Thomas Keller

by tristero

I fully agree that Thomas Keller’s primary focus must be on his art, but there is nothing “brave” about it. It’s simply the attitude you need to achieve greatness, whether it’s in music, food or any other endeavor that requires careful attention to detail and finely-honed discernment.

However, Keller’s example – a preference to serve Manhattan diners the superb oysters of Stonington, Me vs decent oysters from Long Island – so completely misses the point that it represents a willful ignorance of what the actual problem is. After all, Stonington is not that much farther from Manhattan than Long Island. The real problem is the ecological (not to mention culinary) stupidity of flying crummy garlic from China into NY supermakerts vs delivering great garlic to our groceries from New York State.

Multiply that kind of utterly pointless globalization and degradation of food quality times thousands of food products times nearly every community in every state and you have an aesthetic, environmental, and moral disaster on your hands.

Keller has nothing whatsoever to do with this absurd, wasteful behavior. And, he is, of course, right that he only feeds a few handfuls of people each day so nothing in his personal behavior has that much global impact. He is, pure and simple, a very great chef whose personal example and recipes have revolutionized what food means, even for those of us who will never be able to afford to eat at his restaurants.

In short, Thomas Keller is a genuine food elitist. And that’s my point:

It is because Thomas Keller is a food elitist that he should know better than to make such careless remarks, remarks that can easily be construed as condoning the worst kind of aesthetic and civil vulgarity.