Why Our Fascination with Famous Restaurant Recipes?
When we examine the phrase "famous restaurant recipe," we would do well to determine which word gets the full weight of the modifier "famous"? Are we talking about a better-than-good recipe that is famous primarily because of its association with a certain restaurant or are we talking about a recipe so superlative that its renown has rubbed off on the establishment where it's served? It could be either, but either way, when we speak of famous restaurant recipes, we speak in ultimate terms, and we expect these recipes to live up to their reputations. They must yield cuisine that is utterly delectable or utterly unique. They must give us food that is worthy of praise and enjoyable enough to persist in our memory. On a deeper level, they confirm that we are doing okay, for such culinary wonders don't exist where food is scarce and seen exclusively as a facilitator of survival.
In countries that are considered affluent by Third World standards, dining is best understood as a holistic experience. Sensation is everything. Food, like music, art or travel, has become something to enhance our experience of time. Memoirs, biographies and novels are liberally sprinkled with the names of restaurants. The French writer Marcel Proust in Remembrance of Things Past dwelt often upon what occurred during mealtimes. Frances Parkinson Keyes made a post-war generation of readers long to enjoy a leisurely dinner at Antoine's in New Orleans. Food as an occasion for conviviality has been celebrated by artists. Can any one of us look at Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party without wanting to be there with friends on that balmy, floating afternoon? And as for travel - to lunch at a certain inn has become a requisite part of our trip itineraries, all the better if we can come away or later get hold of a recipe for a signature dish we ate there.
Ah, restaurants - breathtakingly ornate, tarnished, rundown, closed, renovated, edgy, or being nudged along by octogenarian owners who would really like to give up the business but - we want to know how they make that particular salad of wild greens and edible flowers or that bowl of chili that will leave us sipping ice water for an hour after we eat it. This is color; this is Life. All establishments with special recipes are welcome to impress us. Even when we have to sit outside on a concrete step and wipe our mouths with thin paper napkins pulled from an aluminum holder that pops open, spilling its contents every time someone touches it, the culinary experience will rise to the occasion if the food is good or legendary. Location, celebrity patrons served, number of patrons served, number of years in operation all become part of the mystique of establishments associated with both formal and word of mouth cuisine ratings.
When it comes to famous restaurants and their recipes, we are all the victims of romance, expecting a list of ingredients to be imbued with ambiance. It is the promise of this borrowed touch of atmosphere as well as the increased chance of creating delectable food that lures us variously to recipes from Paula Deen and from a relatively unknown restaurateur who runs a lunch counter on Route 66. We are suckers for package deals, happy as larks to obtain those recipes that give us a sense of location along with their "two cups of bleached flour" or "half cup of chopped pecans." Through restaurant recipes we experience and re-experience our nation's largeness and its history. We also experience its "Now."
As for our own personal histories - although we cannot recapture that certain afternoon in Savannah when we ate key lime pie with friends or the rainy morning when our young son had a holiday from school and we decided to treat our child and ourselves to a fabulous early lunch at the Blue Willow Inn, we can re-make some of the same dishes we savored on those occasions. In a sense, a restaurant recipe can put time and place in our hands.
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