You could make that statement about nearly any fine dining restaurant. Very few are just making classic, established dishes. Most are combining techniques and ingredients in new ways. Often, they are taking a basic dish and layering on a surprising seasoning or ingredient. Sometimes, the basic dish is deconstructed to view the dish in a new light. Sometimes, a basic dish is married to another basic dish from a different cuisine to highlight similarities and to surprise in that way.
This combination isn’t terribly surprising, but then again I’ve never seen this dish before.
I like pork schnitzel and I like Taiwanese popcorn chicken and I think Mei Lin executes better than I do. So I’m in!
Which prob explains why I do very little fine dining…
The latter 2 “options” you mention sound very interesting to me (and I would happily pay for that). The first honestly just sounds… lazy (sorry). We’ll see which version this falls under.
B/c, unless it’s really amazing, I could pay a possibly equally talented but less famous chefs less $ to make a dish that’s almost equally tasty? And it just doesn’t seem that creative to me. Isn’t that part of what we’re paying for at a fine dining establishment (creativity that’s also delicious)? Genuine question.
@robert: I know you run this board, but I’m also a paying and contributing member, and I really think you could and should think of a way to rephrase that in a way that doesn’t imply physical violence directed a real person.
You could, but then you would all be unoriginal hacks that are copying Mei Lin and would deliver an end result that is presumably something less than what Nightshade is offering.
Yes, thank you. I think, fundamentally, that’s my issue w/ her creation.
No, the Taiwanese popcorn thing has some smokey spice. I don’t know what the constituents ingredients are, but it’s really tasty in a Doritos-Cool-Ranch sort of way (which is why I also don’t get why someone would pay a lot of $ for it, since it tastes tasty-cheap to me). Not that it tastes LIKE Doritos Cool Ranch, but it has a similarly (IMHO) artificial, laboratory-experiment quality to me.
Depends. To me, the approach of adding an interesting new ingredient to a dish depends on understanding flavor profiles well enough to make the new combination work and relies upon exceptional technique to make the dish worthy of inclusion in a menu. The kind of cooking Thomas Keller does strikes me as mostly technique driven that occasionally plays with thoughtful new ingredient combinations. I don’t see that as lazy, though it’s perhaps less creative than other approaches. It certainly is the least risky, which is both good and bad.
I’m not really sure I “get” this. I don’t know anywhere I can currently get the dish in question. So the idea that you can get this dish made by a less famous chef seems erroneous (at least for now). I also value creativity, but I’ve had my fair share of wildly creative meals that don’t taste good. So, creativity must always be subservient to taste. And a lack of creativity is no deal breaker, even for fine dining.
I don’t know. I like fried things like tonkatsu, schnitzel, and popcorn chicken so this speaks to me enough to want to give it a go.
Yeah, I think this is why I’m confused by the reaction my comments are getting from other posters.
I LOVE and ADORE fried food. All the stuff you’ve listed is stuff I like. And yet I have no interest in trying her combination, ALMOST regardless of how good it ends up tasting.
Combining a pork schnitzel and popcorn chicken makes me think that the dish will taste like… popcorn chicken but made w/ pork. Or pork schnitzel that has some additional spice (that tastes really delicious from something that you presumably could sprinkle out of a bottle).
It conceptually just get a big “meh” from me.
I think it’s sort of like Disney doing a remake of “The Lion King.” Maybe the original is good enough that it doesn’t need to be mucked w/. Or maybe the new version doesn’t take it “far enough” to make it worthy.
The question I have is, why is this worth trying to combine things that aren’t far apart in taste (and I get some people will take exception to my statement), texture, or even possibly in prep? Not quite the right analogy, but you can make pork cutlet or ground-beef cutlet. And, yeah, they taste distinctly different. And, yes, sometimes I’m in the mood more for one than the other. But the two aren’t so different that I’d bother advertising it as something new or interesting.
I’ll compare to, say, Erven, where I would read the description of the dish and say to myself, “I don’t even get how those things could be combined in a harmonious way” and then was delighted to find out that they COULD be.
I’m happy to be proven wrong about the pork-schnitzel-popcorn-chicken combo. But I’ll def be looking forward to other people trying it first.
I have the same view. Many original authentic dishes people like also came from a prior mashup. You never know what you might happen upon until you try it.
I recognize that this is one single success amongst many failures, but Majordomo’s short rib appears to be one example of 2 similar dishes (Korean bbq/American bbq) being combined into something greater than the sum of its parts.
So as the poster above me so eloquently states, you never know until you try. We may feel that this is not an original concept (schnitzel + popcorn chicken) yet nobody is doing it.
But just because it doesn’t exist (yet) – either by the hand of a no-name line cook or a famous TV celebrity chef – doesn’t mean its necessarily desirable.
I mean, a sashimi milkshake doesn’t exist (yet), but that doesn’t mean I’m actually waiting for someone (famous or not) to create it.
Sure. But your statement is not really germane to @paranoidgarliclover’s statement to which I was responding. The point was made that such an uncreative dish could be had elsewhere at a better price with comparable execution. I don’t think it can be.
Anyways, if I’m going to die on a hill, it isn’t going to be popcorn chicken X pork schnitzel (even though, like, I wouldn’t mind eating it).
Right now, I’m just trying to get my love to agree to do Hayato with me if I can get reservations. I mean I love me some Republique but I need a break from the Mediterranean region. See! I got real problems here!!!
There are a number of sources for recent menu prices and there are myriad reasons for not posting menu prices on the web. These places aren’t doing much take out business.
