Restaurants
Coming to a Menu Near You
By John Burns published Jun 1, 2008
At the counter stands Hervé This, the world's first-only?-PhD in molecular gastronomy. In front of him sit 31 culinary directors, menu developers, and cooks of all stripes from assorted Earls, Cactus Club, and Joeys rooms, and from Saltlik Steakhouse. This (pronounced "teece"), a chemist and gourmet, is stumping the crowd with that building block of traditional French cuisine: the egg. How can we tell if the one he's holding is raw or hard-boiled? The cooks (mostly men in their 20s and 30s) throw out the answer: only a hard-boiled egg, stood on end, will spin. "Non," says This. All eggs spin. He sets this one in motion, drops one finger to stop it, then lets go. The egg kicks back into gear: "Fresh," he says. His accent makes the word sound sultry.
The chefs are spending their Sunday night at Barbara-Jo's Books to Cooks for this corporate seminar, at the invitation of Stew Fuller, president of Saltlik and a member of the family behind the Earls empire.
This throws out challenges. Standing before a bowl of egg whites: "What would be the best whisk to use?" The room points to the smaller. Non. The larger has more loops, which divide the whites more efficiently. "So again, which one?" Onside now, we yell for the bigger whisk. "Non, better is both. More efficient, and if you are short of time in your restaurants, you should use more whisks together.
"Is any woman here having her period?"
Deep silence. As he contrives that peculiar alchemy of yolk, water, and oil we call mayonnaise, This cites various old wives' tales. Can a menstruating woman make mayonnaise? Yes, he has determined. Must egg and oil be the same temperature? No. He has a storehouse of 25,000 axioms; the ones that delight him are the truths that seem false, and vice versa. "I'm happy when a chef tells something, it's very strange, we make the experiment, and he's right. Then we have some knowledge.
