We have three political parties: Democrats, Republicans and Maybes/Maybe-knots. Similarly we can divide ourselves into three groups: the Bries, the Brans and the Barbecues.

The Brie

The Brie group is populated with exuberant folk who live to eat something new. These are the explorers, who flock to elBulli, The French Laundry, Alinea and The Fat Duck. Their heroes are Ferran Adria, Thomas Keller, Grant Achatz and Heston Blumenthal.

These are the Cirque du Soleil of chefs: high fliers who soar to new heights on bended twigs and clouds of dry ice while Iron Chefs and their challengers continue to astonish and delight their followers as they exhibit their own brand of jaw-dropping daring and culinary expertise.

The Brie group hurries to every new restaurant, daring to savor novel tastes, marveling at the dazzling décor and freedom of choices. They are having a glorious time, shouting applause and encouragement for the chefs and spurring them on to new creations to delight their fans. The cooks are like a jam of jazz musicians, playing set after set, variation after variation, spurring each other on with flair and imagination.

As Bobby Flay observed: “In the end, your creativity — perhaps even your outrageousness — will determine the final result.”

A characteristic of the Bran brigade is their tendency to treat themselves as outpatients. They study food labels as though they are prescriptions for life or death. Members of this group concern themselves with calories, cholesterol, and fat and have lately become obsessed with gluten.

The Brans medicate themselves with food supplements, rigorous exercise regimes and diets of denial. They fret about fluorides in the water and salt, (except sea salt), in the soup. They do not lie in the sun.

Many Brans are united in their devotion to slow (food). They sing rousing choruses of Amen’s to the principals of sustainability, seasonality and farmer’s markets. They believe we should treat animals humanely so they can eat them. Their hero is Saint Alice.

The Barbecue brotherhood are an entirely difference kettle of fish. They are happiest when dressed in warm clothing, armed and fortified with spirited drinks. They like to hunt and kill their own food: doves, ducks and dears.

The Barbecues can be found striding around their contemporary backyard version of an ancient campfire, carrying a beer and a spear, while their mates scurry about gathering all the sides and washing the dishes. The Barbecues regard a large steak with the same near reverential awe as the flag and the constitution. To those with whom they disagree, they offer tea — and sympathy. Their hero is not the Jolly Great Giant.

It is interesting to discover all three of these disparate approaches to dining result in an almost identical lifespan of three score years and ten (or twenty if you are an actuarian totting up future social security benefits.)

A lifetime if you are watching the political parties — party.

It is happening everywhere: NICHING.

Like TV niches: if you are on the right, you go to FOX. On the left, MSNBC. CBS, NBC and ABC Networks are fading. They are generalists. TV channels are increasingly specialized: Food, fishing, fashion, biggest losers, biggest winners…hardly anything in the middle. Same with specialty stores, specialty doctors, specialty religious institutions, political parties etc. Same with magazines that were once read by “general” readers. Only specialized readers thrive.

It’s becoming the same things with cookbooks: What sells are famous chef books, (I see Paula Deen’s estimated net worth is $24 to $28 million.) Famous country (Tuscany) books are still selling as are diets of the day (gluten free) or Minimalist, books for those who can’t or don’t want to cook. So what options are available to an author who is exploring a different topic entirely: Season to Taste for example…

This is one of those astonishingly unexpected treasures that we may be fortunate to stumble across by chance or word of recommendation. It’s food memories remain in the palette of the mind while interspersed in a tale of loss (of the sense of taste after a devastating car accident) and the joy of gradual recovery.  Skillfully woven between meals is a love story. You won’t find a more lucid explanation of the physiology of smell than these words written by its author, Molly Birnbaum.

How can this author reach those who are reading Grant Achatz’ Life on the Line, a widely recognized narrative also about the loss of taste? How can she bask in his reflected glory?

Many of us lose our sense of taste as a side effect of chemotherapy or traumatic head injury or other medical catastrophy. So Molly Birnbaum and Grant Achatz publishers could/should/would do good things to make doctors aware of these books and recommend them to all the many patients yearning for reassurance that their own sense of taste will return, even an astonishing, fleeting one whiff at a time.

Many despairing authors could reach a wider readership by exploring unconventional paths.

Executive Chef Alfred Portale, Gotham Bar & Grill

There are those who invent clocks and others who tell the time. There are architects who design buildings and folks who paint them. There are artisans who make violins and artists who composers of concertos.

We tend to think of artistic creativity as springing from the minds of dancers and painters and musicians, but plumbers, electricians and vacuum cleaner engineers also invent novel solutions to problems. They are creative geniuses too.

We all know chefs who acquire or are endowed with exceptional ability. Some are intellectual giants. Some are blessed with intuitive talent.

If we tried to make a list of influential chefs, it would reach from Lucullus who drew his last breath in 56 B.C. and trace a glorious gastronomic path through the prism of Apicius who took his first breath in 25 B.C. We’d mention Taillevent 1310 – 1395, and Rabelais who tirelessly described sixty ways to cook an egg.

In his treatise Gargantua, Rabelais wrote, “Drink always and you shall never die,” though unfortunately he did — in 1553.

We’d add to our list, Catherine de’ Medici, who arrived from Italy as a tiny betrothed 14 year-old and became the Queen of France. She changed the culinary landscape by introducing the French court to truffles, Parmesan cheese, artichokes, quenelles, roast duckling with orange sauce and pasta — lots and lots of pasta.

It has been observed there wouldn’t have been a Renaissance without pasta, because hungry men growl, and with rumbling tummies, foment revolutions whereas the well-fed sing happy songs and bequeath everlasting beauty. With a bellyful of spaghetti, a person can contemplate creation itself.

It was Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher who lived from 341 B.C. to 270 B.C. who wisely declared, “The beginning and root of all good is to make the stomach happy; wisdom and learning are founded on that.”

By Gum! If only those old Greeks still ruled the world we would all be living in Paradise instead of dwelling in perpetual poverty.

Do you remember the dictum of King Henri IV, patron of that venerable inn, La Tour d’Argent? He pronounced his monarchy philosophy thusly, “If God allows me to live, and I will see that there is not a single laborer in my kingdom who does not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.” And that pronouncement was made in the mid-1500s before the Colonel fried his very first KFC.

As we march through the menus of time we stumble across Colbert, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the Minister of Finance who served the Sun King, Louis, 14th. He approved France’s purchase of Quebec and Louisiana even though according to writer Daniel Rogov, author of Rogues, Writers & Whores, Dining with the Rich & Famous, “he could see no way to convince the savages that inhabit those lands to buy our fashionable frocks.” However, Colbert did see the colonies as a source for enriching the French larder, (though the future presence of McDonald’s in the Musée du Louvre was surely not what he had in mind).

Parmentier was the person who persuaded Parisians to set aside their fear of potatoes. This feat of conversion from fear of crisp spuds prompted Chef Curnonsky’s description of French fries as being among “the most spiritual creations of Parisian genius.” The original French fries are thought to have been first consumed beneath the bridges of Paris during the French Revolution and were known as Pommes Pont-Neuf.

Thus we stride through the first stirrings of culinary creationism and evolve from Sauce Béarnaise to Green Goddess Dressing, from Poulet Demi Deuil with a fine Bordeaux to Chicken Nuggets with Diet Coke. We have traveled far and with increasing width from Sachertorte to Twinkies.

Each stage in the devolution of our culinary journey takes us to new heights: from the 17th century’s influence of La Varenne, we stride through gastronomy to honor: Brillat-Savarin, Marcel Boulestin, Antonin Carême, Choron, Dugléré, Nicolas Appert, (who invented canning), to Auguste Escoffier; Alain Chapel; Alain Ducasse and Alain Senderens to  Ferdinand Point; Guy Savoy and Gordon Ramsay; Chef Boyardee and Rachael Ray’s discovery of 365 ways to use leftover hot dogs.

We can all agree that Alfred Portale, a former jewelry designer and top of his class graduate of the CIA, is among the most inventive and highly acclaimed chefs of our time. As too are Ferran Adria, Grant Achatz, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and a host of others who have ascended into the exalted pantheon of kitchen deities.

What distinguishes these creamers of crops is their ability to think creatively: so not salt and predictable pepper but salt on caramel. Not those four seasons but twelve seasons in a year.

It is said: “No one is born with taste. Taste must be acquired not only by tasting but by learning and reading in dozens of disciplines and by experimenting and perfecting and making choices; choices about the right ingredients are of no greater or less importance than choosing the right words to describe your purpose.”

It is one thing to name an item on the menu fish eggs and astonishingly more profitable to whisper the word caviar. To say liver of a fat duck is less enticing than Fat Duck’s Foie (gras).  Or pâté rather than cold  meat loaf. Pommes frites go better with steak than Freedom Fries, a dish of revenge best served cold.

Robert F. Kennedy wrote, “Some dream of things that are and ask, Why? Others dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?” Nonconformists and risk takers possess the ability to paint toothache in fondant or describe the seductive smell of sizzling onions.

Creativity is a skill that can be developed. It is based on the fundamentals of technical knowledge and soaring imagination. Leonardo da Vinci had to understand the elements of anatomy in order to paint the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper; Picasso had to understand the fundamentals of art before creating his own cubistic artistry.

Every great chef starts to climb the ladder of stardom only after fully understanding the pure ecstasy of a well-constructed consommé. It is this grasp of complex simplicity that separates the sous from the celeb.

It takes a certain kind of intellect to think of serving a beefsteak tomato with a steak knife. To say “I love!” in a different way.

To invent a new dish is to pay homage to all who cooked before us and all the consumers who declared the chef to be an artist.