leads us it will still be an
Evolution of American Cuisine. In
America, we are that Evolution, chefs who are the proverbial mixed,
melting, conglomerate pot that is the American Dream.
In American Cuisine Today
we shall explore the American landscape, find its gastronomic pulse, taste the
culture-of-the-moment and dive into the ocean of the American palate – one
great restaurant at a time. We will be
creating Spring Tasting Menus from the minds of the country’s best Chefs and
from Dining Rooms across the land, from sea to shining sea.
We Americans may be defined
by who our natural or adopted parents (family or country) might be. More specifically we are defined by how we
were raised and what events or rituals shaped our memories, and by what defined
by our food preferences. What we eat can
be who we are, or what we wish to be.
‘Pioneers in American Cuisine’
The First New Age (The 70’s) – ‘The Classical Period’:
Jean-Louis Palladin
Alice Waters
Robert Mondavi
Julia Child
Graham Kerr
Madeline Kamman
James Beard
Waverly Root
Craig Clairborne
Greenpeace
Closer To Home (The 80’s) – ‘The Regional American’ Influence:
Paul Prudhomme
Dean Fearing
mark Miller
Wolfgang Puck
Jasper White
Larry Forgione
Jonathan Waxman
John Folse
Jeremiah Tower
Bradley Ogden
The Big Explosion (The 90’s) – ‘The Contemporary Period’ (Also known
as ‘The Las Vegas Period’):
Thomas Keller
Alfred Portale
Charlie Trotter
Charlie palmer
Daniel Boulud
Norman Van Aken
Eric Ripert
Gary Danko
Jean-Georges Vongerichten
Rick Tramonto
Todd English
David Burke
The Food Network
Alfred Portale
New Chefs, New Issues (21st C.) – ‘The Cutting Edge Period’:
Slow Food
The Green Movement
Seasonal, Sustainable,
Local and Organic Food
Grant Achatz
Nathan Myrvold, Chris Young
and maxime Bilet
Food Trucks
David Chang
Daniel Humm
George Mendes
Wiley Dufresne
Joel Salatin (Polyface
farms, VA)
Dan Barber
Bryan Voltaggio
Michael Ciramusti
JB Prince
PolyScience
Linda Runyon
(ofthefield.com)
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