Tradition, May 17, 2006 — Today we get back to our ongoing "Restaurant Love" series talking about what I'd like to see from chefs and restaurateurs. As I know all of them are sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for the next installment, let's get on with it. Today's topic is tradition. What I mean by tradition is the hundreds (if not thousands) of living culinary traditions found in every corner of the planet.

The first moment of clarity I had around culinary tradition was after a conversation with an amazing chef I know. The focus of his cooking is a little known region in Northern Italy. But he's so talented I figured he could apply his skills to any cuisine. I asked him if one day he might consider applying his prodigious skills for simplicity and picking perfectly complementary flavors to combine to Thai food. And that's when he said the thing that made a deep impression on me: "I can't do that. I wouldn't know what it's supposed to taste like."

All of a sudden enlightenment and understanding rushed in like a really cold drink making its way through your chest on a hot day. You need to actually know what the food is supposed to taste like before you make it. We talked about this in The Importance of Focus. But this is deeply important. And it also explains a lot about why most restaurants are lost making random dishes of random food.

And as new a thought as this was for me, it was also perfectly logical. How could you make something great if you'd never experienced what it's supposed to taste like in its best form? I suppose there are a tiny handful of chefs that have Beethoven like skills. They can literally taste food that they cook in their head. Other than for those few exceptions, I think that this is a valid question.

I don't know why so many chefs appear to eschew tradition. What makes a chef think that they can circumvent decades and even centuries of evolution? And maybe even more importantly, why would they want to?

The evolution of various cuisines can follow funny paths of both necessity and good taste. The origins of sushi for example can be traced to the fourth century BC in southeast Asia where preserving fish in rice by fermenting it was a necessity in order to feed your family. Baccala (salt Cod) likely came from a similar necessity.  (It's funny to imagine how cuisine would have evolved if refrigerators  - and airplanes for that matter - had existed thousands of years ago.) Sometimes economics guide a cuisine as well. People buy what they can afford. But even though practical matters such as preserving food, and economics, as well as what ingredients are available locally affect the development and evolution of a cuisine, ultimately I have to imagine so does taste. When two different fish are available locally and inexpensively I would imagine the one that tastes best after spending months embedded in fermented rice would be the one that became a staple.

And then comes family and memory. Whatever the food is, if it's made by your mom, or grandmother, and especially if it's served on special occasions, that food becomes part of who you are. And eventually it can become part of an entire community, part of the culture. There's a lot of debate about evolution these days. Not to be too political, but I'm a fan of science. And science tells me that evolution is an amazing tool in the development and improvement not only of humans but of things made by humans: language, software, and yes... food.

So... the process of evolution combined with hundreds (if not thousands) of years, and thousands (if not hundreds of thousands or millions) of people have collaborated to create an amazing culinary tradition with delicately balanced ingredients and deliciously meaningful combinations, yet the chef at the restaurant you're eating at has decided that they can improve on it by adding some Asian ingredients or throwing it out all together.

As much as I enjoy the scientific method, I enjoy innovation and creativity even more. But there is something to be said for mastering the tradition before you decide to innovate. And much as I raised a ruckus by claiming most home cooks are worse than they think, I'll raise an equal ruckus and claim that most restaurant chefs either flaunt tradition, or are too impatient to understand how to faithfully recreate a particular food tradition before deciding to tinker.

I know there are exceptions. However, chefs that can create deeply interesting, new and unexpected combinations of flavors that aren't constrained by what's available within a day's horse-ride are few and far between.

The debate is not between tradition and innovation. It's between fashion and lasting value. Remember this thought: perfectly executed dishes based thoughtfully in a deep culinary tradition taste great and don't go out of style.