Gastronomy Quotes

The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick. Not wounded. Dead.

The gentle art of gastronomy is a friendly one. It hurdles the language barrier, makes friends among civilized people, and warms the heart.

And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.

To invite people to dine with us is to make ourselves responsible for their well-being for as long as they are under our roofs.

(...) The new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Specch, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.

Paris was a place where one wanted to walk, where to walk—flâner, as the French said—was practically a way of life. (“Ah! To wander over Paris!” wrote Honoré de Balzac. “What an adorable and delectable existence is that! Flânerie is a form of science, it is the gastronomy of the eye.

A man who was fond of wine was offered some grapes at dessert after dinner. "Much obliged," said he, pushing the plate aside; "I am not accustomed to take my wine in pills.

A German wine label is one of the things life’s too short for.

Short story collections are the literary equivalent of canapés, tapas and mezze in the world of gastronomy: Delightful assortments of tasty morsels to whet the reader's appetite.

No one was irritable; we have never known anyone to remain unhappy while digesting a good meal. We enjoy lingering in a becalmed state, a kind of midpoint between the reverie of a thinker and the contentment of a cud-chewing animal, a state that should be termed the physical melancholy of gastronomy.

the way in which meals are enjoyed is very important to the happiness of life.6

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF GASTRONOMY There's a rule for proper doses in the dinner-eaters lore: one should stop the filling process while one still has room for more. And if someone at the table had reminded me before - Hallelujah! I'd be able to absorb a little more.

He who has not lived in the eighteenth century before the Revolution does not know the sweetness of life and can not imagine that there can be happiness in life. This is the century that has shaped all the conquering arms against this elusive adversary called boredom. Love, Poetry, Music, Theatre, Painting, Architecture, Court, Salons, Parks and Gardens, Gastronomy, Letters, Arts, Science, all contributed to the satisfaction of physical appetites, intellectual and even moral refinement of all pleasures, all the elegance and all the pleasures. The existence was so well filled that if the seventeenth century was the Great Age of glories, the eighteenth was that of indigestion.

Die gastronomischen Kenntnisse sind allen Menschen nöthig, insofern alle die Summe des Vergnügens, die ihnen bestimmt ist, zu vermehren streben.

gastronomically, a wild salmon and a farmed salmon have as much in common as a side of wild boar has with pork chops.

[...] j'ignore à peu près tout de la gastronomie japonaise. Je sais seulement qu'ils consomment une quantité inimaginable de poissons. En fait, je répète ce qu'on dit habituellement à propos du Japon, je ne fais aucun effort de recherche. Je suis un parfait écho.

There are three kinds of oyster-eaters: those loose-minded sports who will eat anything, hot, cold, thin, thick, dead or alive, as long as it is oyster, those who will eat them raw and only raw; and those who with equal severity will eat them cooked and no way other. The first group may perhaps have the most fun, although there is a white fire about the others' bigotry that can never warm the broad-minded.

Cuisine is a universal and mixed-race love marriage, in which man sublimates a place and a culture.

Good cooks make the most of what they have, great cooks of what they don't.

God has subjected man to six great necessities: birth, action, eating, sleep, reproduction and death.

that the table established a kind of alliance between the parties, and made guests more apt to receive certain impressions and submit to certain influences. This was the origin of political gastronomy. Entertainments have become governmental measures, and the fate of nations is decided on in a banquet. This is neither a paradox nor a novelty but a simple observation

1: There are at least six of them:     Sight, which embraces space itself, and tells us by means of light of the existence of the objects which surround us, and of their colors. Hearing, which absorbs through the air the vibrations caused by agreeably resonant or merely noisy bodies. Smell, by means of which we savor all odorous things. Taste, by which we appreciate whatever is palatable or only edible. Touch, by which we are made aware of the surfaces and the textures of objects. Finally physical desire, which draws the two sexes together so that they may procreate.

It may be that a taste for Bittor’s cooking, for his obsessive, slightly mad investigation into the nature of wood and fire and food, has been prepared by our culture’s ongoing attempt to transcend all those things, not just with molecular gastronomy, but with artificial flavors and colors, synthetic food experiences of every kind, even the microwave oven. High and low, this is an age of the jaded palate, ever hungry for the next new taste, the next new sensation, for mediated experiences of every kind.

The southern half possesses the most outstanding scenery, the prettiest villages, the best gastronomy and, withal, a Gallic knack for living well, while the north has the finest cities, the most outstanding museums and churches, the ports, the coastal resorts, the bulk of the population, and most of the money. The Flemings can’t stand the Walloons and the Walloons can’t stand the Flemings, but when you talk to them a little you realize that what holds them together is an even deeper disdain for the French and the Dutch.

Cannibalism is a problem. In many cases the practice is rooted in ritual and superstition rather than gastronomy, but not always. A French Dominican in the seventeenth century observed that the Caribs had most decided notions of the relative merits of their enemies. As one would expect, the French were delicious, by far the best. This is no surprise, even allowing for nationalism. The English came next, I’m glad to say. The Dutch were dull and stodgy and the Spaniards so stringy, they were hardly a meal at all, even boiled. All this sounds sadly like gluttony. —PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR

A dynamo in the kitchen, she was elevating Mexican cuisine to new gastronomic levels. She had opened her restaurant, El Colibrí, two short years ago. At first people thought she was nuts- then they tasted her dishes. Billing her cuisine as "not your mother's tacos," she'd introduced gourmet Mexican food to Los Angeles, and you didn't eat her creations- like the lobster tail served with the pomegranate mango salsa, served on a blue corn tortillas- with your hands, especially with her secret version of a chimichurri sauce. A hint: truffle oil along with olive oil. The girl genius was an alchemist in the kitchen, creating elixirs and blending ingredients like a mad culinary scientist.

I, like, added curry spices to the tomatoes and then firmed it with sodium alginate. Then there's the mousse I made with powdered, freeze-dried foie gras blended with turmeric. The white dollop in the middle is a puree of potatoes and six different types of cheese. Once your mouth has thoroughly cooled from those items, you should totally try the piecrust arches. Oh! I flash froze it first, so it should have a very light, fluffy texture. I kneaded coriander and a few other select spices into the pie dough. It'll cleanse your palate and give your tongue a break. This dish is all about "Thermal Sense," y'know. Molecular gastronomy teaches about the various contrasting temperature sensations foods and spices have. I took those theories and put them together into a single dish.

Men's ideas, though, continue to run in the old channels about oysters as well as God and war and women. Even when they know better they insist that months with R in them are all right, but that oysters in June or July or May or August will kill you or make you wish they had. This is wrong, of course, except that all oysters, like all men, are somewhat weaker after they have done their best at reproducing.

The southern half possesses the most outstanding scenery, the prettiest villages, the best gastronomy and, withal, a Gallic knack for living well, while the north has the finest cities, the most outstanding museums and churches, the ports, the coastal resorts, the bulk of the population, and most of the money. The Flemings can’t stand the Walloons and the Walloons can’t stand the Flemings, but when you talk to them a little you realize that what holds them together is an even deeper disdain for the French and the Dutch. I once walked around Antwerp for a day with a Dutch-speaking local, and on every corner he would indicate to me with sliding eyes some innocent-looking couple and mutter disgustedly under his breath: “Dutch.” He was astonished that I couldn’t tell the difference between a Dutch person and a Fleming. When pressed on their objections, the Flemings become a trifle vague. The most common complaint I heard was that the Dutch drop in unannounced at mealtimes and never bring gifts. “Ah, like our own dear Scots,” I would say.

Not every change is so subtle. There are chefs in Rome taking the same types of risks other young cooks around the world are using to bend the boundaries of the dining world. At Metamorfosi, among the gilded streets of Parioli, the Columbian-born chef Roy Caceres and his crew turn ink-stained bodies into ravioli skins and sous-vide egg and cheese foam into new-age carbonara and apply the tools of the modernist kitchen to create a broad and abstract interpretation of Italian cuisine. Alba Esteve Ruiz trained at El Celler de Can Roca in Spain, one of the world's most inventive restaurants, before, in 2013, opening Marzapane Roma, where frisky diners line up for a taste of prawn tartare with smoked eggplant cream and linguine cooked in chamomile tea spotted with microdrops of lemon gelée.

To share a meal is to undoubtedly experience one of life's great joys. Yet this doesn't mean that there can't be some kind of connection when we eat alone, be it with ourselves, what's around us, or a higher power. UNESCO states that French gastronomy emphasizes 'the pleasure of taste,' and that some of the essential elements involve utilizing local products, pairing food with wine, and taking the time to smell and taste items at the table. Alone, we can plumb local markets and examine their wares closely. We can breathe in and relish the flavors in a sauce, or the coolness of a pitcher of cream. We don't necessarily take time to do these things in the presence of company, particularly during lively conversation. A solo meal is an opportunity to go slow; to savor.

La soif factice, qui est spéciale à l'espèce humaine, provient de cet instinct inné qui nous porte à chercher dans les boissons une force que la nature n'y a pas mise, et qui n'y survient que par la fermentation. Elle constitue une jouissance artificielle plutôt qu'un besoin naturel : cette soif est véritablement inextinguible, parce que les boissons qu'on prend pour l'apaiser ont l'effet immanquable de la faire renaître ; cette soif, qui finit par devenir habituelle, constitue les ivrognes de tous les pays ; et il arrive presque toujours que l'importation ne cesse que quand la liqueur manque, ou qu'elle a vaincu le buveur et l'a mis hors de combat.

Twenty-eight courses?" Dylan mused. "Get comfortable," Grace said with anticipation. They came on little spoons, tiny plates, in small glasses, atop mini-pedestals even speared and hung, suspended on custom-made wire serving devices like little edible works of art, which was entirely the point: mint-scented lamb lollypops, osetra and oysters on frothed tapioca, beet gazpacho and savory mustard shooters, foie gras porridge with a sweet ginger spritz in an atomizer, ankimo sashimi on house-made pop-rocks, plums in powdered yogurt, goat cheese marshmallows, venison maple syrup mastic, warm black truffle gumdrops with chilled sauternes centers. Foamed and freeze-dried, often accompanied by little spray bottles of fragrance and tiny scent-filled pillows, the food crackled and smoked and hissed and sizzled, appealing to all the senses. Thin slices of blast-frozen Kobe carpaccio were hung on little wire stands to thaw between courses at the table. All sorts of textures and presentations were set forth. Many were entirely novel and unexpected renderings of traditional dishes. Intrigued and delighted by the sensory spectacle, Dylan and Grace enjoyed the experience immensely, oohing and aahing, and mostly laughing. For as strange as each course might be, as curious as the decorative objects that presented them, each one was an adventure of sorts, and without exception, each one was delicious, some to the point of profound. And each one came with an expertly matched extraordinary wine, in the precisely correct Riedel glass.

After several courses, Dylan looked at the menu, noting that "Cheeseburger" was next up. "Okay, this is something I recognize," he said with relief. "Don't get too excited," said Grace knowingly as she sipped the last of a bright and barnyard funky Romanee-Saint-Vivant from a big-bowled burgundy stem. The waiter stepped out of the shadows and set two servings of the next course on the table simultaneously. Another server placed two very large Bordeaux stems on the table, and then carefully filled each with just one and a half ounces of wine. "This is Chef's cheeseburger," the waiter said. "Paired with the '70 Latour." The waiter and other server then backed away. Dylan and Grace leaned forward, examining the strange creation. It smelled amazing, though it looked much more like something from a science class than from a Michelin-starred restaurant-- a tiny piece of freeze-dried cheese on a teaspoon of bison tartare, lying atop a small lettuce pillow that had been filled with Vidalia onion smoke. It sat on a small warm open-face wheat bun, and the whole thing was presented on a miniature plate on which was a little pool of foamed heirloom tomato, and another of foamed mustard seed. And it was all topped with a few droplets of pureed brined Japanese cucumber. Dylan just stared at it. "I feel like it belongs in a museum." "I know. It's almost too beautiful to eat," Grace said. They were both captivated by the variety of scents coming from the presentation. It did, indeed, smell like an amazing cheeseburger. "Well, I'm gonna try," said Dylan, putting the little top bun on. Grace watched as he picked it all up with his thumb and forefinger, dapped it in the foamed tomato and mustard, and popped it in his mouth. Dylan's mouth and nose were filled to bursting with all the expected flavors and scents of a great cheeseburger-- bread, meat and cheese, ketchup and mustard, lettuce and pickle. Oh, wow, it was good. And as he chewed, he popped the lettuce pillow, adding just the right touch of sweet onion scent and flavor to the mouthful.

Jasmine licked her finger and flipped through her notes: Smoked Chicken with Pureed Spiced Lentils, Hot Ham and Bacon Biscuits, Cassoulet Salad with Garlic Sausages. After three cookbooks, she was finally finding her voice. She had discovered her future lay in rustic, not structure. Oh, she had tried the nouvelle rage. Who could forget her Breast of Chicken on a Bed of Pureed Grapes, her Diced Brie and Kumquat Salsa, her Orange and Chocolate Salad with Grand Marnier Vinaigrette? But her instincts had rightly moved her closer to large portions. She hated the increasing fad of so much visible white plate. She preferred mounds of gorgeous food and puddles of sauces. Jasmine kneaded her heavy flesh and smiled. She had finally found her term. She was going to be a gastrofeminist. She would be Queen of Abundance, Empress of Excess. No apologies of appetite for her, no 'No thank you, I'm full,' no pushing away her plate with a sad but weary smile. Her dishes would fulfill the deepest, most primal urge. Beef stews enriched with chocolate and a hint of cinnamon, apple cakes dripping with Calvados and butter, pork sautéed with shallots, lots of cream, and mustard.

The train of thought went like this: I scribbled down the most "sophisticated" foods I could think of. Foie gras. Truffles. Expensive wine. Caviar. Ibérico ham. The one that struck a chord with my Jewish brain was caviar. Caviar served with blinis, little pancakes hailing from eastern Europe. In Russia they served blinis with caviar and sour cream. But even if I could make a hundred and fifteen blinis in the time allowed (since we had to make a few extras for beauty shots and mistakes), I couldn't just serve them with caviar and sour cream. That wasn't transformative enough. Original enough. What else was served with blinis? I tapped my pen thoughtfully against my Chef Supreme notepad. We were getting to the end of our planning session, and the way the others around me were nodding and whispering to themselves was making me nervous. Sadie, they all know exactly what they're doing, and you don't, I thought to myself. And then I nodded, confirming it. Jam. Blinis were served sweet-style with jam. But even if I made my own jam, that wouldn't be enough. I needed a wow factor. What if... what if I made sweet blinis, but disguised them as savory blinis? Ideas ran through my head as we were driven to the grocery store. I wasn't hugely into molecular gastronomy, but even I knew how to take a liquid or an oil and turn it into small gelatinous pearls not unlike fish eggs. I could take jam, thin it out, and turn it into caviar. Then what would be my sour cream? A sweetened mascarpone whip? And then I needed something to keep all the sweetness from becoming overwhelming. I'd have to make the jam nice and tart. And maybe add a savory element. A fried sage leaf? That would be interesting...

And for the person who likes oysters, such a delicate, charming, nostalgic gesture would seem so delicate, so nostalgically charming, so reminiscent of a thousand good mouthfuls here and there in the past...in other words, so sensible...that it would make even nostalgia less a perversion than a lusty bit of nourishment.

Why, Hang Town Fry...I remember once..." Then, for a few minutes or seconds before the part he has been playing so long submerges his real thinking self, and smudges all the outlines into those of a campus character, you see what this big deaf lost man must have been, one night down near the Ferry Building when he ate Hang...Town...Fry...

Women however charming, have this disadvantage - they distract the mind from food.

Set out on a culinary excursion like no other at Spice Mantra, the encapsulation of Indian gastronomy in Hampton. Immerse yourself in an exquisite mix of flavors, aromas, and textures meticulously created flawlessly. With a guarantee to greatness and a passion for true cuisine, Spice Mantra stands as the premier destination for discerning food enthusiasts seeking the finest Indian dining experience in Hampton.

We call our system the Department of Corrections, or simply Corrections, but correcting or any notion of rehabilitation has been largely thrown to the wayside in favor of punitive action through the revocation of selfhood.

America sends its criminals to unseen corners of our society, where they live they live monotonous lives that take away autonomy and choice, and where their time is completely owned by the institution.

We’re all full of gastronomy and recipes,” he once told a journalist. “Turn on a TV anywhere in the world and you will see an idiot with a spoon. And every newspaper and magazine has recipes and a photo of the dish taken from above like a cadaver. It’s a form of onanism and is masturbatory. We must normalize food rather than put it on a pedestal out of reach.

Bringing this all together, the 1980s become and intensely significant point for the purposes of our understanding of what one could consider the degradation of our prison system and our food system in America: We see at that time period a sharp increase in the rates of diet-related disease, the number of incarcerated people, and the gap between the wealthy and the poor.

Even French pilferage has not relegated Italian culinary genius to the darker corners of gastronomy. Marie de’ Medici brought Italian cookery to France, where Gallic duplicity quickly undermined the integrity of good ingredients with unctuous sauces. The French will always confuse egregious decorative effects with creative integrity. They have a genius for appearances. Trompe l’oeil will do for a Frenchman, but not for an Italian.

As the excesses of 'molecular gastronomy' have slowly faded away, like the smell of a particularly pungent fart, a breath of fresh culinary air has swept across the country. I've been passionately interested in food and drink for more than 30 years and writing about it for a decade. In my experience there has never been a more exciting time to eat out in this country.

Abignades or abegnades A term used in te department of the Landes for the intestines of a goose cooked in its blood. Abegnades are found almost solely in the chalosse region, where they are eaten on bread fried in goose fat, with slices of lemon.

Is there really any difference, the writer Jeb Boniakowski once asked, between highly engineered and processed foods like the kind you find at McDonald’s, and molecular gastronomy, the application of food science to cooking that became popular in modernist haute cuisine establishments like elBulli and Alinea? Boniakowski draws a powerful conclusion that should be obvious in retrospect: “I’ve often thought that a lot of what makes crazy restaurant food taste crazy is the solemn appreciation you lend to it.” But we tend to limit our indulgence of that appreciation. Boniakowski offers a delightful thought experiment to illustrate the point: If you put a Cheeto on a big white plate in a formal restaurant and serve it with chopsticks and say something like, “It is a cornmeal quenelle, extruded at a high speed, and so the extrusion heats the cornmeal ‘polenta’ and flash-cooks it, trapping air and giving it a crispy texture with a striking lightness. It is then dusted with an ‘umami powder’ glutamate and evaporated-dairy-solids blend.” People would go nuts for that.20 Even

Edible flowers have many culinary uses. Sought after for their flavors, aromas, textures and colours, edible flowers are used fresh, frozen, dried, crystallized or as a foam - in molecular gastronomy - and appear in meat and fish dishes, pastas, salads, soups and desserts. Some common forms of edible flowers are found in garnishes, candied sweets, confits and jellies, pickled flowers or flower vinegars; flavourings such as essences and spice blends; food dyes and colourings; teas, infusions and tisanes; flavoured waters and syrups; and liquors, cordials, bitters, wine, beer and mead.

Un simple plat en sauce peut avoir un effet tranquillisant, quasi maternel. Même si, en vérité, c’est souvent meilleur avant de le manger. Les promesses trahies des spécialités locales qui, une fois en bouche, se révèlent originaires de Barquette-en-Alu me font le même effet qu’un copain qui vous raccroche au nez.

La Lauze est l’un de ces restaurants à la mode depuis quelques années à Paris. Sièges anguleux, ambiance en nuances de gris avec la signature bien en vue du designer au coin d’un comptoir patiné pour paraître authentique, et une assiette dressée autant pour le goût que pour les réseaux sociaux avec son voile de curry, son trait de jus de bette- rave et sa compotée de carotte bleue, comme si une sculpture de Niki de Saint Phalle s’était échappée du centre Pompidou pour se soulager dans votre hors-d’œuvre. On appelle cela la « bistronomie », je suppose qu’elle finira par envahir jusqu’à Limoges, et le boudin aux pommes jettera les armes aux pieds des légions gustatives du XXIe siècle, tel Vercingétorix devant Jules César.

The plate the waiter now set before her looked like an abstract painting: vivid green shot through with bright-coral slashes. "Taste!" he urged. It was clearly a fish but so sweet she did not recognize it. Looking at the color, she hazarded a guess. "Salmon? Or maybe not. It doesn't taste like salmon." Troisgros looked very pleased. "That is because it was caught just this morning in the Allier, our local river. But also because we preserve the color by slicing the fish very thinly and searing it for just a few seconds." "So it's almost raw?" She wasn't sure about this. "In Japan they eat their fish raw." She took another bite; the herbal sauce flirted with bitterness. "The flavor is so green I feel I'm eating color." "Sorrel." He gestured to the waiter, who removed the plates and then set a single small bird surrounded by sliced fruit in front of each of them. "Sarcelle aux abricots," he announced. "Sarcelle?" Stella did not recognize the word. "It's a freshwater duck," said Jules. "I can't remember the word in English." "Teal," Troisgros supplied. Stella closed her eyes and tried describing the flavor. "It tastes wild." She began to dream herself into the dish as if it were a painting, imagining a golden field in the sunshine, feeling the air rush past, hearing the sound of her own wings. Circling in a great joyous arc, she spotted a tree covered in tawny fruits, breathed their perfume in the air. "I wanted---" the chef was watching her--- "to give you the essence of the animal. To let you taste what the duck ate on her flight through life.

…it was the influence of Jewish cuisine that made the artichokes popular in Italy around the end of the sixteenth century―before that time Italian Gentiles had not eaten them and derisively called them a “Jewish vegetable…

In my cooking, I'm trying to avoid canned food preparing all from fresh and local ingredients.

The preparation and consumption of dishes, as well as the customs and rituals connected to them, play a central role in all cultures. They do not merely satisfy a biological need but are essential elements in the identities of social groups, since their traditions are to a large degree related to them.

Because of the munchies I get after a fat spliff is the reason I care for tasty food!

I will never forget that day. It was in Europe, what... seven years ago now? It was molecular gastronomy's most prestigious international competition. As famous name after famous name received their awards... ... imagine my shock when I saw a young girl less than ten years of age step forward to receive one of her own!" "Cooking is art. The more it is honed, the more beautiful and elegant the result. I look forward to showing you all... the beautiful worlds the art of cooking can create." She went on to receive almost all the awards there were to win. By the time she was ten years old, she had successfully obtained forty-five patents and was contracted with over twenty different restaurants for research into new menu items. She is heaven's gift to molecular gastronomy, a certified genius! Of all the first-year students in the institute, no one can refute that she is the one closest to being named to the Council of Ten!

Mert ameddig nem tudjuk konyhánkat újragondolni, ameddig nem tudunk egy patinás, a hagyományokon, a régi magyar gasztrozófián alapuló, mégis korszerű és izgalmas gasztronómiát varázsolni, addig olyan nép leszünk, amilyen most vagyunk: egyszerre álmos és álmosító, alacsony növésű, de fennhéjázó, irigy és dühös, maradi és sznob, szűklátókörű és középszerű nemzet.

Drawings on caves dealt with one of man's major concerns, that of finding food. Hunting with spears, trapping deer, stalking game with bows and arrows, and spearing fish or catching them in nets are all portrayed with an energy.

She'd ordered the curated wild Alaskan sea cucumbers, sprinkled with artisanal milk thistle foraged at dusk from Springdale Farms and served in a sea of pureed stinging nettles. At least Sam thought that's what it was. She'd eaten the entire cucumber slice in one bite. "Are you sure you wouldn't like something, sir?" The waiter, dressed in a grain sack with cutouts for his head and arms, hovered at Sam's shoulder. "No, thank you." Sam rubbed his belly and let out a small burp. "I shouldn't have had that second Reuben on my way over. Or maybe it was the Cobb salad. I'm so full I couldn't even handle an amuse-bouche of fermented sardine foam or dihydrogen-monoxide consommé.

Finian’s Rainbow was arguably one of the most controversial and racially provocative shows of its time. It was written in 1947, before Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement brought the fight for equality to the forefront of social issues. In the show, blacks, whites, and immigrants live happily together. Black and white performers in the chorus shared the stage and even held hands, breaking barriers still in place in the 1940s. In addition to racism, Finian’s Rainbow took on the U.S. economic system, consumerism, and political corruption.

There isn't a menu, only a few daily specials. You might get some molecular gastronomy or classic French food or meatloaf and mashed potatoes, but it's always amazing." "Today they have family-style broasted chicken. The best in the state," Doug said. "Broasted?" "Fried, but under pressure. I don't really know what magic happens, but its extra juicy and crunchy.

...to give a clear picture of the whole scene of Italian gastronomy.

After the interview and photo shoot, Cantu invited us to dinner at Moto, where we ate a poached scallop and "pearls" of squid ink sealed inside a polymerized shell made from a buttery saffron and seafood broth; beet-flavored cotton candy, sweet and earthy and fantastic; a menu printed on fully edible paper, with ink that tasted like a tangy aged Manchego cheese; and freeze-dried ice cream pellets with twenty-five-year-old balsamic vinegar, with the richness and complexity of a Sauternes.

We slurped cool briny oysters wrapped in a gossamer sheet of warm pancetta fat and topped with a sweet green pistachio emulsion. We frantically scooped up disappearing clouds of Parmesan "air" with muesli. We popped bubbles of melon caviar between our tongues and the roofs of our mouths. We crunched down on delicate coils of sweet and salty olive oil spring candy. It was delicious, surprising, strange, and fun to eat this food.

A Culinary Celebration: The International Istanbul Gastronomy Festival