Food writer Andrew Friedman’s latest book The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food seems misleadingly titled to give the impression it would tackle the very concept of the dish: a freestanding food item that can do duty as main course in the pan-cultural human ritual of imbibing aliment at certain times in the day; and report on the trades responsible for transforming plant and animals products into their typical ingestible form. Make no mistake: it is instead all about a dry-aged strip loin with tomato and sorrel, as made and served at Chicago’s Wherewithall in July 2021. The restaurant closed in 2023 “stymied by plumbing issues” and hurt by erratic pandemic dining; it had already had three openings in four years.
The Romance of the Professional Kitchen
Traditionally, to be a chef one had to know a thing or two about cooking generally and almost everything about one cuisine in particular. But at least since the emergence of the celebrity chef phenomenon the skills required of one bearing the title—regardless of celebrity—extend far beyond those involved in food preparation. The chef must have a social media presence, appear on cooking programs, write cookbooks, promote household products, and become a brand. At the very least he must aspire to. All these demands made on the personnel pool ensure only the temperamentally sociable, ambitious, and self-promoting sort achieve the distinction of being cooks able to invent original dishes as well as influence the public’s palate as culinary tastemakers. Because so much is expected of the chef, and the social rewards for the chosen few are so outsize, the profession attracts big personalities willing to do anything short of taking some yeast to help them rise.
Varying proportions of ability and personality can come together in a chef, but personality is always legible in a way that proficiency in the gastronomic arts is not. Even before social media, Marie-Antoine Carême, reputed to be the world’s first celebrity chef, understood the importance of making himself, personality and all, seen. In the absence of a television show to take him on a world street-food tour, and anticipating the power visible feats of culinary prowess as now seen in Instagram food porn reels could have on people not occupied in the F&B industry, he earned his métier qua celebrity chef by making pastry, marzipan, and sugar replicas of ancient Athenian ruins, ornate Chinese fortresses, and other famous buildings of the 18th century. The man used his real, virtuosic skills, combining design sensibility with baking mastery, to put up a dog and pony show whose report could reach those unable to sup at his table.
Lapping it Up
Now that the recipe for making a celebrity chef is well known there is a steady supply of celebrity chefs famous for being celebrity chefs. And, their exertions reliably generate commentary by food writers, who’re themselves culinary bureaucrats conveying celebrity chefdom’s gastronomic agenda to the untutored public. This is as beneficial an arrangement for the leisure class keen to adopt the affectations and idioms of sophistication as it is for the enterprising and hungry chef who hasn’t yet snagged a television show and is willing to show the world how the sausage is made.
Friedman reports on his visits with the people at Nichols Farm and Orchard which grew the tomatoes, Butternut Sustainable Farm which grew the sorrel, the Slagel Family Farm which supplied the beef, and the Smits Farm which contributed the fresh herbs. Leaving no stone unturned he rides with the delivery company workers who bring it all to Wherewithall so it can be transmuted into the frankly unimpressive sounding dish that is the star of the book. Of course, following the compulsive pattern at play here Friedman continues to thicken the plot by including the voices of the workers at the vineyard from which the restaurant sources its wines, the chef de cuisine, the dishwasher, and servers at the joint.
If Friedman’s attention to the unseen and unheard workers who make the dish possible seems to democratise access to the working secrets of fine dining establishments, his gloss on the emergent picture reveals an insider perspective aligned with that of restaurateurs rather than patrons. Analogous to the harmless and irritating enthusiasm of scholars who think the mysteries of the world are exclusively revealed by their own discipline, Friedman’s honorary status as an insider to restaurant culture—though he has never been a chef or worked at a restaurant—comes with an overwrought appreciation for every restaurant-adjacent task from dishwashing to finding parking for the delivery truck that brings ingredients to the establishment. While these jobs no doubt have their challenges and rewards, not every challenge has the material wherewithal to bear poetic description. If the romance and drama of the hidden workings of the restaurant weren’t celebrated enthusiastically enough for some readers’ liking, Friedman ennobles its professionals yet further by opining restaurant meals are too cheap to fairly remunerate them. This is not a widely shared view even among those willing to splurge on fancy meals they know they will enjoy.
A Matter of Taste
By all means Friedman is thorough; as a researcher, as an interviewer, and as writer. He meets everyone, talks to everyone, and reports on everything that goes on within the scope of his brief. The trouble is that not everyone is worth meeting, not everything everyone has to say is terribly interesting or informative, and much of what goes on is so generic as to discourage book-length ampliation. Literally any restaurant anywhere must rely on a variety of trades and businesses, boast of chefs who do much more than cook, and dishwashers who wanted to be chefs, and cooks who wanted to be musicians, or photographers, or something else. These types of stories are legion, and the fact that they also play out in a Chicago restaurant founded by James Beard Winners Johnny and Beverly Clark doesn’t make them any more interesting. Friedman who teaches at the Culinary Institute of America has over his many years of writing with and about chefs and industry insiders accumulated over twenty thousand pages of interviews, and hopes to donate them to an archive after his death. If these are like the interviews contained in this book one may conclude nothing very substantial will be added to the store of human knowledge of culinary culture.
REFERENCE
Andrew Friedman (2023) The Dish: The Lives and Labour Behind One Plate of Food. Mariner Books.
