As we noted yesterday, Alinea chef Grant Achatz is contributing to The Atlantic’s new food blog, creatively titled “The Atlantic Food.” Which is now live! And, um, is pretty awesome.
What we care about, of course, is what Grant has to say. His first post is up, a reflection on the various “culinary congresses” that he attends several times a year. These conferences — international summits of big-deal chefs, generally focusing on molecular gastronomy (or whatever you want to call it) — tend to pop up regularly in Europe, and can help solidify a chef’s global reputation.
For Achatz, the first few that he attended, several years ago, were joyful exercises in idea-sharing and showmanship — levitating wine corks! Wafers that, Wonka-like, taste like an entire Christmas dinner! (On that matter, we get a curiously unsettling metaphor for apotheotic cannibalism — “a wafer that captures the essence of baby Christ as he lay in the manger.”) But as Achatz has become more and more globally famous (and, one imagines, a bigger headliner for the conferences’ organizers) the challenge of one-upping his previous years’ demonstrations gets harder. With characteristic wit, he paints a picture of himself as a tired old man, dodging deadlines and evading requests for advance outlines of what he’ll demonstrate for this year’s Madrid Fusion event.
As a blog post, it’s, well, not a blog post. It’s more of a personal essay, Huffington Post-style. But that’s picking nits — we’re beyond psyched to have a regular dose of Achatz showing up in our RSS feed. Contributions are also in from the likes of Sally Schneider, Marion Nestle, and Bill Niman, all worth checking out.
Madrid Fusion, G8 Summit for Chefs [The Atlantic Food]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]
[Photo: Madrid Fusion]
