Interview
From an interview yesterday with Grant Achatz:
More than expensive and rare, it’s just that we never say we can’t do something. That’s just not even an option. On the opening menu we were doing the PB&J dish and we would buy cases and cases of grapes because each giant two-and-a-half pound cluster of grapes could only produce three perfect grapes that were still attached to stem as we wanted. The running joke in the restaurant is that every day at staff meal, there would be some iteration of grapes. And it ran the gamut. There was Waldorf salad, grape smoothies, etc. It was just because we were producing a retarded amount of grapes. And we did the same with hearts of palm. So when we approach certain things like that, there’s always one thing on the menu that the perfect piece that is like one out of 100, but we’re going to buy the 100 and use one. That’s just the way it is. We don’t limit ourselves. The truffle dish is another example. We’re just trying to get that perfect piece.
I'd like to point out two things: 1) the idea of finding and using exclusively the perfect bite or ingredient in a batch of ingredients. Yesterday I saw an awful commercial for some two-bit restaurant in Cleveland that boasted about "only using the freshest ingredients". I commented about how absurd such a boast is. Firstly, no one uses "only the freshest ingredients". No lies. You buy food by the case. If it's fresh by the time it gets to your kitchen, it won't be by the time you're 3/4ths through with the case. But you serve it all to make money. It's the way economics work. If you throw out everything that isn't the freshest it could possibly be, you'd double or triple cost. This is not to say that you serve bad or rotten ingredients. Just that there's a difference between the fish that was caught that morning and served that night and the wagyu steaks that have been in your freezer for a month. Most of us probably have an idea about how long we can keep vegetables useable in a refrigerator. And even after those carrots are a little bendy, they're still just fine for throwing in the stock pot or pureeing into a sauce.
The second thing I'd draw your attention to: The use of the word "retarded". Setting aside any hippy calls by the language police, I really like the phrasing because it characterizes someone who is generally portrayed by the industry as being larger than life.
More than expensive and rare, it’s just that we never say we can’t do something. That’s just not even an option. On the opening menu we were doing the PB&J dish and we would buy cases and cases of grapes because each giant two-and-a-half pound cluster of grapes could only produce three perfect grapes that were still attached to stem as we wanted. The running joke in the restaurant is that every day at staff meal, there would be some iteration of grapes. And it ran the gamut. There was Waldorf salad, grape smoothies, etc. It was just because we were producing a retarded amount of grapes. And we did the same with hearts of palm. So when we approach certain things like that, there’s always one thing on the menu that the perfect piece that is like one out of 100, but we’re going to buy the 100 and use one. That’s just the way it is. We don’t limit ourselves. The truffle dish is another example. We’re just trying to get that perfect piece.
I'd like to point out two things: 1) the idea of finding and using exclusively the perfect bite or ingredient in a batch of ingredients. Yesterday I saw an awful commercial for some two-bit restaurant in Cleveland that boasted about "only using the freshest ingredients". I commented about how absurd such a boast is. Firstly, no one uses "only the freshest ingredients". No lies. You buy food by the case. If it's fresh by the time it gets to your kitchen, it won't be by the time you're 3/4ths through with the case. But you serve it all to make money. It's the way economics work. If you throw out everything that isn't the freshest it could possibly be, you'd double or triple cost. This is not to say that you serve bad or rotten ingredients. Just that there's a difference between the fish that was caught that morning and served that night and the wagyu steaks that have been in your freezer for a month. Most of us probably have an idea about how long we can keep vegetables useable in a refrigerator. And even after those carrots are a little bendy, they're still just fine for throwing in the stock pot or pureeing into a sauce.
The second thing I'd draw your attention to: The use of the word "retarded". Setting aside any hippy calls by the language police, I really like the phrasing because it characterizes someone who is generally portrayed by the industry as being larger than life.