Photo: Atlanta Food & Wine Festival
This is third episode of Jeremy Fox’s interviews with Inside Scoop surrounding his weeklong Smith at Saison dinner series. See also: Part One and Part Two.
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Last time, we were discussing the pressure of performing for others, so to speak.
When people fault chefs by saying they’re not cooking for other people, but they’re cooking for themselves: There’s some truth to that. But for the most part, if the chef is cooking what they believe in — what they want to eat, what they want to cook, what they want to share — it’s not being selfish or arrogant. It’s being generous. It’s chefs putting themselves out there. They’re going to be criticized, you’re going to see libelous comments about yourself online. It’s just inevitable.
What’s that like? Dealing with this media crush, the comments, seeing yourself out there so much, even though you don’t do interviews often.
You get sick of it. You get sick of yourself. In the beginning, it’s nice to be recognized, but you can easily go from being the underdog to being the target.
Is all this food media a good thing?
People are interested. There’s more awareness for what it takes, how much work goes into what we do. There’s more awareness for sustainability, the ingredients. Overall, I think it’s a good thing.
It’s so much different from when I started in culinary school and started cooking in the ’90s. Emeril hadn’t really blown up yet, Food Network wasn’t really much. Now, you see parents who want their kids to be chefs. I tell them ‘Don’t let them do it!’ [Laughs] But it’s fun to see kids eat at the restaurant and how adventurous they are. And they know chefs like baseball players. They’re pretty educated on ingredients, too. More than I was at 20, these 10 year old kids know their ingredients.
How about the impact on the industry side?
With young cooks – I’ve talked about this with other chefs – they’re not learning how to cook the basics. They’re learning how to cook everything in a bag. You give them this vegetable, or this meat, and ask them to cook it in a pot or on the stove and they don’t know how to do it. I think that’s a bad direction to go in.
You mentioned design inspiration earlier. What else — or who — inspires you?
It is inspiring to see how many restaurants over the last year and a half popped up that are far from the ordinary. Restaurants that have really broken out of stereotypical San Francisco mold, and are doing things differently, doing things from the heart. I think they’re successful because they’re breaking the rules and making new rules. That, overall, is a big inspiration.
And going forward?
In contrast to what I said about restaurants that are breaking the usual California mold, that shouldn’t be the new mold. I kind of see it a little bit already, to where there’s this mold. It’s good to break the mold, but every place should have its own mold. Well, not every place, but places that want to have their own personality. They have to be original. There are always challenges.
Tomorrow: The conversation continues with some thinkage on the first few nights of being back in the kitchen. How dishes evolve, cooking with meat, and looking ahead.