To Restaurant or not to Restaurant
To restaurant or not to restaurant? Guixé wonders out loud in the conversation with St John restaurateur Fergus Henderson (Icon 87, September 2010): should he open a restaurant? Is he asking Henderson for advice, or is it just a ruse? It comes down to this: is the restaurant, with its kitchen/chef /dining room pointing teleologically to single meal experiences off a pre-established menu, and sitting at a table or counter, the ideal framework from which to explore critical food design? The problem is that restaurants, even those touted as flamboyantly contemporary, are rarely more than merely modern. They are places where cooks rearrange form, often rather smartly, and are recognized for their formalist virtues. But contemporary? Modern means not interactive, where diners don’t cook. Modern means socially square, where the party in the reservation book ends up party to themselves. Modern is not mobile, it’s a fixed address, when contemporary life is radically ubiquitous, and eats accordingly. Modern is still in order, where you order in order and are served orderly, while contemporary is out of whack. Modern puts the concept in the food; contemporary finds it there too, to be sure, but everywhere else as well. It doesn’t even have to be edible. And it could be priceless. The rubric reads contemporary cuisine, but in modern restaurants. So what are we proposing? A new sort of restaurant beyond the scope of present-day culinary practice? Or not a restaurant at all?
Jeffrey Swartz