- Email: [email protected]
The changing role of the chef: A dialogue
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 17 (2019) 100157
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijgfs
The changing role of the chef: A dialogue a,∗
T
b
Anne E. McBride , Roberto Flore a b
Torribera Mediterranean Center, University of Barcelona/Culinary Institute of America, 131 Farragut Road, North Plainfield, NJ 07062, USA Office for Innovation and Sector Services, Technical University of Denmark, Diplomvej, Building 373A DTU Skylab, DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
A B S T R A C T
For Gastro-Chef-Science 2018, we were asked to collaborate on a presentation entitled “The new role of the chef in the 21st century,” which would help frame the interactions between scientists and chefs that were at the centre of the program. We each began with a brief introduction to contextualize our perspectives and define what we mean by chefs and their role. The presentation, followed up by a dialogue between the two of us. Anne: an academic who wrote her dissertation in food studies at New York University on the changing role of the chef in the 21st century and has been researching how the profession of the chef has evolved since the 1970s, while also closely working with chefs as a conference organizer, writer, and director of the Experimental Cuisine Collective at NYU. Roberto: Manager of the Skylab FoodLab at the Danish Technical University, former head of R&D of the Nordic Food Lab. Roberto is a long-time chef with background studies in agriculture. Roberto has worked extensively side-by-side with scientists, entrepreneurs and thought leaders to further the application of food-related innovation in a real-world context, encouraging hands-on learning, and building bridges between disciplines by using food as a vehicle to address grand global challenges. The format allowed us to interrogate the other's approach and gain in the process a fresh outlook on our own work, rather than if we had more unilaterally presented on the topic. This paper replicates that format. What we said then and write here is informed by our own experiences. We hope to open the conversation to others who feel concerned by the questions it poses, so that we can collectively continue to create a growing body of evidence behind the changing role of the chef.
1. Introduction Long gone is the time when being a chef meant only cooking food for others. Chefs today must opine on cultural and policy questions, understand complex sustainability and nutrition issues, take stances in their restaurants and through direct political action, and be keenly aware of societal shifts that influence their customers' values. Their world has opened up, as they are asked to collaborate with scientists, designers, artists, and inventors to develop new tools, techniques, and dishes, often gaining media recognition in the process and developing new levels of expertise. Their appearance at public events, such as food and wine festivals, four-hand dinners, cooking demonstrations, or book signings, result in further media attention—an attention that is already heightened for their cooking, thanks to the proliferation of food-focused websites and shows and their need for content. Chefs are also increasingly using social media to be in contact with their customers and fans and provide cooking advice, recipes, industry gossip, business developments, and general glimpses into their lives without the filter of a public relation firm or an editor. The world wants to hear from chefs. These demands, opportunities, and attention happen in all markets, for chefs in all sorts of operations. They are, however, particularly intense for chefs who have reached the pinnacle of their industry, whether locally or internationally, and the recognition that come with that: a category of chefs who tend to be educated, often highly so, good
∗
storytellers, globally connected, and thoroughly covered by the media. Their field of influence is broad and their movement closely followed, creating the trickle-down change in their profession we have observed from our respective positions. As is obvious when observing their interactions, in person or virtually, chefs generally have the trust of the public. We trust chefs because they tell us grandma stories. When doing things right, chefs are the guardians of knowledge, of heritage, of traditions. They also take those into the future because, unlike anthropologists who might “only” report on the techniques and traditions they find, chefs bring them to life, make them delicious and relevant for us, and through their food and their public platform, weave narratives that help keep history alive. In that sense, cooking is the one continuation of so many traditions that otherwise only live on through oral histories. Chefs can also earn trust as “neutral” agents of change. At the Mistura conference in Peru in 2013, Gaston Acurio, a Lima chef who has gained global recognition for his Peruvian restaurants and efforts on behalf of his native cuisine, was introduced as a trusted intermediary between farmers and politicians. Farmers in rural communities in Peru had a deep mistrust of politicians, who made change of any kind, on either side, challenging. But because Acurio had earned the trust of these farmers through the schools he established in their communities and other frequent activities there, they trusted him to become a mediating agent who had their interest at heart while talking to
Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (A.E. McBride).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgfs.2019.100157 Received 2 November 2018; Received in revised form 30 April 2019; Accepted 1 May 2019 Available online 11 May 2019 1878-450X/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 17 (2019) 100157
A.E. McBride and R. Flore
trusts them and a desire to expand their reach beyond the kitchen. The Chef as Entrepreneur: The first noticeable change in the profession of the chef that opened the path for its twenty-first century incarnation began in France around nouvelle cuisine (Rao et al., 2003). Beyond the culinary developments that chefs like Pierre Troisgros and Bocuse establish—simplifying and lightning French cuisine, for example—the greater impact for the profession is that chefs become chefowners rather than employees of restaurateurs. Suddenly, the chef is no longer hidden in the kitchen, leaving the public face of the restaurant and the roaming of the dining room to the restaurateur; rather, they step out in front of diners. This concept of the chef as entrepreneur, as owner of their business, directly leads to the chef as expert who will come later, when personal and aesthetic statements can also appear in terms of positioning around social or environmental issues, for example, or through activities that take place outside of one's restaurants (Fine, 1996). The Chef as Entertainer: When the Food Network launches in 1993 in the United States, the chef further steps into the limelight (Collins, 2009; Gordon, 2016). It is no longer enough to be in the dining room or in media articles being talked about—chefs must now perform their cooking in front of a camera, explaining to an audience who does not possess their knowledge and skills how to do what they do. The Chef as Expert: In this third and current phase, the chef becomes an expert through the power he/she has acquired in the previous two stages—the chef is required to be out of the kitchen and in front of the public. As the potential of the culinary profession is fully unlocked, the role of entertainer can leave chefs unfulfilled, especially since many food television personalities in 2019 do not have any professional training, and as such are not part of the networks mentioned above. Chefs as experts have acquired technical and creative skills, knowledge, public attention, and media recognition. That would have been enough in the era of the chef as entrepreneur. But in the current era, it is not, and chefs want more, because they know more and have more to share. They want to talk about sustainability or chemistry, for example, both because media and public ask them to do so, and because it gives them something new to learn. The chef as entrepreneur learned business skills. The chef as entertainer learned media skills. The chef as expert has to learn about a wider range of issues because the public looks to chefs as trusted knowledge diffusers, whether rightly or wrongly.
politicians back in Lima about the needs and challenges of those rural communities (personal notes from the author, 2013). Through establishing trust with communities, through the platforms they build, chefs can typically move somewhat fluidly between groups. This is perhaps also true because in the context of their everyday job they must talk to customers just as much as their staff, shifting discourse from internal code to public expression. This fluidity extends to the collaborations that were at the centre of GCS 2018 and take place seemingly every day in the food world of the second decade of the twenty-first century, with artists, anthropologists, biologists, historians, or fashion designers. This collaboration process is changing the nature of the kitchen but also changing the nature of academia, which has often been focused solely on its own perspective, considering others only as subjects of study rather than collaborators. This is part of what we wanted to explore through our interactions that took place in preparation for this paper, and the presentation that is behind it. We have both been working for much of our careers on breaking the walls between university and kitchen. When the Experimental Cuisine Collective at New York University launched in 2007, the idea was to help scientists communicate better about their work by using food, help chefs better understand food and cooking through science, and overall help everyone better to understand each other. We are still a long way from that happening seamlessly, but dialogues like this might be helpful starting points. 2. The changing role of the chef: a social scientist's perspective What do we mean by chef in this context of high-level collaborations? The chef is, in dictionary and census definitions, in the professional group referenced, and in popular cultural understanding, the one overall in charge of the kitchen from an organizational and creative perspective. Others in the kitchen have smaller managerial responsibilities but the chef, understood as head chef, is the one ultimately responsible. The creative element and the special recognition of a certain type of establishments, in the U.S. Department of Labor's ruling, for example, sets apart chefs who are uniquely original in what they do, who create rather than recreate dishes (Department of Labor, 2004). The importance of an “imagined community,” usually thought of in a context of nations (Anderson, 1991), transfers to professional settings, where people engage in similar activities. For chefs that means participating in activities from festivals, conferences, and panels to collaborative dinners to interviews. In doing so, they share a collective identity that becomes larger than them. Chefs, like artists, also depend on a cooperative network (Becker, 1984) to perform what they do and be recognized as part of their profession. And networks are part of the social process that allows them to acquire expertise (Collins and Evans, 2007). It is important to note here that much of these networks, like the chef profession itself, have been dominated by white males, who thus have most benefitted from them and the platform and public trust they have provided. Times are changing, but much work remains to be done. Until the 1970s, a few rare chefs established fame and worldwide reputation: Carême, Escoffier, and Fernand Point, for example, but they were exceptions more than the rule. In the 1970s, the activities of chefs began expanding beyond the stove at a never-before-seen scale, to the point that Newsweek put Paul Bocuse on its cover in 1975, calling him “the most visible, the most influential—and possibly the best—chef in the world” in the related article (Newsweek, 1975). The time period is unquestionably significant and marks a clear shift to close observers. Through an exhaustive review of material produced about and by chefs since the 1970s emerge three distinct periods in the evolution of the role of the chef: The chef as entrepreneur (1970s-1990s), who materializes through nouvelle cuisine; the chef as entertainer (1990s-2000s), who comes of age with the Food Network; and the chef as expert (2000s-current), who emerges in the tension between a public who
3. The changing role of the chef: the chef's perspective The role of chefs is evolving. Food is providing the canvas by which chefs can address social, political and environmental issues through their preferred form of artistic expression—food. Over the last ten years, we have witnessed the rise of various impactful initiatives such as Massimo Bottura's Refettorio, a project helping to revalorise food waste and provide meals to low-income populations (https://www. foodforsoul.it); Virgilio Martinez's Mater Iniciativa, valorising indigenous foods of Peru (http://materiniciativa.com); Leonor Espinosa's Funleo Foundation, supporting rural development projects based on food sovereignty in Colombia (http://funleo.org); and José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen, providing food to families affected by natural disasters (https://www.worldcentralkitchen.org). At the same time, we have seen a rise in the number of fora and collaborative projects that build community and give chefs a common purpose: the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2) Advocacy Hub Chefs' Manifesto, helping chefs to advocate for the UN Sustainable Development Goals through food (http://www.sdg2advocacyhub.org/ chefmanifesto); the James Beard Foundation's Boot Camp for Policy and Change, empowering chefs to become more politically minded (https:// www.jamesbeard.org/education/bootcamp); Parabere Forum, an independent international platform featuring women's views and voice on major food issues (http://parabereforum.com); and various United Nations agencies and the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centres working with chefs to raise the 2
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 17 (2019) 100157
A.E. McBride and R. Flore
rather than for chefs working for institutions (like university dining), chain restaurant groups, or corporations—for the type of chefs most likely to receive media attention. That can be frustrating for chefs who feel that they are “doing everything right” and yet cannot seem to garner the same level of attention as what a privileged few receive. Creativity and innovation are valued above almost all else, and there is a major trickle-down effect when it comes to chefs' influences and thus to the evolution of their role. AEM: So much of chefs' knowledge is embodied, based on craft, handson work, repetition of work. What are some of the best ways you have found to document that in a way that facilitates collaboration with scientists? RF: There is little space for conducting precise experiments during service. This is why it is important to detach oneself from the rush of cooking in order to improve the skills and knowledge that could feed back into the restaurant kitchen. Therefore, food labs have a special role filling this gap and create a space that facilitates collaboration with scientists. If chefs want to collaborate more with scientists, they need to learn more about how to control the creative process. Serving food is a complex task as the reproducibility of a recipe is fundamental element of a successful dish. Therefore, a scientific approach can help chefs to work more systematically. RF: Are chefs real super heroes, or they are simply collectors of the values and know-how that society is slowly losing? AEM: Very few people are heroes, let alone super heroes. So my default position here is to not think of chefs in that fashion (someone like José Andres and the work he does in disaster areas, feeding people who have lost everything, is about as close to super hero status as anyone gets). Chefs do play a major role in studying and preserving culinary traditions, even as they adapt them to their modern kitchens and use them, often, as a departure point for innovation. The tradition and know-how might not be represented in the most faithful fashion once a dish is finished, but they are underlying values in it. In that manner, chefs play an essential role in the preservation and dissemination of traditions and knowledge. That is part of their expertise, and part of their roles. AEM: What are some of your strategies for democratizing this process of expertise acquisition and diffusion? How can the future of creating scientific knowledge be improved? RF: Universities need to embrace new ways of thinking and facilitate paradigm shifts that recognise the present and future value of interdisciplinary spaces. Skylab at the Technical University of Denmark is one existing example of what this could possibly look like. It is relevant to keep the momentum of already existing initiatives by developing/strengthening networks that enable the cross pollination of ideas and supports collaboration across disciplines. We need to create more open source spaces and databases/platforms that build on previous knowledge. Further, we need to create clouds of information accessible to everyone and share it as heritage for humanity.
status of their work (https://www.cgiar.org). Academia is also starting this path towards change. Several universities around the world today, such as the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Harvard University, are hosting interdisciplinary laboratories, where food is the contact point between chefs and researchers. For example, the FoodLab at DTU Skylab is an alternative learning environment while mission is to support student innovation and wild ideas using food as multifunctional tool to address the complex issues. FoodLab promotes fearless development of future humancentered technologies, food products, and sustainable solutions to global challenges (www.skylab.dtu.dk). The Harvard Science and Cooking Programme, a popular lecture series, pairs Harvard professors with celebrated food experts and renowned chefs to showcase the science behind different culinary techniques (https://www.seas.harvard. edu/cooking). As the role of chefs changes, we witness more and more chefs engaging by creating new dishes and concepts to voice their opinions and world views; clearly, for many, it is no longer just about deliciousness and creating a pleasurable experience for customers, but rather a new set of concerns. This nouvelle époque for chefs is also characterized by scientific engagement and technological innovation in order to provide better quality food to more people, combat hunger, valorize indigenous communities, and reduce environmental impacts of food production. 4. The changing role of the chef: in conversation AEM: What do you want scientists to understand most about the world and work of the chef? RF: Clearly, the role of chefs has expanded outside the realm of restaurant kitchens. A subset of expert chefs have now distanced themselves from being a line chef or from daily operations like cooking meals for customers with the aim of pursuing academic endeavours, such as the work that I am doing as manager of the Technical University of Denmark's Skylab FoodLab. Or, to create new, internal spaces within restaurants that enable them to spend more time on deep-dives and the exploration of new ingredients techniques, materials and concepts (for example Noma test kitchen, or El Celler de Can Roca's Masia R&D space). At the same time, a new breed of scientists with backgrounds in chemistry, physics, sensory science and psychology, for example, have entered the world of gastronomy, joining forces with chefs (see also the Special Issue contributions by Bernat Guixer, Pia Sörensen, and Ole Mouritsen as examples). In the fine-dining restaurant world, food innovation is generally driven by a fast prototyping approach that uses trial and error to arrive at the creation of a desirable product. At the same time, kitchens receive seasonal and unstandardized products, indicating that the creation of standardized recipes is not always applicable. Therefore, there is a need for developing methodologies that are driven by the experience of handling a product combined with scientific knowledge. RF: Is the role of chefs changing at the same way everywhere in the world? Or are there societies where the chef's role is still undervalued? AEM: This expansion of the chef's role that we are discussing here is still a mostly western phenomenon, whether the chefs are located there or the channels that elevate their position are. A lot of it is tied to the mediatization of chefs and their amplified platform. Their increased role is directly connected to their increased visibility and the expansion of their domains of expertise. This happens much more easily in places with strong media cultures, and more specifically, strong food media cultures. You've mentioned traveling to China, Roberto, and there hearing from chefs that they do not benefit from the same stature that chefs might in places like Denmark or the US. In countries where cooking is still considered a blue collar profession, one that would not please parents as much as a university degree would, for example, it is true that chefs are still contained into certain boxes when it comes to their perceived expertise. And even in places where chefs have high status, it is often reserved for high-profile independent restaurant chefs
Conflicts of interest No conflict of interest to report. References Anderson, B., 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised ed. Verso, New York. Becker, H.S., 1984. Art Worlds. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Collins, H., Evans, R., 2007. Rethinking Expertise. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Collins, K., 2009. Watching what We Eat: the Evolution of Television Cooking Shows. Continuum, New York. Department of Labor, 2004. Defining and delimiting the exemptions for executive, administrative, professional, outside sales and computer employees. 79 (69), 22121–22191. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2004/04/23/04-9016/ defining-and-delimiting-the-exemptions-for-executive-administrative-professionaloutside-sales-and.
3
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 17 (2019) 100157
A.E. McBride and R. Flore
Fine, G.A., 1996. Kitchens: the Culture of Restaurant Work. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Food: The New Wave. Newsweek 50. Gordon, S., 2016. They Call Me Supermensch: A Backstage Pass to the Amazing Worlds of Film, Food, and Rock ‘n’ Roll. Ecco, New York.
Rao, H., Monin, P., Durand, R., 2003. Institutional change in Toque Ville: nouvelle cuisine as an identity movement in French gastronomy. Am. J. Sociol. https://doi.org/10.1086/ 367917.
4
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijgfs
The changing role of the chef: A dialogue a,∗
T
b
Anne E. McBride , Roberto Flore a b
Torribera Mediterranean Center, University of Barcelona/Culinary Institute of America, 131 Farragut Road, North Plainfield, NJ 07062, USA Office for Innovation and Sector Services, Technical University of Denmark, Diplomvej, Building 373A DTU Skylab, DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
A B S T R A C T
For Gastro-Chef-Science 2018, we were asked to collaborate on a presentation entitled “The new role of the chef in the 21st century,” which would help frame the interactions between scientists and chefs that were at the centre of the program. We each began with a brief introduction to contextualize our perspectives and define what we mean by chefs and their role. The presentation, followed up by a dialogue between the two of us. Anne: an academic who wrote her dissertation in food studies at New York University on the changing role of the chef in the 21st century and has been researching how the profession of the chef has evolved since the 1970s, while also closely working with chefs as a conference organizer, writer, and director of the Experimental Cuisine Collective at NYU. Roberto: Manager of the Skylab FoodLab at the Danish Technical University, former head of R&D of the Nordic Food Lab. Roberto is a long-time chef with background studies in agriculture. Roberto has worked extensively side-by-side with scientists, entrepreneurs and thought leaders to further the application of food-related innovation in a real-world context, encouraging hands-on learning, and building bridges between disciplines by using food as a vehicle to address grand global challenges. The format allowed us to interrogate the other's approach and gain in the process a fresh outlook on our own work, rather than if we had more unilaterally presented on the topic. This paper replicates that format. What we said then and write here is informed by our own experiences. We hope to open the conversation to others who feel concerned by the questions it poses, so that we can collectively continue to create a growing body of evidence behind the changing role of the chef.
1. Introduction Long gone is the time when being a chef meant only cooking food for others. Chefs today must opine on cultural and policy questions, understand complex sustainability and nutrition issues, take stances in their restaurants and through direct political action, and be keenly aware of societal shifts that influence their customers' values. Their world has opened up, as they are asked to collaborate with scientists, designers, artists, and inventors to develop new tools, techniques, and dishes, often gaining media recognition in the process and developing new levels of expertise. Their appearance at public events, such as food and wine festivals, four-hand dinners, cooking demonstrations, or book signings, result in further media attention—an attention that is already heightened for their cooking, thanks to the proliferation of food-focused websites and shows and their need for content. Chefs are also increasingly using social media to be in contact with their customers and fans and provide cooking advice, recipes, industry gossip, business developments, and general glimpses into their lives without the filter of a public relation firm or an editor. The world wants to hear from chefs. These demands, opportunities, and attention happen in all markets, for chefs in all sorts of operations. They are, however, particularly intense for chefs who have reached the pinnacle of their industry, whether locally or internationally, and the recognition that come with that: a category of chefs who tend to be educated, often highly so, good
∗
storytellers, globally connected, and thoroughly covered by the media. Their field of influence is broad and their movement closely followed, creating the trickle-down change in their profession we have observed from our respective positions. As is obvious when observing their interactions, in person or virtually, chefs generally have the trust of the public. We trust chefs because they tell us grandma stories. When doing things right, chefs are the guardians of knowledge, of heritage, of traditions. They also take those into the future because, unlike anthropologists who might “only” report on the techniques and traditions they find, chefs bring them to life, make them delicious and relevant for us, and through their food and their public platform, weave narratives that help keep history alive. In that sense, cooking is the one continuation of so many traditions that otherwise only live on through oral histories. Chefs can also earn trust as “neutral” agents of change. At the Mistura conference in Peru in 2013, Gaston Acurio, a Lima chef who has gained global recognition for his Peruvian restaurants and efforts on behalf of his native cuisine, was introduced as a trusted intermediary between farmers and politicians. Farmers in rural communities in Peru had a deep mistrust of politicians, who made change of any kind, on either side, challenging. But because Acurio had earned the trust of these farmers through the schools he established in their communities and other frequent activities there, they trusted him to become a mediating agent who had their interest at heart while talking to
Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (A.E. McBride).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgfs.2019.100157 Received 2 November 2018; Received in revised form 30 April 2019; Accepted 1 May 2019 Available online 11 May 2019 1878-450X/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 17 (2019) 100157
A.E. McBride and R. Flore
trusts them and a desire to expand their reach beyond the kitchen. The Chef as Entrepreneur: The first noticeable change in the profession of the chef that opened the path for its twenty-first century incarnation began in France around nouvelle cuisine (Rao et al., 2003). Beyond the culinary developments that chefs like Pierre Troisgros and Bocuse establish—simplifying and lightning French cuisine, for example—the greater impact for the profession is that chefs become chefowners rather than employees of restaurateurs. Suddenly, the chef is no longer hidden in the kitchen, leaving the public face of the restaurant and the roaming of the dining room to the restaurateur; rather, they step out in front of diners. This concept of the chef as entrepreneur, as owner of their business, directly leads to the chef as expert who will come later, when personal and aesthetic statements can also appear in terms of positioning around social or environmental issues, for example, or through activities that take place outside of one's restaurants (Fine, 1996). The Chef as Entertainer: When the Food Network launches in 1993 in the United States, the chef further steps into the limelight (Collins, 2009; Gordon, 2016). It is no longer enough to be in the dining room or in media articles being talked about—chefs must now perform their cooking in front of a camera, explaining to an audience who does not possess their knowledge and skills how to do what they do. The Chef as Expert: In this third and current phase, the chef becomes an expert through the power he/she has acquired in the previous two stages—the chef is required to be out of the kitchen and in front of the public. As the potential of the culinary profession is fully unlocked, the role of entertainer can leave chefs unfulfilled, especially since many food television personalities in 2019 do not have any professional training, and as such are not part of the networks mentioned above. Chefs as experts have acquired technical and creative skills, knowledge, public attention, and media recognition. That would have been enough in the era of the chef as entrepreneur. But in the current era, it is not, and chefs want more, because they know more and have more to share. They want to talk about sustainability or chemistry, for example, both because media and public ask them to do so, and because it gives them something new to learn. The chef as entrepreneur learned business skills. The chef as entertainer learned media skills. The chef as expert has to learn about a wider range of issues because the public looks to chefs as trusted knowledge diffusers, whether rightly or wrongly.
politicians back in Lima about the needs and challenges of those rural communities (personal notes from the author, 2013). Through establishing trust with communities, through the platforms they build, chefs can typically move somewhat fluidly between groups. This is perhaps also true because in the context of their everyday job they must talk to customers just as much as their staff, shifting discourse from internal code to public expression. This fluidity extends to the collaborations that were at the centre of GCS 2018 and take place seemingly every day in the food world of the second decade of the twenty-first century, with artists, anthropologists, biologists, historians, or fashion designers. This collaboration process is changing the nature of the kitchen but also changing the nature of academia, which has often been focused solely on its own perspective, considering others only as subjects of study rather than collaborators. This is part of what we wanted to explore through our interactions that took place in preparation for this paper, and the presentation that is behind it. We have both been working for much of our careers on breaking the walls between university and kitchen. When the Experimental Cuisine Collective at New York University launched in 2007, the idea was to help scientists communicate better about their work by using food, help chefs better understand food and cooking through science, and overall help everyone better to understand each other. We are still a long way from that happening seamlessly, but dialogues like this might be helpful starting points. 2. The changing role of the chef: a social scientist's perspective What do we mean by chef in this context of high-level collaborations? The chef is, in dictionary and census definitions, in the professional group referenced, and in popular cultural understanding, the one overall in charge of the kitchen from an organizational and creative perspective. Others in the kitchen have smaller managerial responsibilities but the chef, understood as head chef, is the one ultimately responsible. The creative element and the special recognition of a certain type of establishments, in the U.S. Department of Labor's ruling, for example, sets apart chefs who are uniquely original in what they do, who create rather than recreate dishes (Department of Labor, 2004). The importance of an “imagined community,” usually thought of in a context of nations (Anderson, 1991), transfers to professional settings, where people engage in similar activities. For chefs that means participating in activities from festivals, conferences, and panels to collaborative dinners to interviews. In doing so, they share a collective identity that becomes larger than them. Chefs, like artists, also depend on a cooperative network (Becker, 1984) to perform what they do and be recognized as part of their profession. And networks are part of the social process that allows them to acquire expertise (Collins and Evans, 2007). It is important to note here that much of these networks, like the chef profession itself, have been dominated by white males, who thus have most benefitted from them and the platform and public trust they have provided. Times are changing, but much work remains to be done. Until the 1970s, a few rare chefs established fame and worldwide reputation: Carême, Escoffier, and Fernand Point, for example, but they were exceptions more than the rule. In the 1970s, the activities of chefs began expanding beyond the stove at a never-before-seen scale, to the point that Newsweek put Paul Bocuse on its cover in 1975, calling him “the most visible, the most influential—and possibly the best—chef in the world” in the related article (Newsweek, 1975). The time period is unquestionably significant and marks a clear shift to close observers. Through an exhaustive review of material produced about and by chefs since the 1970s emerge three distinct periods in the evolution of the role of the chef: The chef as entrepreneur (1970s-1990s), who materializes through nouvelle cuisine; the chef as entertainer (1990s-2000s), who comes of age with the Food Network; and the chef as expert (2000s-current), who emerges in the tension between a public who
3. The changing role of the chef: the chef's perspective The role of chefs is evolving. Food is providing the canvas by which chefs can address social, political and environmental issues through their preferred form of artistic expression—food. Over the last ten years, we have witnessed the rise of various impactful initiatives such as Massimo Bottura's Refettorio, a project helping to revalorise food waste and provide meals to low-income populations (https://www. foodforsoul.it); Virgilio Martinez's Mater Iniciativa, valorising indigenous foods of Peru (http://materiniciativa.com); Leonor Espinosa's Funleo Foundation, supporting rural development projects based on food sovereignty in Colombia (http://funleo.org); and José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen, providing food to families affected by natural disasters (https://www.worldcentralkitchen.org). At the same time, we have seen a rise in the number of fora and collaborative projects that build community and give chefs a common purpose: the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2) Advocacy Hub Chefs' Manifesto, helping chefs to advocate for the UN Sustainable Development Goals through food (http://www.sdg2advocacyhub.org/ chefmanifesto); the James Beard Foundation's Boot Camp for Policy and Change, empowering chefs to become more politically minded (https:// www.jamesbeard.org/education/bootcamp); Parabere Forum, an independent international platform featuring women's views and voice on major food issues (http://parabereforum.com); and various United Nations agencies and the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centres working with chefs to raise the 2
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 17 (2019) 100157
A.E. McBride and R. Flore
rather than for chefs working for institutions (like university dining), chain restaurant groups, or corporations—for the type of chefs most likely to receive media attention. That can be frustrating for chefs who feel that they are “doing everything right” and yet cannot seem to garner the same level of attention as what a privileged few receive. Creativity and innovation are valued above almost all else, and there is a major trickle-down effect when it comes to chefs' influences and thus to the evolution of their role. AEM: So much of chefs' knowledge is embodied, based on craft, handson work, repetition of work. What are some of the best ways you have found to document that in a way that facilitates collaboration with scientists? RF: There is little space for conducting precise experiments during service. This is why it is important to detach oneself from the rush of cooking in order to improve the skills and knowledge that could feed back into the restaurant kitchen. Therefore, food labs have a special role filling this gap and create a space that facilitates collaboration with scientists. If chefs want to collaborate more with scientists, they need to learn more about how to control the creative process. Serving food is a complex task as the reproducibility of a recipe is fundamental element of a successful dish. Therefore, a scientific approach can help chefs to work more systematically. RF: Are chefs real super heroes, or they are simply collectors of the values and know-how that society is slowly losing? AEM: Very few people are heroes, let alone super heroes. So my default position here is to not think of chefs in that fashion (someone like José Andres and the work he does in disaster areas, feeding people who have lost everything, is about as close to super hero status as anyone gets). Chefs do play a major role in studying and preserving culinary traditions, even as they adapt them to their modern kitchens and use them, often, as a departure point for innovation. The tradition and know-how might not be represented in the most faithful fashion once a dish is finished, but they are underlying values in it. In that manner, chefs play an essential role in the preservation and dissemination of traditions and knowledge. That is part of their expertise, and part of their roles. AEM: What are some of your strategies for democratizing this process of expertise acquisition and diffusion? How can the future of creating scientific knowledge be improved? RF: Universities need to embrace new ways of thinking and facilitate paradigm shifts that recognise the present and future value of interdisciplinary spaces. Skylab at the Technical University of Denmark is one existing example of what this could possibly look like. It is relevant to keep the momentum of already existing initiatives by developing/strengthening networks that enable the cross pollination of ideas and supports collaboration across disciplines. We need to create more open source spaces and databases/platforms that build on previous knowledge. Further, we need to create clouds of information accessible to everyone and share it as heritage for humanity.
status of their work (https://www.cgiar.org). Academia is also starting this path towards change. Several universities around the world today, such as the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Harvard University, are hosting interdisciplinary laboratories, where food is the contact point between chefs and researchers. For example, the FoodLab at DTU Skylab is an alternative learning environment while mission is to support student innovation and wild ideas using food as multifunctional tool to address the complex issues. FoodLab promotes fearless development of future humancentered technologies, food products, and sustainable solutions to global challenges (www.skylab.dtu.dk). The Harvard Science and Cooking Programme, a popular lecture series, pairs Harvard professors with celebrated food experts and renowned chefs to showcase the science behind different culinary techniques (https://www.seas.harvard. edu/cooking). As the role of chefs changes, we witness more and more chefs engaging by creating new dishes and concepts to voice their opinions and world views; clearly, for many, it is no longer just about deliciousness and creating a pleasurable experience for customers, but rather a new set of concerns. This nouvelle époque for chefs is also characterized by scientific engagement and technological innovation in order to provide better quality food to more people, combat hunger, valorize indigenous communities, and reduce environmental impacts of food production. 4. The changing role of the chef: in conversation AEM: What do you want scientists to understand most about the world and work of the chef? RF: Clearly, the role of chefs has expanded outside the realm of restaurant kitchens. A subset of expert chefs have now distanced themselves from being a line chef or from daily operations like cooking meals for customers with the aim of pursuing academic endeavours, such as the work that I am doing as manager of the Technical University of Denmark's Skylab FoodLab. Or, to create new, internal spaces within restaurants that enable them to spend more time on deep-dives and the exploration of new ingredients techniques, materials and concepts (for example Noma test kitchen, or El Celler de Can Roca's Masia R&D space). At the same time, a new breed of scientists with backgrounds in chemistry, physics, sensory science and psychology, for example, have entered the world of gastronomy, joining forces with chefs (see also the Special Issue contributions by Bernat Guixer, Pia Sörensen, and Ole Mouritsen as examples). In the fine-dining restaurant world, food innovation is generally driven by a fast prototyping approach that uses trial and error to arrive at the creation of a desirable product. At the same time, kitchens receive seasonal and unstandardized products, indicating that the creation of standardized recipes is not always applicable. Therefore, there is a need for developing methodologies that are driven by the experience of handling a product combined with scientific knowledge. RF: Is the role of chefs changing at the same way everywhere in the world? Or are there societies where the chef's role is still undervalued? AEM: This expansion of the chef's role that we are discussing here is still a mostly western phenomenon, whether the chefs are located there or the channels that elevate their position are. A lot of it is tied to the mediatization of chefs and their amplified platform. Their increased role is directly connected to their increased visibility and the expansion of their domains of expertise. This happens much more easily in places with strong media cultures, and more specifically, strong food media cultures. You've mentioned traveling to China, Roberto, and there hearing from chefs that they do not benefit from the same stature that chefs might in places like Denmark or the US. In countries where cooking is still considered a blue collar profession, one that would not please parents as much as a university degree would, for example, it is true that chefs are still contained into certain boxes when it comes to their perceived expertise. And even in places where chefs have high status, it is often reserved for high-profile independent restaurant chefs
Conflicts of interest No conflict of interest to report. References Anderson, B., 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised ed. Verso, New York. Becker, H.S., 1984. Art Worlds. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Collins, H., Evans, R., 2007. Rethinking Expertise. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Collins, K., 2009. Watching what We Eat: the Evolution of Television Cooking Shows. Continuum, New York. Department of Labor, 2004. Defining and delimiting the exemptions for executive, administrative, professional, outside sales and computer employees. 79 (69), 22121–22191. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2004/04/23/04-9016/ defining-and-delimiting-the-exemptions-for-executive-administrative-professionaloutside-sales-and.
3
International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 17 (2019) 100157
A.E. McBride and R. Flore
Fine, G.A., 1996. Kitchens: the Culture of Restaurant Work. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Food: The New Wave. Newsweek 50. Gordon, S., 2016. They Call Me Supermensch: A Backstage Pass to the Amazing Worlds of Film, Food, and Rock ‘n’ Roll. Ecco, New York.
Rao, H., Monin, P., Durand, R., 2003. Institutional change in Toque Ville: nouvelle cuisine as an identity movement in French gastronomy. Am. J. Sociol. https://doi.org/10.1086/ 367917.
4