As a scientist, I am very excited to see chefs, cooks, and foodies delving into food science. I am up for the most outlandish and crazed ideas. I too feel very committed to understanding, making, documenting, and preserving legacy cuisines (Colombian, Native American, etc) and I do not feel that is threatened by MolGas experimentation.

What I do lament is that MolGas will not live up to it’s potential and become sidetracked into elitist extraordinarily expensive venues where the science can become smoke and mirrors for the sake of being smoke and mirrors rather than a teachable moment. Hope that makes sense.

I am also an artist so I can totally appreciate a chef’s art but I think that the enduring work manifests through a combination of legacy techniques and cuisines with a “modern” or contemporary approach to ingredients etc.

I think the greater measure of transcendental food experiences lies in the dedication of the chef to outstanding preparation and flavor development while maintaining simplicity of ingredient.

Alas, I have to run to an on-location shoot for the next two days so I will be out of regular touch.

Thanks for visiting!

But as I think about both tradition and evolution in cooking, I find myself asking questions. Is tradition – if that means simply repeating established practice – necessarily a good thing? Are newfangled approaches – simply by virtue of their novelty – necessarily bad?

For me, a good dish is one that successfully arranges the interaction of flavors, aromas, textures, temperatures, and appearance. Classic cuisine has had the benefit of time – or evolution – to select and perfect combinations of ingredients and techniques that succeed in this way. Molecular Gastronomy has not.

A traditional chef who is competent to repeat classics, but lacking a deep comprehension of why things work as they do is a talented craftsman, but not an artist. Chefs like this can deliver wonderful meals as long as they stay within familiar bounds, but most often fall short when they attempt to innovate. Witness the many technically competent, but undisciplined and clueless practitioners of arbitrary fusion cuisine.

In the realm of MolGast, a chef who creates novel – but otherwise unenlightening – combinations is a hack. But when a chef, in either realm, is an artist…

Creative, and worthwhile, invention in the kitchen is an expression of an artistic vision. When a chef, proceeding from a deep understanding, uses MolGast to realize an otherwise impossible dish – one that expresses something compelling – they have done something great. Molecular gastronomy is important, not because of all the silly things people have done with it, but because it occasionally permits a true artist to precisely isolate the salient aspects juxtaposed in his composition.

These people who are working on colorless essences or flavorants are mostly making one off artificial flavorings that many of us try to avoid these days. go figure.

It may be cool, and it may present new delivery of flavors, but mostly it’s for the ‘wow’ factor and the ego of the chef, in my opinion.

Food, to me, is best when it’s low tech. Apply the right type of heat to the food, if it needs heat, make the flavors really say something.

I work in IT; don’t put it on my plate, too!