Eat American!

• Share

(8 of 9)

Developing as it is, American food, posh and plebeian, is showing many strengths and weaknesses. To the good are the new and interesting combinations of ingredients that add variety and innovation. There are also the healthful practices of decreasing the amounts of salt and fats and of increasing the appreciation of fresh vegetables and fish.

On the debit side is the persistence of the American sweet tooth, most out of place in main courses like meats cooked with bananas or berries and sugar on fried trout. There is also the idea, borrowed from the worst tearoom tradition, that the use of many different foods and seasonings makes a dish "gourmet." And though it is certainly desirable to have talented young people committed to careers in cooking, there is the hazard that the often exaggerated and premature praise they are getting will make them think they have nothing more to learn. The danger in having such young chefs head their own kitchens is that they miss experienced direction to refine their palates and mature their tastes.

In addition, there are the stylistic lapses. Looking for a single dish that embodies most of the precepts and a few of the pretensions of this new cooking, one could find no better example than the following from the menu of John Sedlar, chef at Saint Estèphe, a highly touted, simple and beautiful restaurant in Manhattan Beach, Calif: "Raviolis au style du Nouveau-Mexique, sauce crème de chèvre," explained as "New Mexico--style raviolis stuffed with carne adobada (red chile ragout) served with a cream garlic chevre sauce." With an English translation that includes Spanish, Italian and French, this is a fairly complex idea in a movement supposedly dedicated to simplicity. That the combination is delectable is perhaps the critical saving grace.

If French is fairly rare on these menus, obfuscation is rampant. At the American Bounty, the student-operated restaurant of the Culinary Institute of America, the menu sometimes lists among the soups "Bowl of the Wife of Kit Carson." Nothing hints that the customer will get a turkey broth with vegetables, chilies, oregano, beans, avocado, cheese and rice. At best, simplicity does prevail. Among dishes that make better reading and perhaps better eating: tenderloins of pork grilled with honey-mustard glaze and black peppercorn butter sauce, from Steven in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Russian ice house soup, a cold blend of sour cream, buttermilk, vodka and shrimp that is a summer selection at Huberts.

That citizens of any nation should be so suddenly excited about their own native chefs, products and dishes is understandably regarded as somewhat bizarre by Europeans and Asians. French Critic Millau in an early observation of the trend labeled it la grande folie (the great folly). With typical Gallic acerbity he concluded, "Americans not only search for their roots, they eat them."