Deconstructed Meatloaf

From reading the headling to an entry on Michael Bauer's blog this morning "Food that reaches for the stars," I thought Bauer was going to ridicule restaurant dishes presented as architectural towers. But the actual complaint was something else. A reader had written complaining about the need to "deconstruct" his food. ".... the house special, meatloaf, that was supposed to be comfort food; instead it discomforted me. Again, mashed potatoes as the foundation, with a thick slice of meat loaf next, with vegetables on top of the meatloaf, all topped by a lava flow of gravy. In deconstructing this dish, the result on the plate looked even worse than the pureed beet escapade -- sloppy and unappealing."

This complaint is certainly something very new and surprising. It is a child of the obsessions of post-modern cuisine. It wasn't so long ago that putting multiple ingredients together was a way to make something delicious: beef stew comes to mind. Then chefs started 'deconstructing' the food. A few years ago, I had a particularly interesting Bloody Mary constructed/deconstructed by Ludovic Lefebvre consisting of frozen vodka crystals, tomato sorbet and celery foam. This trend along with the recent super infatuation with farm-branded terroir-driven ingredients as pure as the driven snow has led to the complaint above where someone is upset when meatloaf is served atop mashed potatoes. Ridiculous, I say. Where's my Hungarian Goulash?