Are Tasting Menus a Bore? Yes, But They At Least Are...Exotic, No?

A true rambling, and some swearwords.

The other morning, I spent my happy first hour awake with my favourite company - Prof. Alessandro Barbero’s voice, my preferred soundtrack for light runs and power walks.

As I was happily skipping around the riverbanks in the cold Alpine breeze, I listened to Barbero telling the story of Marco Polo’s chronicles, and one thing he said caught my attention. He discussed how Polo’s book accurately depicted his travels and findings in China, and how it shed light on European ways of life, as much as it did on specific aspects of the Eastern cultures the traveller was encountering. A narrator, by default, while telling a story, uses a perspective, a visible lens that cues the narrator as much as the narration.

In this case, Marco Polo referred to witnessing meals in China that combined meat and fish, which he noted because his habits differed. In Venice, where he was from, Catholicism imposed a rigid calendar of fasts, “giorni di magro” and “giorni di grasso”: meat and fish were consumed religiously—and on separate days.

Eating both in the same meal was unheard of and strange to him, so much so that he noted it in his collection of facts and hearsay that would have become his bestseller. This is the podcast episode, in case you also want to spend some time learning and having tons of fun with the Professor:

As a result, today, we have a formulation of menus that is more oriental than one could imagine in fine dining, with good peace for the French, who probably argue this was their idea.

Let’s break down the typical Michelin-friendly menu, which tends to be the same boring shit everywhere, safe for illustrious outsiders that refuse to comply with this order of things and go their way - and I am talking about those restaurants that do not abide by the rule of offering a tasting menu, but impose an à la carte menu, and you be damned.

Why Menu?

A tasting menu allows a restaurant to control its costs.

This is the ultimate truth.

You know how many guests are booked, you have a fixed set of dishes that will be prepared, you are in control, you cut costs, cut waste, and so on, in a virtuous circle.

There is no magic, just business.

This is all good and true, and it's perfectly fine if you’re a small rural restaurant offering a one-menu option, take it or leave it, with seasonal tweaks and a focus on fresh produce.

But when you are a multiple Michelin stars restaurant in an urban context, and you offer three, four, five tasting menus, I know you are just a prick full of shit. Because what you are doing is using a Japanese gastronomic narrative device without substantiating it.

You may say, but weren’t we discussing China and Marco Polo? Yes, also, but bear with me. I tend to get lost when I have to travel in time and space.

Serving meat and fish in Chinese style was a sign of opulence and wealth at Marco's time. Serving a series of plates and products through different preparations in Japanese Kaiseki style is a sign of the Chef's knowledge.

The sign of serving a medley of products and some techniques is a random sign of wanting to belong to the caste of Chefs who need to show their skills and show (off) the products they lay their hands on. Or this is what it seems from the outside, most of the time: rare menus where you can feel a train of thought in your mouth - even rarer are those that combine it with attention to the guest’s digestion.

Mostly, it’s a medley. But medleys rarely win music festivals and feel like karaoke, to continue in this weird musical analogy.

On Why Most of Fine Dining Menus Are a Bore

If we take a Japanese fine dining menu structure, we will see that there is a reason why the courses follow each other in a meaningful sequence.

We are served different gradients of temperatures, and our mouth is always entertained by a sequence of cold-tepid-hot, also sour-sweet-salty-bitter-umami, and so on, ad libitum:

• Sakizuke is the initial course. Similar to the French amuse-bouche, it typically features something pickled to stimulate the diners' appetites for the upcoming dishes.

• Hassun is a course that highlights the seasonal aspects of the meal.

• Suimono is a soup course prepared with a dashi broth base. It is considered the most significant dish in a kaiseki sequence and is a testament to a chef's skill.

• Tsukuri, or the sashimi course.

• Yakimono, aka grilled dishes.

• Takiawase serves a simmered dish, usually combining vegetables with some form of meat.

• Shokuji is my favourite: the rice course (gohan) is served alongside miso soup and pickles.

• Mizugashi or Mizumono features a selection of desserts or sweet dishes.

However, if we take any “westernised” menu nowadays, there is just a lot of confusion in too many cases.

For some reason unknown to me in this timeline, Chefs are convinced that their menus will be an escalation of power towards (I would even say “against”) the diner’s palate. Instead of dancing a subtle, seductive dance of contrappunto (a reference that perhaps only

Giorgia Meschini

will get), they seem like a NASCAR car piloted by someone on speed—the drug, I mean.

You end the dish to plunge into the dessert, and to no avail, you are served a palate cleanser in the form of some crushed ice and citrusy flavours: your senses will be embalmed in sugar, and after having been beaten so hard, you will be left with the feeling of dizziness.

There is no dance, just punching.

If we add to this the parallel tendency of Sommeliers to serve wines ranging from bland, ethereal Champagne to red, bulky, 16-degree oaky red wines to “pair” with the “inevitable” game or red meat final dish, you get the picture.

Punches, punches everywhere.

Maybe it is because of this that I find myself at ease more at vegetarian restaurants, wherethey do not have to face the potency of that fucking inevitable meat or game (or big fish) at the end of the savory courses..

This Western inability to mix (temperatures, techniques, but also…sweet coming up OUTSIDE the dessert zone) is becoming increasingly boring. As this year, my better half has decided AGAIN to visit all the Michelin restaurants in the county, I despair a little. AAAAARRRRGH, I will scream at the umpteenth tasting menu (why does the fucking Michelin hate à la carte so much, I swear) where the boring, usual, endlessly repeating sequence will again repeat itself, immutable like a catholic mass. Ritualistic, boring.

Don’t chefs understand that, no matter how many spherifications, creative acts, or gimmicks à la Enigma or Alchemist they play, the FUNDAMENTAL issue is in the menu structure, not in the courses?