by Karen Leibowitz

For the past year, I’ve been masquer- ading as a restaurant person. To be honest, I only worked in a restau- rant briefly, and for most of that time, I was a flailing amateur, but ever since my husband and I pub- lished a book about our adventures running a pop-up, I’ve been treated like an industry insider. For the most part, I assume that I’m the beneficiary of reflected glory, but I do enjoy the attention, especially when it comes from people whose opinion I admire, like Chef Dominique Crenn. I met her one night when she was eating received a particularly luxurious because the a late dinner at a restaurant that I Michelin star last October, but restaurant is situated in the mid- helped open. We chatted for a few when I first went, in July, it felt like dle of the Marina, a minutes at the bar, and she was so a neglected treasure. Only about neighborhood known for binge nice that I made a reservation at her half the tables were occupied, drinking. The menu offers a choice restaurant as soon as I got home. and the quiet dining room felt between two tasting menus, but

2 | Lucky Peach Paintings by fede yankelevich

Rorschach food by THIERRY AGEE

butter sphere topped with a dollop of cassis jam; she advised us to con- sume it all at once, as a shot. How charming! How personal! The story behind the food made it all the more compelling, because I could identify the burst of flavors I was experiencing as something I now recognized as “French childhood.” Over the next few courses, I realized that several of Crenn’s dishes were in fact avant-garde updates of classic flavor combina- tions, which is why the high-flying techniques didn’t feel like mere you cannot order a la carte—you are made a version of kir royale that stunts. The textures were innova- in the chef’s hands. paired cassis with cider instead of tive, but the flavor combinations Indeed, Crenn delivered the champagne. This dish, she said, were powerfully satisfying, and second amuse bouche herself, with was an adaptation of her childhood even vaguely emotional. When I an explanation that when she was memory. In Crenn’s updated ver- tasted a beef tartare garnished with growing up in Brittany, her mother sion, the cider is enclosed in a cocoa tiny pearls of smoked sturgeon,

Lucky Peach | 3 horseradish custard, and rye crumbles, I felt Tasting Menu” and a longer “Sonnet Tasting that she had somehow tapped into my own Menu.” New potatoes with chestnut spheres, memories of lox and pumpernickel bagels potato consommé emulsion, and truffles are with my grandparents, mixed with the beef- called “Mémoire d’enfance;” a plate adorned and-horseradish flavors of Passover. This with a wide stripe of wild mushrooms is “A Frenchwoman had transformed my Ameri- Walk in the Forest,” and an intermezzo is can-Jewish childhood into haute cuisine, and given the grandiose title of “Crennologie.” I loved it. It may be tempting to dismiss all of The next time she came to our table, I this as frou-frou nonsense. It could seem poured out all of the memories her food had solipsistic for a dish to allude to the chef’s evoked. She laughed, ducked her head a bit memories of childhood, but ultimately, it has when I praised her cooking, and said that a sociable function, like a poem that draws she liked to hear about the emotions inspired on a specific experience to communicate a by her food. I felt like we were becoming universal truth. In terms of poetry, Crenn is friends—talking about our childhoods and much more of a Romantic than a Modern- trading compliments. Wasn’t it great to know ist: at Atelier Crenn, food is offered up as the chef? a tactile poem, which registers both emo- And then she went and spoke with the tionally and intellectually, though personal table across the room. expression is primary. And because the food A few minutes later, I saw her standing is presented as art, the chef resembles an art- at the door, deep in conversation with another ist. Perhaps not coincidentally, Crenn fulfills couple. many preconceptions about artists: she is Who were these people? How did she stylish, passionate, feminine, and French. know all of them? I felt a twinge of jealousy. She looks like an artiste. She was making a personal connection with Of course, not everyone subscribes to each of them. It had nothing to do with who this idea of the artistic chef. In a review for had met her before. We all felt like her cook- San Francisco magazine, Josh Sens wrote ing was speaking directly to us. Was this the that “Crenn has made her namesake atelier a sign of a great chef or a great personality? bold song of herself, a restaurant so devoted to her personal expression that occasionally it seems that she forgets about the people on nitially, Dominique Crenn planned to the other end.” In other words, personal cui- call her restaurant Atelier 123, using the sine can be perceived as egotistical, or even IFrench word for “workshop” or “studio,” domineering. Crenn insists that she isn’t but in the end, she decided to name it in interested in imposing her vision on her din- homage to her father, who was an artist and ers. She just wants to let them get to know a politician. The restaurant is filled with her. She reflected somewhat ruefully that she paintings by Mr. Crenn, but the name also is praised and criticized for the same quality: cultivates the idea that his daughter is an “Personal can be viewed by some people as artist in her own studio. Atelier Crenn con- very endearing, but other people will tell you sciously draws a connection between cook- that you can’t be personal. And I don’t think ing and art, or rather, Art with a capital A: that’s right.” the restaurant’s tagline is “Poetic Culinaria,” and diners have a choice between a “Haiku

4 | Lucky Peach he Personal is Political,” the femi- notions wholly distinct from grandmothers’ nists declared in the 1970s, in recipes. “Personal cooking” is a term that’s “T what was once a radical assertion also employed by chefs with avant-garde tech- that individual lives matter far more than had niques, unconventional menu designs, and been previously acknowledged. A generation later, we hardly need to declare the importance of “the per- “I felt that she had somehow tapped sonal,” but perhaps we do need to into my own memories of lox and examine what we mean by a term that draws on some conflicting pumpernickel bagels with my grand- notions in our culture, particularly when it comes to food. parents, mixed with the beef-and- “Personal” might be on its way horseradish flavors of Passover.” to becoming as much of a culinary buzzword as “artisanal,” “sus- tainable,” or “authentic.” Last October, Sam idiosyncratic palates. It simultaneously evokes Sifton’s final review for The New York Times the most traditional cooking and its opposite. summarized his favorite restaurant thus: “... So what exactly is personal food? Or, more no restaurant in New York City does a bet- importantly, why does that word resonate with ter job than of making personal and us? I confess that I love to know about a chef’s revelatory the process of spending hundreds background and how it relates to the menu— and hundreds of dollars on food and drink.” perhaps because I want to feel that I’m not In the last few years, Food and Wine has run simply buying a product, but making a con- an article called “When Restaurants Get nection—and I don’t think I’m alone in that Personal,” while Saveur has published on both desire. Our interest in the personal side of food “Personal Space” and “The Personal Touch”; draws an artificial connection between a chef’s Ruth Reichl’s new Gilt Taste runs a series of life-story and his or her food. But what if chefs personal essays on food. want to cook something outside of their ethnic It’s not just the word but the concept of jurisdiction? What if their reimaginings of being “personal” that has expanded its reach. childhood dishes stray far from the originals? An astonishing amount of food media is built Is their food then impersonal? on our interest in chefs and their personal lives. We see “Chefographies” on the Food Network, and in the last few years, even the t the end of my meal at Atelier Crenn, New Yorker has started running long profiles I did something I’ve never done of chefs. Cookbooks lovingly trace the prov- A before: I asked the chef out to dinner. enance of recipes through family traditions I suggested that we go to , which Corey and childhood memories. Lee had just opened. He had won a Rising Star But “personal” is a slippery word. It Award from the James Beard Foundation for sounds so appealing, with its cozy connota- his work as chef de cuisine at the French Laun- tions of old-fashioned home-cooking, of dry, and Benu had been getting rave reviews mothers nurturing their children, of food already. It’s now one of six restaurants with two as an expression of place and heritage. And stars in the San Francisco Michelin guide, and yet, at the same time, “personal” can evoke its reputation is still growing.

Lucky Peach | 5 Benu’s website promised “a unique and obscure word like “benu,” which feels foreign, personal restaurant,” so I was excited to see if but is nearly impossible to place. He said, his tasting menu would be “personal” in the “When you hear that word ‘benu,’ I think same sense as Dominique Crenn’s. Given what very few people will know the origins without I’d heard about Benu, the restaurant offered a looking it up. That was something that was stark contrast with the Atelier. Though the two important, too: not to be pinned to a particu- kitchens share an enthusiasm for adventurous lar area of the world, because the style of food culinary techniques, they seemed worlds apart that we’re doing is not about recreating or

“Everything I heard about Benu seemed masculine, rigorous, and perfectionist—a far cry from the poetic sensibility of Atelier Crenn. The chef himself was well respected in San Francisco restaurant circles, but no one really knew him well.”

stylistically. Everything I heard about Benu representing a single country or culture. So seemed masculine, rigorous, and perfection- having this amorphous word that didn’t sound ist—a far cry from the poetic sensibility of so French or so Asian was important because Atelier Crenn. The chef himself was well we didn’t want to be coming into it with any respected in San Francisco restaurant circles, expectations of a particular culture.” For an but no one really knew him well. Asian-American who spent nine years at the So last August, Dominique Crenn and I French Laundry, the choice to dampen French met at Benu with each of our partners. None and Asian connotations seems like a deliber- of us had been to Benu before, but Crenn ate attempt to differentiate the chef’s back- had eaten Lee’s food when he worked under ground from the restaurant’s own “ethnicity.” . She said she was looking for- And although many of the dishes at Benu ward to seeing what he would do in his own combine Asian and European culinary tradi- name. tions, the chef does not explain them in terms Of course, it’s not like the restaurant was of his own history. (Lee moved from Korea to literally in Lee’s name. In contrast to “Atelier New York when he was sixteen.) “I think there Crenn,” the name “Benu” points away from are a lot of places where we mix an Asian the chef, toward the restaurant itself. As Lee technique with a European ingredient, but told me later, “I wanted to find a name that it’s not really formulaic,” Lee said. “I don’t sit somehow reflected the spirit in which the down and try to get each of these elements restaurant was conceived. The ‘benu’ stands in there. Stylistically, it just kind of happens for the phoenix bird, which is something naturally.” that exists in almost all cultures. It stands Even one of Benu’s signature dishes— for something being reborn, which we could foie gras xiao long bao, for instance, which relate to when opening a restaurant.” playfully (and literally) injects classical Lee cited another reason to choose an French cuisine into classical Chinese

6 | Lucky Peach cuisine—is framed in international terms, Later, when I asked Lee about his eel as a matter of technique above all. Lee cigar, he answered in terms of culinary told me, “I really wanted to do a dumpling technique: “It really started with the eel as a somewhere on the menu, because they’re main ingredient, and because eel is so soft, a universally loved food. People have been we wanted something that was crunchy, like stuffing something in dough all over the feuille de brick. The way it’s actually eaten world. When we were deciding, we knew the and presented is a big part of it: there’s some- most technical dumpling was the xiao long thing that’s very fun about it, if you’re in the bao, and it was gratifying as someone who middle of a tasting menu and you’re forced works with his hands to do something chal- to eat with your hands because there are no lenging. I wanted to do something different, utensils.” Alright, but what did the cigar and and the richness and the savoriness of the ashtray mean to him personally? “It’s not broth made fois gras a natural.” And he’s personal to me as a person,” Lee said, “but it’s right. When you eat the dumpling, it doesn’t personal to the restaurant.” feel like fusion at all; it feels like xiao long When Lee talks about Benu, he often uses bao and foie gras were made for each other. a plural voice, expressing the motivations or Still, it’s hard not to read Lee’s foie gras xiao inspirations of the kitchen, rather than his long bao as a reflection of the man himself, in own. “When I mean personal, I don’t even spite of his technique-driven explanation. mean one person, it’s really a collective group,” The deliberately blank canvas of Benu’s Lee said. “It’s really the sous-chefs and even physical space suggests a certain reticence the line cooks participating in the conversa- regarding personal touches: the menu descrip- tion. I’m referring to the personality of the tions are pointedly minimal (just “salt and restaurant. There needs to be someone at the pepper squid,” for example, or “oyster, pork head of that who helps focus it, but it’s really belly, kimchi”), the décor is neutral (mostly a personal restaurant. The restaurant itself is creamy beige), and the chef does not enter the personal.” The food at Benu reflects an identity dining room (at least, not while we were there). rooted in a coterie of fine-dining cooks, who The most individual flourishes appear on the share their own language and traditions; in this plate. In fact, the plates themselves are vehicles philosophy, one is identified as a cook before for Lee’s personality to shine through: when any particular ethnic or national label. Benu first opened, Lee worked with a Korean By the time we had finished our dinner, porcelain maker, KwangJuYo, and an Ameri- it was well past midnight and the restaurant can design firm Blueoculus, so that every dish had been empty for quite a while. Our server would look exactly the way he wanted it. invited us back to the kitchen to meet the When I ate at Benu, I found myself unac- chef. When we entered, a bunch of cooks were countably delighted by a plate shaped like an still there, although it was nearly 2 a.m. and ashtray, from which I ate “eel, feuille de brick, they had finished cleaning up for the night. crème fraiche, lime” in the shape of a cigarillo. We chatted with Corey Lee, and he showed The presentation was so tactile and evocative; us around the back, but we never actually it reminded me of my earliest childhood, when interacted with the other cooks. Maybe this is my father still smoked cigars and he’d take me what it means to share a personal identity as a with him to the dark, mysterious tobacco shop. kitchen: leaning against the counter at the end The experience was personal and emotional, of a long day, waiting dutifully for your chef to not unlike what I’d felt at Atelier Crenn. meet another chef face to face.

Lucky Peach | 7 t some point during our we’re starting to think about him but shouldn’t we be wary of food dinner at Benu, I asked and the food—without him.” that promises to be all things to all A Dominique Crenn if she This is how therapists talk, but people? While everyone seems to found Corey Lee’s food personal. “I she had a good point. It’s almost agree that personal is better than don’t know too much about him, impossible to escape projections impersonal, no one can pinpoint too much about his background, about a chef, for better or worse. what makes food personal. Yet we but I think he’s definitely trying to Whether the chef personally keep gobbling up media about chefs go deep and find himself,” she said. greets each table or remains in like Lee and Crenn alike, because “What do you think?” the kitchen, diners can’t help but we’re eager to learn not just their I confessed that I didn’t find speculate about the person behind recipes, but also their histories, their it particularly personal, but I did the food. It’s human nature to feel methods and their madnesses. Edi- have a sense of a smart, precise that food is a conduit of emotion tors devote entire magazines to their sensibility. Then again, I wasn’t and sociability, and in the current Chefs Issues. Why? Why do we want sure whether I was really finding climate, where chefs are treated to know the chef personally? those qualities in the food, or if I’d like celebrities, the intimacy of the In the end, great food is always brought with me into the restaurant table can be thrilling. We can feel, personal, though the reasons range on the basis of what I’d read just for a moment, like we have a widely, from emotional identifica- about Benu. I worried aloud that personal connection with a great tion to intellectual investment. I’d inadvertently projected Asian chef, like the food offers the chance As different as Dominique Crenn stereotypes onto Corey Lee, and by to absorb a bit of the person along and Corey Lee may be, both con- extension, onto the food at Benu. I with the other nutrients. sciously emphasize the ways that fretted that maybe I’d also projected Maybe that’s why this is also their restaurants are about people my stereotypes about sensitive the age of branded cookware and as well as food. And whether it’s Frenchwomen onto Dominique frozen foods, where the picture of psychosomatic or not, our experi- Crenn and her restaurant. a smiling chef hints at a personal ence of food is affected by what Crenn’s partner, who’s a thera- guarantee, even though we know we know about the chef. Through pist, jumped in excitedly: “Of course that the recipes are developed by the stimulation of taste buds, food you’ve projected! But by this point food scientists and produced in reaches our hearts and our minds, in the meal at Atelier Crenn, you factories alongside generic ver- but the meaning we discover in would have met Dominique. You sions of the same thing. But all our food may have less to do with would have had a relational contact, around us, we see evidence of the the chef than with ourselves. While perhaps to project more, but she depersonalization of the food we it may be alluring to imagine a res- would have showed up by now. This eat—from agribusiness to super- taurant capable of speaking directly is not a criticism by any means, but market mega-chains—so we cling to each of us, accessing the memo- I don’t know him—I’m still staring to the idea of a real live person ries of a long-lost birthday cake at a wall. There’s a sense of sorcery, standing at the stove. Personality- or a passion for hydrocolloids, no of the hidden magician behind the branded food products take our chef could untangle the network of big wall in a very fancy place. So desire for a connection to the per- associations and beliefs that we all what do I know? I know he’s Asian, son cooking our food, distill it to carry with us. I know he comes from the French its purest form, and conveniently Ultimately, no matter how Laundry, I know his age, so I get package it for purchase. personal chefs’ cooking may be to kind of wild with my projective The idea of personal cooking themselves, how the food reso- opportunities, because there’s the is universally appetizing, with its nates with us will always be more absence of a person. I’m aware that connotations of both love and luxury, personal.

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