courtesy of bencollsuss via flickr
On SF Gate’s Inside Scoop today, the honorable Paolo Lucchesi sat down with the venerable Rick Bayless to talk shop. After he got done waxing on about his good eating in SF (none of it Mexican), he got down to business. A man with a sharp mind, Bayless always has some interesting things to say.
“Mexican food in California has been so incredibly limited to the taqueria style. It’s like if you went to France and say American food is just hot dogs—it’s good but it’s not the whole story. Everyone is so focused on taquerias. It’s a very, very small amount of cuisine in Mexico.”
“I’m looking for a chef to have the guts to rise above and do a fine dining restaurant that really showcases the real food of Mexico. [ed’s note: yes!] And it seems people are clamoring for that. Granted you need the background and have to travel in Mexico—you don’t learn it in culinary school. But I still think there’s someone in San Francisco that can do that.”
“I think Mexican food in LA tends to be quite bland. There are places that are doing the real thing, but it’s mostly sticking to the taqueria model. There’s a little bit lighter, fresher quality to what I’ve tasted in San Francisco, but there seems to be a sameness to what you get in LA. It tends to be gringo-ized to me. Not all, but most.” [Interestingly, Bayless just opened a place in LA called Red O. Read what Grubstreet had to report.]
“There’s a bit of investment in our country in keeping our image of Mexico and Mexican food as low, cheap and not worthy of our attention. I’ve been on the other side of that my whole life, because I first went to Mexico as a kid and found it to be the most enriching culture and wanted to bring it back through food.” [yes, yes, yes!]
“In the United States—and in a lot of cases, California, because of its large immigrant population—there’s become a stereotype of what Mexican cuisine should be, and it’s hard to break out of it.”
“I have a Mexican soul but not a Mexican grandmother, so I don’t have to be slavish about adhering to one particular family recipe. I think that if we’re going to break out, we have to see the country in a different way than the way we’ve stereotyped it as poor, downtrodden and nothing but a beach getaway for us to play in. That’s a hard thing to get over.”
“People forget that Mexico City is a sophisticated, world-class city. There’s a chef in Oaxaca that’s doing molecular gastronomy things — he’s incredibly well-traveled and well-educated. We just have to be able to open our eyes to what’s really there, and wipe out the Cancun and Mazatlan images from our minds.”
Nice interview Lucchesi.