
The Japanese Origins of Modern Fine Dining - lnguyen
https://www.eater.com/2017/9/7/16244278/japanese-fine-dining-bocuse-tsuji-kaiseki
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majos
My pet theory is that the rise in the "Japanese" style of fine dining -- which
to me is characterized by pristine ingredients and a sort of atomized style,
where most dishes appear as a combination of elements -- is in part explained
by a roughly concomitant growth in the weight of reviews in determining a
restaurant's place in a hierarchy. Maybe I'm underrating the influence of
professional reviews before the 60s, or overrating the influence of
professional and amateur reviews now, but it does seem to me that "Japanese"
style cooking is easier to justify intellectually, and for that reason more
likely to earn the Michelin etc. plaudits that make these restaurants' names.

An audience can pretty easily grasp an account of the right
grower/forager/fisher supply chains that produce really nice ingredients, and
they're fun to write and read about too. And being able to discuss a dish as a
sum of constituent parts (how many "nice" menus these days describe dishes as
just a list of ingredients, one of which are unexpected?) makes the task even
clearer. The built in diversity and, sometimes, narrative of a tasting menu
also helps.

Compare this to the difficulty of explaining why a single curry or mole tastes
good, where it's hard not to fall back on hand-waving terms like "complex", or
"haunting" or something. These dishes are, at least to me, far harder to pick
apart and analyze in a convincing way, and that sort of analysis seems
necessary to justify "fine dining", from what I can tell. Last I checked this
was reflected in the allocation of Michelin stars, for which there are close
to zero Indian, African, or Mexican (to name a few huge cuisines) last I
checked, (though I think Mexico may have made some headway recently.)

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justicezyx
Agreed, Chinese dish, on the other hand, always appears as stir fry, no matter
how different things are actually made...

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Mikeb85
That's ignoring things like Chinese BBQ and dim sum, which are about as far
from stir fried as it's possible to get.

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justicezyx
Those 2 things are <1% of what we Chinese thought as "Chinese cooking".

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Mikeb85
Fair, but that's a significant portion of Chinese cuisine in restaurants
around here.

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justicezyx
Exactly, right? And they are not Chinese cooking...

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Mikeb85
> And they are not Chinese cooking...

Lol, there's a huge Chinese population here, and Chinese restaurants only have
Chinese cooks... And it's mostly Chinese who go to them.

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Mikeb85
As interesting as this is, Japanese kaiseki, while having some aspects in
common and influencing some chefs, is not really the origin of modern fine
dining.

French fine dining comes from the aristocratic courts of Europe, and if you go
to one of the old temples of gastronomy in France, it's easier to see the
influence. You start with hors d'œuvres, then move to entrées (appetizers),
then typically you'll have fish and/or meats, often cooked on the bone then
carved tableside. Then you move on to cheese/dessert carts. That's fine
dining.

Anyhow, the more modern style of many plated courses is largely a result of
the wave of fine dining that came out of Spain, where chefs started serving
many tapas in succession. And when the Spanish and French influences mixed,
voilà, you have where we are today.

However that's not to say there's nothing similar in other cultures. Kaiseki
is of course similar (however also differs in many ways) to Western fine
dining. Dim Sum is quite similar to tapas, yet different. Sushi is also
similar to tapas in many ways.

Anyhow, while there are similarities between lots of cultures' dining styles,
the origin of Western fine dining is without a doubt French fine dining +
Spanish tapas.

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empath75
In a less serious sense-- prime time on The Food Network is basically non stop
competitive cooking shows--a genre invented in Japan, afaik. That is going to
have to have an influence on up and coming chefs. It's certainly had an
influence on how ordinary people perceive chefs.

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kurthr
Ahhh... Iron Chef! Those were the days, with Chairman Kaga grasping the
perfect pepper, "Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are." :^)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mhAPrBddfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mhAPrBddfM)

I learned that adding truffle will make anything better, and that you can make
ice cream from anything.

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gumby
From the article: "the predominant narrative for the genealogy of contemporary
international fine dining is that its paternity is exclusively French."

Can't deny that's the dominant narrative and for the scope of the article,
totally appropriate, but leaves out the answer to "why France?"

In the 1600s, Marie de' Medici shows up and, (allegedly) appalled by the local
cuisine, sends for her Italian cook. Since her son was Louis XIII, that set
the standard. Which makes it mystifying that Italian haute cuisine has been
pretty much absent on the stage. It's not like you can't get a great meal
there!

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nemo44x
Haute Cusine is more than good food. It tends to be avante guard cooking with
certain service standards. There tends to be a certain evolution and style to
it. Marco Pierre White made some incredible food that was highly influential
to Western haute cuisine but anyone serving food that way today would be
considered passé even though it's simply astonishingly good, creative food.

Italy is steeped in a good tradition that is its own thing. Haute cusine
exists there. Look no further than Osteria Francescana. That caused an outrage
in the Italian press when opened but is now universally agreed upon that its
one of the worlds best restaurants with progressive Italian cooking. A
revolution of a restaurant to a place resistant to change from tradition.

Although I love fancy restaurants I prefer the warm, family style approach to
food you see throughout Italy.

Which is why Spain is my favorite food place. A great acceptance of super
experimental food with a love for the traditional regional cuisine. It's such
an open minded but authentic and true to itself good culture.

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riffraff
did Osteria Francescana actually cause genuine outrage?

There have been avantgarde cooks in Italy for decades, e.g. the "cyber egg"
from Scabin dates to the '90s, and the "raviolo aperto" or "fish dripping"
from Marchesi are from the '80s I think.

As an italian, the only time I remember real outrage about cooking, is when a
tv-famous chef mentioned he puts garlic in the amatriciana, but I've been out
of the country for a while.

EDIT: I correct myself, seems the "fish dripping" is from 2005.

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nemo44x
I'm not Italian and have limited knowledge of the true traditions and broad
relationship with food. The Netflix show "Chefs Table" featured this
restaurant and spent some time exploring the local suspicion when the
restaurant transformed.

Was it sensationalizing it? I'm not sure.

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dredmorbius
"Fine dining" itself is largely a post-1980 phenomenon.

[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fine+dining&ye...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fine+dining&year_start=1958&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cfine%20dining%3B%2Cc0)

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empath75
A concept can exist independently of a word.

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dredmorbius
As noted in a parallel thread, searches of other related terms suggest
otherwise.

If you've got specific evidence of a strong tradition of eating out at fine-
service restaurants, I'd be interested. "Coulda been different" doesn't carry
a whole lot of weight. Coulda not been different as well.

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jeff6845
I spent quite a few years growing up in Japan back several decades ago, and my
experience is that Japan is about efficiency. Most common foods were served in
a bowl, not in smaller, highly decorate plates, and more of them. Food was
always served prepared, meaning one did not need a knife or fork. One had to
learn to use chopsticks, and for rice as well.

There were establishments that look close to the pictures if one searches the
usual search engines, but I observed most food was eaten in the home, or
packed in lunch boxes.

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gkanai
> Most common foods were served in a bowl, not in smaller, highly decorate
> plates

Kaiseki ryori is not 'common food' (a good kaiseki meal in a major city is
easily 30-50,000 JPY or more) so what the article is writing about and what
the average Japanese meal is are two very different things.

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nihonde
定食 is usually served in five or six small dishes, and that’s definitely
everyday food in Japan. The tableware is not often special, though.

This article is backward to me. I’ve lived in New York and Japan long enough
to know that the best food in NYC is average in Japan. NYC is stuck on a weird
old-fashioned idea that French cuisine is the pinnacle of dining out. I’ll
take any 4+ Tabelog rated kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto over Le Bernardin or any
other Michelin-rated celebrity chef vanity room every single time.

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krapp
>I’ve lived in New York and Japan long enough to know that the best food in
NYC is average in Japan.

It seems odd to deem the entire culinary culture of an international
metropolis as being worth less than the mediocre fare of a country that puts
corn and mayonnaise on pizza.

I'm not saying the best food in Japan isn't the best food in the world, but
Japan's average is in no way better than the best in NYC. That's just silly.

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nitrogen
_...corn and mayonnaise on pizza._

That sounds amazing, and very vaguely like Mexican food.

There's no reason to believe that we in America have the final word on what
pizza ought to be.

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Udik
> There's no reason to believe that we in America have the final word on what
> pizza ought to be.

You might have forgotten an /s there at the end. Regards from Italy.

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contingencies
I remember reading an article on how the Italian fascist period under
Mussolini invented a lot of minimalist and modern dining traditions, however
try as I might I can't find it again.

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mabub24
There was Italian Futurist cooking, outlined by Marinetti and Fillia. It was
very modernist in the 20th-century sense. But, considering Futurism's uneasy
relationship with Mussolini, I don't know how much influence it had on the
Mussolini era. I imagine he would've had a weird "traditional Italian" and
Roman Empire centric idea of cooking, but that's just me hypothesizing.

See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_cooking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_cooking)

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johansch
This seems extremely superficial. :/

The headline doesn't really deliver.

