In the current issue of the academic journal The Senses & Society (Vol. 7, Issue 2), I explore the trend of contemporary chefs around the world manipulating taste through the filters of time and place. (The pricey issue is available from Berg Publishers as a free trial.) Travel with me to Greece, Chicago, Copenhagen, Roses, and Tokyo to understand how the historical-emotional connection to nostalgia and memory can have an impact on flavor, and moreover on the experience of dining. Using a sensory framework posited by anthropologist C. Nadia Serematakis, who longs for the taste of a now extinct Greek peach, I suggest that Achatz, Redzepi, Adria, and Narisawa are culinary alchemists who “concoct new combinations of time and place, mixing modernity with tradition, playing with our sense, creating mythic tastes and cooking up contemporary myths.” Read on…
June 19, 2012 · 8:22 am
Just Peachy: My Exploration of Taste Trends in Contemporary Cooking
Filed under Food for Thought
Tagged as Alinea, El Bulli, Ferran Adria, Grant Achatz, Nadia Seremetakis, Next, noma, peach, Rene Redzepi, rodhakino, Yoshihiro Narisawa
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