August 2008 Archives

A recent thread on Chowhound revealed that Zuni Cafe—one of the local temples to "California" cuisine—was serving a "Blossum Bluff" nectarine for dessert priced at four dollars and fifty cents. So far, so good, but the message also reported that this nectarine was served by itself, unadorned, unsliced and rolling around on a plate (see photo).

There are scores of replies in this thread and they fall into two camps: the outraged and the apologists. The outraged think that it is absurd for a restaurant to buy a flat of nectarines, and then plop them onto plates with just a quick washing as the total value added. They point out that anyone in San Francisco can go to the Farmer's Market and buy their own organic nectarine and cut it up and eat it for a lot less than $4.50. The apologists insist that this is a perfect nectarine, and the essence of California cuisine is that the ingredients are the most important, the cooking is entirely secondary. And besides, Zuni is a CAFE not a Michelin three-star restaurant.

Personally, put me in the outraged camp. Restaurants need to add something or there's just no point in going out. The nectarine should have at least been sliced and served with a sprig of mint or some other garnish. How many people would present such a dessert at a home dinner party, or even a home dinner?

I think high end sushi is the cuisine with the closest affinity to purity of ingredients that California cuisine purists are always preaching. However, no sushi chef would dream of putting anything before the customer without attempting to make certain that the presentation was perfect. Rolling around on a plate is not perfect presentation.

At 7:45 a.m. on August 7, 1974 a twenty-four year old Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped off of the roof of the World Trade Center on to a ¾-inch steel cable and walked to the other tower, then--without stepping off of the cable--he walked back. For forty-five minutes he stayed on the cable, eventually making eight traverses while dancing, kneeling, saluting and laying prone on the wire 1,350 feet above the plaza far below. Seven years before, while sitting in a dentist's office, Petit had been paging through a magazine and had seen a drawing of the twin towers proposed for lower Manhattan. For seven years he had practiced, schemed, and dreamed. James Marsh's thrilling documentary "Man on Wire" tells the story of how that dream came true.