Honor Among Thieves

Is any food "original" anymore? Is there anything that hasn’t been developed yet, when it comes to producing things to put in our mouths? The heyday of food discovery is long over. Gone are the days of experimenting with everything around us, putting it in our mouths, chewing it, possibly dropping dead soon after. Of course, these days were synonymous with animal skin-centric fashion, and tonal grunts instead of significant language, but that still must’ve been fun times. Now we trust packaging, labels, bright lights and big cities to free us from the stress of possibly dying every time we insert something into our maw.

When we speak of “means to an end,” the window of finding new “ends” is slowly closing…but the window of “means” remains open. We’ve mapped out the world, both geographically and culinarily speaking. How far we can go has been defined; its how we get there that continues to evolve, become faster, more technological.
If you think of food as numbers, there are millions of different permutations, a seemingly endless number of algorithms to get from ingredients X to finished product Y. But there is no π, no endless string of abundance in the food world. An everlasting gobstopper is the closest we’ve come; thank you, Willy Wonka.

Nowadays, you can find one of my dishes in over 1800 locations worldwide. Step inside an Au Bon Pain on any given day, and you’ll find a curried lentil soup, developed by yours truly. But only because after I came up with it at Mantra, Thomas John stuck it in his pocket, and carried it into his next life as the corporate chef of Good Bread. The first time I tasted it, I got a more nostalgic shock than when I heard Billy Joel’s “Storm Front” for the first time in about 12 years (fantastic album.) Here was my recipe, taken, and mass marketed, without even a stray red hair to validate my historical presence.

Of course, I didn’t come up with it. Pierre Franey has a curried lentil soup that he calls “his own.” But who holds true ownership? No one. Every dish, every “idea,” comes from something. No one grows with such a pure, unadulterated mind so as not to be influenced by everything they experience. The cobblestone road outside of the coffee shop I’m writing from could be the inspiration for “chicken under a brick.”

I respect these men, these thieves: Pierre, Thomas, all of the chefs whose influence, ideas and patience have helped me design my own persona, in the kitchen and on the plate. It just simultaneously thrills and intrigues me that we all take, whether respectively or not, from those around us. Dishes get tweaked, changed ever so slightly, but still retain some of the personality of those who cooked it before. But one can’t help but wonder about the thin line between reverence and thievery.