Impressions of Impressives

The closest "restaurant" to my house when I was living at Blackberry was fifteen minutes away and called the "Porn O'Que." It is literally a pit stop on the side of the road that combines an adult super store and a barbeque joint. Needless to say I never made it in for some chicken and the food scene in Tennessee was nonexistent. On my way through Chicago, I made sure to stop at every restaurant I'd taken for granted. I've always loved the atmosphere at Avec, where the line is in the dining room and about the same size, but now I really appreciated the food and the cooks behind it. In one day, I went to Hot Doug's, Xoco, Big Star, and Alinea. Which one had the best food? The one set up like a Mexican-influenced McDonald's, Xoco. There wasn't a fancy presentation, no foams, powders or pillows filled with hazelnut air, just plain old yummy food.
"Eating" at Alinea put an absolute end to any desire I had to eat at Moto, El Bulli, or any other restaurant claiming to experiment with molecular gastronomy. I waited three years to eat at Alinea. I legitimately expected it to be the best meal of my life, but if Rick Bayless's new street food beat out Alinea, you know it was not the best meal of my life. The whole time, I kept thinking...What did he do to my food? At first, I was wowed by the brioche foam, and then I figured out, I knew how to do that. I just wouldn't want to. I'd rather just eat brioche. Brioche is really good all crispy and buttery...it's silly all foamy and bubbly.
The end of the meal really pissed me off. I had to suck bubblegum out of a tube...with creme fraiche. Imagine if you were on a first date, with important clients, your family...and you had to finish a meal by sucking on a tube to get creme fraiche out. Great. I paid this much money to do what?! I'll double what I just paid for you to serve me something edible for dessert.
What I figured out is that eating at Alinea is probably better suited for foodies, not cooks. I'm sure there are chefs out there incredibly impressed with what Grant Achatz is doing, and maybe that's the kind of food they want to end up making. But ask any cook what their favorite meal is. It's pizza, a perfectly cooked steak or their mother's chicken noodle soup. The kind of food I want to make will not manipulate the ingredients to resemble something they're not. Bacon will be bacon, caviar will be caviar, hazelnuts will be hazelnuts...because all of those things are good the way they are.
Mark once told me a story about a line cook who burnt a vegetable. The chef took the guy, brought him to the farm and made him apologize to the farmer himself for burning his beautifully grown vegetable. Respect the ingredients, don't screw with them and your food will turn out just fine- if not great. You tell me- which is more impressive- A chef that can manipulate an ingredient to do something unique to/with with, or a chef that can highlight an ingredient and use it thoughtfully?