Why You Should Order the Tasting Menu
The multi-course tasting menu is the Serious Foodie's favorite way to eat, but far too many are too rich, too long, and just too freakin' much. Mercifully, thats changing. Chef David Chang celebrates the new wave of tasting menus that feel like pleasure—not punishment—all the way through that final dessert.
By David Chang; cover photo by ulterior epicure
Tasting menus are chefs’ novels, their Big Ideas, their statements of purpose and intent. Sure, I need to eat them to keep current for my job, but I also find that when done right, a tasting menu—a parade of small courses chosen by the chef, not you—is the ideal way to dine. Successful tasting menus are a high-wire act performed under enormous pressure, and they’ve provided some of the best meals of my life.
And some of the worst. There are a few old-guard tasting-menu places that I tend to avoid because I’ve been so overfed that I’ve vomited in the bathroom or outside when I took a break for some fresh air. I may be the only person in the world to throw up on purpose so I can eat and drink more. Mainly just to be polite! Call it the pride (and stupidity) of the chef, a professional obligation to be as gluttonous as the situation demands.
SEE MORE: WTF Are Chia Seeds?
Fortunately, this happens much less often these days. That’s because there are so many amazing young cooks out there creating tasting menus that are as enjoyable at the eighth course as they are at the first. These cooks go light on starches, meats, breads, and butter. Much as I like to eat those things, they fill me up fast—a death sentence in a multi-hour meal. (And because sometimes my dining companion can’t finish and I know that the kitchen wants to see empty plates, I often wind up eating for two.) The new and improved tasting-menu dinner takes two hours, not four. I’m seeing lots of nine- or ten-course menus, not fifteen. And that’s the money: a two-hour meal that’s heavily edited so there are no superfluous dishes.
The best modern tasting menus pay homage to kaiseki, a “chef’s choice” tradition of Japanese dining. Almost all of the tasting-menu spots in America that interest me have a Japanese aesthetic. Not necessarily in taste, but in construct and sensibility: some raw fish, some very seasonal vegetables to keep things fresh. No surprise, lots of these places are in the Bay Area: Saison, Benu, and Coi in San Francisco, Commis in Oakland, Meadowood in Napa. But even at some restaurants you might think would be heavier—Del Posto in New York, Oxheart in Houston—the kitchen turns out tasting menus that feel more like kaiseki than those meat-heavy ordeals that can make you shudder, not salivate.
SEE MORE: 5 Easy Ways to Make Your Burger Better
When I’m eating a tasting menu at a restaurant that’s on fire, I know that the cooks are the best cooks, cooking their best in a crucible of pressure, hammering away on a wide array of techniques. There could be five different skills or tricks that go into your three-bite salad! When I sit down for one of these meals, I’m always wondering, “Have they thought of something that hasn’t been done before?” Anytime I go to Noma—chef René Redzepi’s massively influential restaurant in Copenhagen—I always leave thinking, “René did it again! With nothing but weeds and garbage. Screw him.”
And that’s why you order a tasting menu in the first place, right? Because eating well means feeding your mind, not just your gut.
More from GQ:
How To Build the Perfect At-Home Bar
25 Biggest Sleazebags in Sports
The 10 Habits of Highly Unflabby People
5 New Rules of Fall Layering
