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.

Coffee Tasting Chart

You might think it would be a gift from the Godz to be a supertaster but there is a distinct downside to this genetic endowment.

If you are a supertaster, you’ll hate sugar and all sweet foods and most fruits and vegetables. For a  supertaster, tasting broccoli is like tasting it multiplied by a factor of 10. So if you hated broccoli at the outset you would hate it 10 times as horribly.

To be a supertaster, regular milk tastes like heavy cream. Supertasters don’t like fat or greasy foods because they contain large molecules that press heavily on the nerves found in their taste pores. Supertasters are thus deprived of the joys of KFC, and even an occasional banana split. (This is no small tragedy.)

The American Association of Advanced Science tells us that the tongues of thin people are more likely to be packed with thousands of taste buds, the exact number of which is genetically determined like inheriting curly hair or brown eyes. Having a bunch of extra sensors on your tongue can be compared with having extra mini microphones in your ears. Sure you can hear what that person is saying about you, but you might not like what you hear.

Humans are unable to control appetite, unlike all other creatures on earth. Almost everyone can detect sweetness in 1 part in 200, salt in 1 part in 400, and bitterness in 1 part in 200,000. Odor can be detected by taste buds even when diluted to 1 in a trillion. The bad news here is that 64% of everyone’s taste buds are lost by age 30. The good news is that our ability to taste outlasts all the other senses. If it tastes good we keep eating it.

If I read on the menu that the lasagna had four cheeses, I could be totally fooled. I wouldn’t be able to tell if it had three or five. A supertaster would be able to identify each cheese and every herb or spice and every other nuance of flavor.

A sommelier can differentiate between literally hundreds of wines. A chef is as dependent on taste perception to earn a living. A great chef is as skilled as a great painter in arriving at a taste palette to please the palate.

Nestle and Cadbury employ chewing gum tasters. A good living can be had by tasting cheese, olive oil, coffee, tea, ice cream, cookies, strawberry jam, barbecue sauce, chocolate, yogurt and dozens of processed foods.

There has been a boom in employment for research chefs who develop tastes. And they now have an association to call their own. It is the Research Chefs Association or RCA. Nation’s Restaurant News trade magazine reported: “You may think it’s fairly intuitive to bring chefs on board when you’re make food but doing just that has become standard practice. More and more chefs are being hired by big business because the companies need a culinary edge as they walk that fine line between being able to mass-produce foods and keeping with what’s going on in the culinary world.”

You can make a lovely juicy salary as a supertaster–providing you first choose your parents carefully.

Rene S. Leon, Culinary Student

I asked one of my students at the ‘Culinary‘ (Culinary Institute of America) to tell me how he fulfilled his dream to become a student at the CIA. His journey was long yet extraordinarily inspiring. This is his story  in his own words.

“My name is Rene S. Leon and I grew up in a small town in Ecuador.

My brothers encouraged me to go away to study in the city of Cuenca which is about a one hour’s journey away from my parents’ home town. I remember the day when they brought me to Cuenca for the first time. I felt so strange and dizzy with anxiety. Imagine me: a country boy arriving in what I then thought was a big city. I grew up where the only traffic on the roads were cows and sheep and dogs running in packs. In Cuenca, there was so much noise and the exhaust from the cars covered the city in a cloud of soot.

Almost  immediately I began to miss my home town of San Fernando. I was terrified because I had to face my first day of class with so many new faces and new teachers. I felt people were looking at me, and this made me feel even more intimidated. Everything felt new, even the air smelled and tasted different from my hometown.  The change from the countryside to the city was so enormous that it felt as though I was living a different language.  For example, in my home town at the high school, I only learned a few vocabulary words in English. I had no idea how to string together a complete sentence.

In my first year in Cuenca, I failed the English class and, in the second year I failed again. I was miserable. I felt as though the whole world was resting on my shoulders. I told my parents that I wanted to drop out of the school. My mother was angry with me and angry with the school but I could see the love for me in her eyes. My parents were frustrated because they weren’t able to help me. They didn’t want me to end up like them.

They always hoped that my brothers and I could get further along because their parents had never supported their dream of going to school. My mother dropped out in the fourth grade and my father made it only as far as the sixth grade. This is why they insisted I return to Cuenca and finish my education. I did manage to graduate, but even up to the last day I always hated English classes.

As soon as I left school, I made up my mind that I wanted to emigrate to America even though I didn’t have any money in my pocket. The job market in Cuenca was not great at the time. I  managed to find work in a fast food restaurant.  It was like a KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) but I earned only $28  a month and I needed $5,000 to  to get to the U.S.

It was impossible to continue dreaming.  But then I heard from my neighbor that they were hiring at his factory. I asked him if he would mind writing a reference letter so that I could apply there. He said, “No problem. I could even take you there!” I was so happy when I heard the salary was $95 a month. I felt a little closer to achieving my goal, but at the same time I was scared because I knew I had to improve my English in order to come to America.

A few months later I decided to borrow the money and come to the United States. When I arrived in 1995, I had to face the same terrible problem that I had in high school:  English!  And this time it was even worse because I had to learn the language in order to get a job. I was very lucky, though, because when I arrived here, my brother Danilo gave me his job.

It was the noblest thing that anyone had ever done for me. That job consisted of washing dishes. But even for this work, I needed English. Fortunately, things have improved since I arrived. I learned fast, and after eight years of hard work, I realized that I could move up the ladder.

I left behind a culture that traces its roots to the Incas (approximately 500 AD) where some ways of life still haven’t changed. Next month, I will graduate with a Bachelor’s degree from The Culinary Institute of America, the world’s premier culinary college.”

I don’t know what Rene will do with his culinary degree. But I do know that he boldly dared to take a risk to go after his passion in food and overcame obstacles that others would shrink from. For if you don’t ask for what you want, the chances of getting it are close to zero.