I great man name Spongebob once said that all he knew was fine dining and breathing. The embarrassing reality is that, with one exception, I've basically only worked in fine dining. And all I know is the finest of dining. And breathing.
I can't tell anyone how to come up with a good salad, i barely know how to make sandwiches. I could create a 20 course tasting menu for Le Bertin that doesn't use any of the same ingredients, but i'd be lost trying to figure out 20 dishes to serve myself for lunch and dinner.
Often, a lot of you make the mistake of thinking I know a lot about food. I actually don't know very much about food in general. But I know quite a bit about fancy food, and I know a WHOLE lot about fancy vegan food. I would even say, I know more about the food I make for a restaurant that doesn't exist yet than I do about the food I make at the place I work now. I've been living in the world of tasting menus, hydrocolloids, deconstructed desserts, minimalist plating, and doing it all without any animal products. I could'nt tell you how to make a cool salad. I know something about making cool burgers. I can tell you everything about how to turn a daikon radish into a piece of "fish" that tastes remarkably like Monkfish, and how to serve it.
I think the biggest factor currently is that I hate so much of kitchen culture but, not only is it all I know, I know it too well. I'm annoyed by cooks and chefs who make food pretty much just to seem cool and jerk themselves off. But also, I legitimately love cool food. I love pretty plates, rare ingredients, complicated and novel preparations. I can only speak the culinary language of metric recipes and french techniques.
I fuckin hate it but I don't think I will ever know, understand, or love something as much as I do food. I'll never know something well enough to be able to spontaneously create something using a back stock of accumulated knowledge as I do with food.
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