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It's
the newest toast of New York. Restaurant Alain
Ducasse, at 155 West 58th St. in
Manhattan (the Essex House), has been hailed by
food critics as elevating fine dining in the city
to new
heights, not only for its luxury but also for its
magnificent French food based on superb American
ingredients. The New York Times awarded the restaurant
four stars, its highest rating.
It
is also one of the most expensive restaurants in
the world, but that is something that chef/owner
Alain Ducasse shrugs off as unavoidable. Interviewed
by The Earth Times in the restaurant, Ducasse said
(in French) that what's important is not the price
but what tastes the best. What he aims to give the
people who come to his restaurant, he said, is "the
best, most pleasurable experience of their lives." That
is why, he continued, his budget includes a item
for 1,000 white roses every week. That is why the
restaurant has only one seating each night, so that
diners can take as much time as they want, so they
can lose themselves in the experience and forget
about the world outside.
"My job," he said, "is to make
them dream about the food, to give them perfection." And
he applies the same standard wherever he opens
a restaurant, he added--a search for perfection,
starting with the raw materials that he purchases
for his kitchens and continuing throughout
the process of cooking and serving the food.
"My aim is always to keep the original
taste of the food," he said, "to
let the pure taste of the product come through
in the finished dish. To make sure that the
seasoning and cooking protects the flavors
that come from nature."
How
does he feel about the raw materials available
to
him in the US? "They are fabulous," he
said, "the best in the world."
"Every day," he continued, "people
show up at the restaurant to offer us new produce,
new sources for produce and other foods. What
impresses me the most about them is the passion
they bring to their work of producing food--the
passion, the love, that is what it is all about." Such
passion comes at a price, he acknowledged.
The freshest, rarest, tastiest morsels on the
market are also, often, the costliest, he explained,
but he has no doubt they are worth it.
In
his book "Harvesting Excellence" (Assouline,
2000), Ducasse hails the American farmers,
ranchers and fishermen who, he says, "have
launched a food revolution." He continued: "The
incredible bounty found in the United States
invites us, the chefs, and those who cook in
their own kitchens, to elicit the finest subtleties
in food . A food experience reaches unparalleled
heights when the consumer knows the source
of the product, specifically the people who
take the time and care to nurture their harvests.
After all, while the je ne sais quoi of a chef
begins with the proper ingredients, the ingredients
come only from the savoir-faire of the harvesters." In
the book Ducasse salutes some of his most prized
suppliers by name, apparently unconcerned that
rival restaurateurs might try to woo them away.
Some of those suppliers provide organic foods,
he explained in the interview, but not all
of them. In France, he explained, he had tried
to find a supplier of organic potatoes, but
he concluded that the best-tasting potatoes
on the market happened to be non-organic.
Although
perfection is his goal, he said, it is also
something
that is always just beyond
reach. "Of course, nobody is perfect," he
said. "Our objective is to get better
and better every day."
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