Video: Who is always wrong about nouvelle cuisine for small portions?
2024 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 12:26
Too easy to shoot the Red Cross. Which, in this case, is represented by the letter of an inexperienced reader of La Stampa (the column is Mirror of the Times) who, like any self-respecting disappointment, vents frustration and discontent towards the restaurant on duty romping at the keyboard and spreading " reviews"Even in the now essential TripAdvisor.
The restaurant targeted is the new one Floor 35 of Turin (of which Dissapore has already spoken), led by the chef Ivan Milani, where ours seems to have organized a pleasant dinner for friends and acquaintances and of which he reports in detail the following impressions:
«I organized a dinner on the skyscraper for a group of friends and acquaintances, and we had a series of inconveniences of no small importance. We chose the 55 euro (without wine) and 80 euro (with wine) menus but at the end the two figures swelled without warning and justification.
Both menus did not include water, coffee, digestives. No refills of dishes and no topping up in wine glasses che was definitely essential.
The courses had the characteristics of the "nouvelle cousine" with quantities similar to the "who saw it" transmission where in essence it seems that the more stars the chef has, the less he puts you on his plate.
To be honest the quality of the food was remarkable, but for those with other tastes, no alternative choices were possible. Some opinions read on Trip Advisor are surprising, where meals of 55 and 80 euros are mentioned when no one has ever paid only those figures. Who will have written them?.
It is obvious that a letter of this nature, filled with evident naivety as well as a certain ignorance of normal catering practice outside the house (water and wine are never included in the fixed price menus, the same applies to coffee and any digestive final) you lend your side to just criticisms and ironic smiles of sufficiency: how do you publicly write that the quality of the food was remarkable "but for those who had other tastes, alternative choices were not possible"?
Alternatives to what? To good taste and a high level cuisine?
Moreover, how do you ask for "encore dishes and topping up glasses" when you are having lunch in one of the most exclusive restaurants in Turin, on the 35th floor of the new and futuristic skyscraper of the Savoy capital, with a breathtaking view of the Monviso and the city itself?
How can you not know that the generous portions from taverns no longer belong, if they ever belonged to it, to haute cuisine and that the maxi dishes of tagliatelle with meat sauce and onion omelette of Fantozziana memory, with annexes bis and tris, do not are they served even more in the most remote trattorias?
It is therefore logical that, faced with a complaint of this stature, chef Ivan Milani had a good game to prepare without delay an answer as detailed as it is cutting, and also hilarious.
In fact, Milani writes addressed to the improvised reviewer by intervening on the Facebook profile of a Dissapore collaborator:
“Anyone who knows me knows that I do not comment and do not respond to reviews but this deserves an exception. The gentleman in question was not present at the dinner! We don't work with agencies. The likeable character has organized a sort of "Piedmont holiday group" by charging the dinner price to his advantage.
It is evident that the organized group is used to attending a type of restaurant different from ours (bis, water and wine at will….).
In addition, the organizer Valente got it wrong and with water, wine and more he ate the profit he had assumed. Hence his anger.
Mirror of the times, as many as 2 reviews on the legendary Tripe Advisor and emails sent to anyone to report that we do not do the "reviews". I go back to my work trying to do it in the best possible way ".
The crest, then! Our flogger of famous restaurants turned out not only to be a fine reviewer, but also a “skilled” event organizer.
But apart from this, you may have noticed in the criticism of ours the inevitable reference to Nouvelle Cuisine, intended as a series of courses reduced in quantity and delicate in flavor served in gastronomic restaurants.
The expression "nouvelle cuisine" is often used to deride enthusiasts with gastronomic tendencies by those who consider it extravagant to pay large bills to leave a restaurant hungry.
Obviously, without knowing what Nouvelle Cuisine really means and what period it refers to.
It is the 1970s; in France a group of young cooks (Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, the Troisgrois brothers, Michel Guerard and others) free themselves from a range of standard recipes made of long cooking, ready-made bases, sauces and dips based on butter and flour, abundant use of fats and spices, endless meals.
Two French journalists and food critics, Henri Gault and Christian Millau (who will found their new guide in 1973), intercept this trend and launch a manifesto for a new cuisine, more modern and light, express and seasonal, which recovers regional riches.
(Link for those who want to learn more).
In the last few days a cartoon entitled “How to properly approach a haute cuisine dish” drawn by Daniel Cuello, illustrator and cartoonist, has been shared a lot on Facebook, in which the small portions of gastronomic restaurants are mocked.
But then, perhaps, it would be a mistake to consider the letter sent to Specchio dei Tempi by the reader of La Stampa in its entirety as a simple outburst. While littered with crude criticism for the most part unshareable, it may contain a grain of truth that deserves consideration other than the easy sarcasm popular among keyboard gourmets.
The small portions of haute cuisine, now accepted by all as normal and adequate, are not a topic that belongs only to the various organizers of retired dinners or to easy-going cartoonists.
The fact that taking them for granted is a common attitude does not mean that instead between the redundancy of the trattoria portion and the ethereal “nouvelle cuisine” portion there cannot be a happy medium.
A concept by now shared does not necessarily represent a correct attitude, but often only what makes us more socially acceptable or more homologated to the trend of the moment.
Sometimes, the King is naked and sometimes the child is a reader of La Stampa.
(we ask, however, to spare us at least the request for an encore, please …)
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