In 2001 I handled publicity for Food & Wine, and one of the selections for the magazine’s annual Best New Chefs package was Wylie Dufresne. The nod helped his tiny, then-unknown restaurant, 71 Clinton Fresh Food, start getting all sorts of attention for what I called then “oddity dining.” I went with the magazine’s then-publisher, Julie McGowan, and some clients of hers. It was super interesting and all, with the tiny bits and pieces you've never heard of thrown together, but I had to stop for pizza on the way home.
Now, more than a decade later, he’s cooking at WD-50, his initials plus his street address, on Clinton Street again (maybe he gets lost a lot), and he’s super famous. I saw him on HBO’s Treme even. By the way, the little I know of him tells me he would hate this simplistic analysis I’ve just spun about his work.
Two years ago Nathan Myhrvold demonstrated what a smart person who made a fortune in Microsoft could do with a billion dollars and a glass-walled stove with his Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. This five-volume, acrylic-encased opus for $625 has everything the super-informed foodie could ever want—even a chapter about parasitic worms and bacterial growth. Scrummy!
But even a philistine like me can see that there is newness out there, both in the preparation and presentation of food at events, partially driven by this new intellectualism.
Taking food apart and putting it back together in new deconstructed versions entered the mainstream catering world for me a few seasons back when I kept seeing all these new versions of B.L.T. hors d’oeuvres. Some had the bacon bits and lettuce shards in scooped-out cherry-tomato cups, some rolled the bacon and tomato in lettuce and sliced it like sushi, and it all tasted pretty good.
Equally clever, though considerably less appetizing (for this eater, at least) was a takeoff on Andy Warhol’s signature soup cans (aren’t you glad I didn’t use the word iconic?) at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach. In black-and-white A&P tuna cans, caterers served a gloppy-looking tuna tartare, three helpings per can. I can’t imagine being able to eat the whole thing without staining something or someone.
One idea that I thought so simple but genius was at the New York City Wine & Food Festival this past fall. As a way to break through the glut of wines and drinks being offered, one exhibitor hired waiters to walk through the crowd with backpacks squirting tastings on the fly.
If that's not weird enough for you, why not serve guests a Vaportini? Since people tell me I must live and breathe alcohol, this seemed right up my alley. It’s actually a branded contraption; you provide the 70- or higher-proof alcohol. Taking inspiration from a crack pipe, there’s a glass sphere and a glass straw and a burning candle (wait, isn’t this how Richard Pryor burned his face off?), and this “revolutionary new way to consume alcohol” will have you feeling the effects instantly. The manufacturers claim that their new invention will make you drink more responsibly. While I’m suspicious, I haven’t yet tried it, but here’s someone who has.
One company in particular caught my attention—well, actually it caught Food & Wine magazine’s attention for me (I’m still a loyal reader. Hi, Dana!)—as being a worthy exemplar of the new high-concept approach to event catering: Pinch Food Design. (Naturally, other BizBash editors have been following the company's work as well.)
So I recently tagged along with co-founder Bob Spiegal as he catered a benefit for Hackensack University Medical Center at the Museum of Modern Art to take in some of his new ideas in catering. This was a massive affair, with more than a thousand guests and live performers on four or five different floors of the museum, each floor with its own unique food "happening."
Pinch has a concept that food and design are equal partners in the event experience. Spiegal’s partner, T.J. Girard, has a background in set design, and all of their serving tables and displays are custom-made (and some they manufacture for sale). In addition, they have their own ideas about cutlery.
In a wood frame with hanging metal hooks, they hung hole-punched focaccia—what looked like hundreds of them. They were warm to room temperature, which I was fine with, but the staging required the portions be of a certain heft, and I wasn’t committed to eating the whole piece. Watching people approach the rack, which Pinch describes as a sort of "food theater," was entertaining, to say the least. Some people just yanked their slices off the hook with their bare hands. Others used a napkin, daintily—like that board game Operation, where you can’t let your tweezers touch the metal sides or the patient's nose will light up—watching carefully so that the slice was removed without touching the hook.
One of the cleverest ideas was their baby back ribs, served on two-pointed spears. The bottom, which sat on a wood surface, was the rib (meat only) flattened, and at the other end of the spear were the condiments. The idea was to take a little bite at one end and then the other. And it seemed to work well.
There was real inventiveness in the food itself. My favorite was the spaghetti-and-meatball. It was a little round pillar of angel hair with a tiny meatball up top, like a mini red-headed snowman. It was a big mouthful, but oh so tasty.
For surprise factor, you can’t beat the the two-man "sushi wand." They stage it like a little performance-art piece, but the servers don’t act all so serious, which I appreciate. They are carrying what looks like a wood block with dozens of sushi pieces, but then they slowly separate, and the block zigzags into a little bridge between the two servers. So you can walk up to the tray (they both held steady, I watched) and it’s kind of floating in air. Then the minute you step away, there are servers with aprons giving you napkins, and mercifully, taking the dirtys and putting them in their pouches. Genius.
But the overall sense of excitement and ingenuity really made the evening. I knew only a handful of people, but all the interaction and surprise made people friendly and approachable, which is I think what the concept of food is all about. Isn’t it?
