Medium Raw

Wylie Dufresne is a fucking hero because he’s got amazing skills, a restless mind—and balls the size of pontoons. He’s decided to do the hard thing—whatever the cost—rather than following the much easier path that has always been readily available to a chef of his considerable advantages. He could have been anybody he wanted—had whatever kind of restaurant, whatever kind of career. And he chose…this. To his constant peril, he experiments, pushes boundaries, explores what is possible, what might be possible. In doing so, he develops techniques and ideas that, after he’s done all the work and taken the time and risk, are promptly ripped off by chefs all over the world—usually without any acknowledgment.

For exactly the same reasons, Grant Achatz is a hero. Only more so—because he not only put what is perhaps the most impressive résumé a chef could have at the service of innovation, experimentation, and the investigation of those things about which he is curious, but he also risked his life in order to continue doing so. When you’re talking about commitment to one’s craft—about rigorously and inflexibly sticking with one’s goals and the highest possible standards—there’s really no one who’s demonstrated that so consistently, or been willing to sacrifice so much.

Alain Ducasse, on the other hand, is a villain. Because he almost singlehandedly brought down fine dining in America with his absurdly pretentious restaurant Alain Ducasse New York (or ADNY, as it was known). While total destruction might narrowly have been avoided, public perception—even among friendlies—of the kind of European-style, Michelin-star place that he aspired to took a serious hit, causing the beginnings of a slow bleed that continues to this day.

Walking into ADNY, I loved the idea of haute cuisine unconditionally. I left, a heretic, the seeds of doubt planted in my heart—like the first toxic pangs of jealousy in a lover. And it wasn’t just me. ADNY damaged, in many minds, the whole idea of luxurious dining rooms and service, made those things dangerously uncool, features you almost have to explain or apologize for these days, something to be overcome by the food.

To use an egregiously overused expression, ADNY was where fine dining jumped the shark. Ducasse revved up the engine of his bike, released his hand from the brake, and took the whole concept hurtling heedlessly across the shark tank, where, unlike in Fonzi’s case, it was doubtful in the extreme that Pinky Tuscadero would be waiting for him.

When he rolled into New York with his bad attitude, ungracious proclamations of how exclusive his new place would be, how unwelcome New Yorkers might be—if they were not already acquainted with Himself via Monaco or Paris—Ducasse did nothing so much as drop a gigantic Cleveland Steamer into a small pond previously occupied by his much smarter and savvier compatriots. And you can bet they saw it for what it was.

Previously, you’d never heard members of the old French guard talking shit about one of their own—not publicly, anyway—but this was different. This guy was fucking it up for everybody.

The little tuffets for ladies’ bags, the selection of steak knives to choose from, the waiters who put on white gloves to trim fresh herbs tableside. The fucking water cart. The even more painful array of Montblanc pens to choose from so that one might more elegantly sign one’s check. The dark, hideous, and pretentious dining room. All of it conspired to smother any possibility of a good time stone-dead in a long, dreary dirge. Nothing could live in this temple of hubris. The generally excellent food was no match for the forces aligned against it. And it just wasn’t, in the end, excellent enough to prevail against the ludicrousness of what surrounded it.

Like watching Bonfire of the Vanities or Heaven’s Gate—or one of the other great examples of ego gone wild in the movie business—there were so many miscalculations, large and small, that the whole wrong-headed mess added up to something that wasn’t just bad but insulting. You left ADNY angry and offended—that anyone, much less this out-of-touch French guy, would think you were so stupid.

New Yorkers don’t like to be treated like rubes. Tends to leave a bad taste. And the bad taste one left with after ADNY metastasized into something larger—feelings of doubt about the desirability—and even the morality—of that kind of luxury. Few in the hermetic world of Francophile New York foodies had ever really asked those questions before. Now, they were asking.