Deconstructing Food

One of the many joys of my somewhat sad life is food. The marriage of texture, flavour, colour and taste is all important- all the elements should join together to create a combined flavour, rather than individual elements being seperated and segregated, like the sportsmen and the nerds at high school.

So you can imagine my disgust, dear reader, at this whole concept of deconstructivists. I am more of the mind to call them destructive.

Where is the talent and the imagination of taking ingredients that should, without fear or favour, be combined to create a dish, rather than bits plopped on a plate like lepers being sent away from healthy people back in the middle ages.

I recently had cause to eat a caesar salad that had been deconstructed. arriving looking sad and forlorn on a plate was a pile of lettuce, next to some pancetta, with shavings of parmesan, and some dry crusts of bread. In a pot in the side sat a dressing that tasted more like ranch than caesar, and finally a coddled egg sat in the middle of the plate, like a fat kid on their own in a ring of bullies.

I was flabbergasted at this foolish idea of pulling apart a classic dish that so relies on its integration of flavour and texture and taste, and actually asked the waiter had the chef gone home and left me to do the work.

I go out to dine so I dont have to spend the time in my own well stocked and quasi professional kitchen. Why then should I be required to build my own dinner, at my expense, whilst there is a chef or a team of staff out back in the kitchen cleaning their nails with their paring knives.

Dont get me wrong. Chefs work probably harder and suffer more stress than almost any occupation I know. I am aware of this becuase I am a qualified chef. But if we continue to deconstruct food and be quite plainly lacking in respect for the combination, then what remains but to stay away from these venues and cook at home.

I am clued up to trends and like new things in food, but lets go back to the days where we get meals served to us that are, in their entirety, complete and ready to devour.