El Bulli tribute dinners (Globe and Mail Article) [General]

2011 Sep 7
At the risk of sounding cynical, I get the impression the journalist devised his narrative before putting pen to paper. In other words, he’s the only one who has given any thought or concern to a “stealing v. honouring” debate.

I would think that any serious chef recognizes the artistic risk in trying to recreate the experience at one of the most celebrated restaurants in the world. It obviously can’t be approached in cavalier manner as a pretender would instantly be exposed.

In the foreword of the APDC cookbook A.Bourdain writes something along the lines of (heavily paraphrased) - ‘Picard is a genius because he is fierce iconoclast in a world of haute cuisine where every hack is copying a genius in Barcelona whose food they have never tried’. In my view, this colourfully describes “stealing”.

A tribute dinner put on by highly talented and devoted disciples, or perhaps in the least, enthusiasts? To me this unquestionably is one of the highest honours one could bestow on el Bulli and Ferran Adria.

2011 Sep 7
It has been my experience that very few newspaper articles whose headline ends with a question mark are worth reading. :-)

2011 Sep 7
Haha FF. Bill O'Reilly-style headlines are the best.

"Fresh Foodie: Secretly hates pizza?"

2011 Sep 7
Something: A or B?
Because obviously it can be nothing else.

Tracinho, I agree with you about the stupid angle, but he tried. And failed. And obviously, no harm was caused to Atelier/Navarra by the publishing of this article. Amirite? Anyone who reads it knows how hard the writer is trying to push his angle. The only thing I can't believe is that he found another chef to substantiate it, kind of.
“If I’ve staged with a chef for six months and I want to use one of his techniques, it’s kind of mine,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s theft. It’s stealing.”

As for the writer having "devised his narrative before putting pen to paper," that's what every journalist does before putting pen to paper.

Another thing that no one mentioned: Did they actually mention Pej in this article? That guy is REALLY. FLIPPING. POPULAR.
"Pej Vongpaisal, an Ottawa air traffic control engineer, spent four years trying unsuccessfully to score a reservation at el Bulli, he said. (The restaurant typically received two million requests annually for just 8,000 spots.) Mr. Vongpaisal has reserved not only for tonight’s dinner, but for the one at Navarra, too."
I do miss his contributions here.

Finally, I found this article really difficult to read and I did not enjoy one second of it, save the Pej mention. I only read it so I could write this post.
Two words: Haute drivel. But I'm not the demographic they're after, so I should probably shut up.

2011 Sep 7
Well they say all publicity is good publicity. The thing I find more interesting is that the Eater National web site picked it up, which means probably stuff like HuffPost picked it up too.

2011 Sep 8
I rather lost a fair amount of respect for the writer's supposed knowledge when he blatantly misspelled stagiaires as "stagières", a spelling that does not exist. Really, if you use a foreign word and decide to italicise it, as you should, the least you can do is take five seconds to check its spelling.

If he got that basic part wrong due to lack of research, what else is wrong? Other than a flimsy excuse for a manufactured controversy, of course.