No dego
Is it thanks to the advent of the modernist gastronomy celebrity chef? First Ferran Adrià, then René Redzepi, along with many others. Restaurants booked out for months ahead; moody Chef’s Table interviews about failure and triumph; documentaries with the chef foraging wild herbs from the banks of a local river. Large, heavy books with intense photography and recipes you’ll never cook. The idea of the chef as intellectual and artist, the meal they make you a journey through memory and geography, to be absorbed in a multitude of tiny little courses, rather than three or four. In their hands, the things on your plate became a culinary novel, a narrative constructed around their ego, their place in the world, and the ingredients they have to hand.
The word “degustation” emerged in France in the early 20th century — a deliberate counterpoint to
