Hellacious Haute Cuisine

The New York Times reports that Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant “currently serving grilled reindeer heart on a bed of fresh pine, and saffron ice cream in a beeswax bowl,” will shutter in 2024. Noma’s labor practices have helped turn the tide on how the public perceives these experiences. Between that, the popular satire The Menu, and the Zetigeisty Fx show The Bear exposing toxic restaurant culture, proprietors and patrons alike may have finally had enough of this type of experience. Has fine dining jumped the shark? 

Time was, I loved indulging in haute cuisine: getting dressed up, getting fancy, getting fleeced. I’ve indulged in more than my fair share of extravagant meals. Once, at a Paris restaurant, the presentation of truffles in a wooden box and a dessert cart featuring marshmallows with orange blossoms literally brought me to tears. That said, most of these places show off the chef’s virtuosity at the expense of realness.

But when did fine dining get weird? I point you to the inventor of disappearing transparent ravioli. 

Spanish Chef Ferran Adrià
Image: Getty

In 2014, I had just started a job at a contemporary art museum whose staff was anxiously preparing for a visit from food royalty, the world-famous Spanish chef Ferran Adrià. While his star has now faded, those who have heard of Adrià know of his legendary (and long-defunct) restaurant El Bulli, once the epicenter of the fine dining universe and the most coveted reservation on the planet. It made gastro tourism a thing and paved the way for places like Noma. 

What about the food, you ask? El Bulli gave the world liquid olives, flavored air, smoke foam, and so much more. Disappearing transparent ravioli was one of El Bulli’s signature dishes. 

I never dined at El Bulli, but old me would have jumped at the chance. The closest I got was trying molecular gastronomy in Barcelona and Los Angeles restaurants run by Adrià acolytes. 

And here’s the thing about molecular gastronomy: it does not taste good. It’s more fun talking about it and looking at it than eating it. Looking at it and talking about it is the whole point. The dishes can be striking in the way that an abstract artwork might fascinate. But the flavor is a secondary consideration.

Oysters with dry ice fog: one of the weird dishes I ate
while on a molecular gastronomy kick in Barcelona

Consommé with mushroom, onion, and egg bubbles:
another weird and unpleasant dish

My sister- and brother-in-law weren’t fooled by any of this food con when I took them to try a molecular meal at the original José Andrés Bazaar in Los Angeles back in 2010. Family lore has it that after an array of tapas comprised of dry ice, flavored air, and those notorious liquid olives, my brother-in-law headed for the nearest fast-food joint to fill up on recognizable food. (Not learning my lesson, I subsequently brought them to an edgy Savannah restaurant with “dirt” on the menu in 2021.) 

 

I personally threw in the towel on dinner-as-chemistry-experiment after a 2011 meal in Barcelona. I told my Facebook friends: “Tonight's molecular gastronomical tapas by Carles Abellan -- consommé with mushroom, onion, and egg bubbles; ox sirloin with turnips; shrimp with grapefruit ice; oysters with dry ice fog -- was as far as I could go.” I have never looked back.

 

Molecular gastronomy was a culinary con. You don’t hear much about it anymore. But you can thank Ferran Adrià every time you get a dish with flavored foam on the side, or hear about food as art rather than sustenance.

 

The rest of the world is starting to think that some other rarefied fine dining experiences are also cons -- and the mark is the poor sucker who gets stuck with the check. 

 

I will probably never get over my penchant for nice restaurants. But I doubt that I will make a trip to Denmark to experience Noma before it closes. 

Something without reindeer heart on the menu will do just fine. 

Desserts in Paris, 2007