[Sneakeater]

If there were anything to the food/art analogy, you might have a point, but there isn't so you don't.

I actually agree with you about that.

There is, however, a lot to the food/architecture analogy, I think.

[Wilfrid1]

Two ways to enhance the discussion would be for an Admin to insert a question mark in the thread title :pedant: and to make it clear that the discussion is - I think - not about food so much as about cuisine (or dishes, if you prefer). In other words, the way food is prepared and presented.

Also, in order to make sense, the question has to be about the dining public's reaction to the way food is prepared and presented.

Can dishes become dated in this sense?

Of course they bleeding well can. Do I have to get out my Vincent Price book of menus again?

[g.johnson]

To whoever is claiming fashion and technology are not changing food very rapidly, I propose taking a look at the Time Life Foods of The World series.

You needn't stoop to the populist, the food in the Marco Pierre White video that someone posted also looked dated. However, I think it's more to do with presentation than substance.

[Sneakeater]

As the initiator of this thread:

1. I wanted to use "cuisine" instead of "food," but then at the last minute changed because I thought it sounded pretentious. But Wilfrid of course is right that "cuisine" is what I meant.

2. When the the thread was posted after I submitted it, I was as surprised as anyone else to see that I had forgotten to type in the question mark.

[Squeat Mungry]

Looks like this guy is dating some food.

[g.johnson]

Of course they bleeding well can. Do I have to get out my Vincent Price book of menus again?

You are assuming that Vincent Price's food was ever anything other than bad.

[Wilfrid1]

Without wishing to complicate the issue unduly: while cuisine becoming dated is inevitable, my long-standing complaint is that there are many features of classic cuisine which could usefully be revived in a modern idiom, if only chefs had the patience, the time and the technique.

I'll throw out one example of this being done successfully: Kreuther's squab-foie croustillant at Atelier - classic in conception, contemporary in execution.

ETA: The one thing I have been pleased to see over the past ten years is a return to the sheer variety of main ingredients one sees on old menus. A decade ago, I constantly griped that the average New York fine dining menu gave you a choice of beef, chicken, lobster, tuna and some white fish. This has changed, for the better (although few realize that scattering menus with sweetbreads and brains and cockscombs is a reversion to how upscale dining used to be).

[Wilfrid1]

Of course they bleeding well can. Do I have to get out my Vincent Price book of menus again?

You are assuming that Vincent Price's food was ever anything other than bad.

It's a collection of menus from restaurants once regarded as the finest in the world. La Pyramide, and so on.

[Lex]

From 1971 - Fonduloha

[g.johnson]

Of course they bleeding well can. Do I have to get out my Vincent Price book of menus again?

You are assuming that Vincent Price's food was ever anything other than bad.

But a couple of examples (that I've posted before) from people who certainly could cook.

From Mossiman's A New Style of Cooking (a Sainsbury Cookbook so possibly dumbed down).


From Nico's My Gastronomy.

[Lex]

[Wilfrid1]

I love Nico's book, and the pictures.

[g.johnson]

Of course they bleeding well can. Do I have to get out my Vincent Price book of menus again?

You are assuming that Vincent Price's food was ever anything other than bad.

It's a collection of menus from restaurants once regarded as the finest in the world. La Pyramide, and so on.

Ah, I'm curious now. Do the combinations in each dish seem weird or the preparation?

[g.johnson]

That's an example of food that's meant to be novel (and sophisticated). But it was always shit. However, the food in Elizabeth David's books of the same period is generally wonderful.

[g.johnson]

I love Nico's book, and the pictures.

I chose the most ostentatious presentation.