The New Yorker magazine recently ran a critical architectural review of the Denver Art Museum’s new Daniel Liebeskind-designed Frederic C. Hamilton Building, set to open next month. Writer Paul Goldberger had some nice things to say about it, and some not so nice, but one point he made stuck with me.
“As a purely sculptural feat,” he wrote, “this building is a thrilling affirmation of the idea that museums can be art works as well as merely containers. It is also willful and arbitrary, and wildly self-indulgent.”
In other words, part of what’s impactful about the new structure is the form itself.
But part of what’s impactful is the headstrong, bold, even arrogant vision behind the design. What kind of person and team would design and build such a shocking, unusual behemoth, at such great expense?
It got me thinking, about architecture, art, innovation, and (me being me), food.
It makes sense for an architect to be supremely confident (or arrogant, depending on where you sit) about his or her work. After all, it would require a bombastic (or bullying) personality to get something that big, that unusual, and that expensive, built.
Other artists don’t have to push as hard. Those making sculpture or fashion or music are freer to conceive and realize a vision without a bulldozer personality.
But no matter what the scale, all art requires the same “willfulness and self-indulgence” that Goldberger mentioned. Without it, an artist would never follow through.
Cooking is no exception. Chefs, the best ones, are artists too. They think differently from the rest of us. They envision and execute dishes that we would never conceive of in the first place. They are willful and self-indulgent enough to make them, and bullish enough to try to persuade us to buy them.
Some of these dishes pass into memory, failures of flavor and form. But some become staples. Without renegade cooks seeing ingredients and flavors in unique new ways, we’d be stuck.
Without Caesar Cardini, an insouciant 1920s Tijuana restaurateur, we’d never have tasted the Caesar salad. Without an outside-the-box thinker in the 1940s (in Minnesota or Texas, depending on who you ask) the corn dog wouldn’t exist. Without the creative food cauldron that’s been Barcelona for the past decade, we’d be without the unimaginably flavorful foams and airs that punctuate meals at some of our country’s best restaurants, like standard-setter Alinea in Chicago.
Chefs who are less creative, and less bold, don’t push boundaries. They fulfill investors’ requirements, but don’t fulfill any artistic vision. Successful financially but destined for irrelevance, these chefs rely on cooking and serving the tried-and-true, or by copying other chefs.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the tried-and-true. I’d walk a mile for a croissant at Les Delices de Paris or a bowl of minestrone at Pagliachi’s, and they’re anything but innovative (they’re just texbook delicious).
But I admire the willfulness and self-indulgence that the wacky chefs exhibit. I envy their confidence that diners like me will reward their willfulness, with our business.
See, we, as diners, are part of the equation. We are responsible for the ever-forward motion of Denver’s culinary development. It’s our cuisine too.
It falls on us to support our own risk-taking chefs, to recognize the value of gambling twenty bucks on a dish you’re unsure about, rather than holding that Jackson for a dish you know you already love.
Michael Long at Littleton’s Opus restaurant is one local innovator, a fastidious student of the science of cooking and a consummate (and funny) artist when it comes to flavors and visual presentation. Also cooking with a free hand is Terry Ripetto at Potager in Capital Hill, who changes her menu monthly to accommodate her inspirations. And the inspiring, dedicated Radek Cerney at Boulder’s L’Atelier (the best place on the Front Range for lobster and potato foam) is perhaps our most adventurous chef of all.
Do I love all of their dishes? No. But am I willing to buy a ticket for their willful, self-indulgent rides?
You bet I am.
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-820-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
More online: Find an archive of Food Court columns. denverpost.com/foodcourt
