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Even before the first snack is served, the chef brings two dark metallic ceramic plates full of ingredients to the table. One is covered in leaves and features a radiant red oxheart tomato, three sizeable white asparagus tied together with a rustic string, and perfect artichoke hearts. The second dish is covered in ice and showcases, among other fresh seafood, a massive blue lobster, three carabineros (scarlet red prawns), and a small gold can that reads: "N25 Caviar selection". "This is what we're going to eat tonight," announces Paulo Airaudo, partner and chef of two-Michelin-starred restaurant Amelia in the Basque town of San Sebastián.
He points to the products and gives a brief description of the origin of each one: "We got these small, tasty guisantes [rounded little peas] from a producer we work with nearby. Tuna comes from Japan, as does sudachi, which we use in some of the recipes.” Dinner begins only after this explanation, followed by a sequence of 15 courses.
From Rio de Janeiro to Hong Kong, from California to the Basque Country, introducing ingredients to the guests before serving is gaining traction in the food world. On silver platters, in minimalist wooden boxes, in centrepieces: "Here are your fresh, giant tiger prawns"; "There's the unusually shaped yellow tuber from the Andes"; "Please, meet the perfect mushrooms from the season."
It's a way, says Airaudo, of showing the diners what the restaurant managed to put together to serve at that meal – and the effort (and also the price) behind each of them. "I see it as an effort to value those who grow and cook the food we eat," he explains. "It's a way of making the relationship with the diners more transparent: they know exactly what they're going to have in their dishes and what they are paying for," he adds.
SingleThread
The growing trend is representative of today’s product-based food scene, a response to the ‘over-technisation’ hangover that gripped restaurants worldwide, driven by the molecular cuisine movement at the beginning of the century. At that time, the idea was to serve an ingredient with as many transformations as possible to prove that cuisine could be a language in itself, without limits. Now, the counter-movement is to rescue the origin of what we eat – as we have always seen, for example, in seafood restaurants with beautiful specimens arranged over ice in a display for everyone to see.
Chef Kyle Connaughton, co-owner of three-Michelin-starred SingleThread in the US, believes people have moved so far away from nature and the "natural form" of ingredients they almost don't recognise what's behind what they eat. "We have lived in an era where we've separated people from where their food comes from," he points out. Tucked in the Northern Californian wine country (in the city of Healdsburg), the restaurant has its own farm, where farmer and floral designer Katina Connaughton dedicates herself to the fields to provide the best products for their Kaiseki-style menu.
Showcasing the ingredients represents an essential move for them. "My role as a chef is to showcase the hard work of the farmer, who also happens to be my wife,” says Kyle. “She is working for months and months to grow a vegetable that I will have and serve in just a few hours. I need to show reverence for that hard work and the integrity in which she farms both in the way I cook and the way we share this with the guest.”
Crispy tilefish at Wing
Introducing products to patrons can also be educational, an interactive way to engage them through the whole experience at the table.
"There are so many ingredients from all parts of the world, and we're still discovering new ones. To our diners, it's fascinating to see the whole, the ingredient in its original state, whether it's a rare fish, the beautiful trays of uni or even some seaweed they never realised they could eat," explains chef Vicky Cheng, from Hong Kong fine-dining restaurants, Vea and Wing.
There, Cheng uses ingredients like dried seafood (such as sea cucumber or abalone) and locally-exclusive products from Asia (like most parts of the bamboo) that may be foreign to anyone who's not Chinese or from Hong Kong. "We showcase these ingredients in their raw form and arrange them nicely to present to our diners. It just takes an extra step to make it visually appealing," he adds.
Since he decided to make the experience of eating at his awarded restaurant Lasai even more exclusive to his guests (by serving only 10 diners per night, instead of 45 as before), chef Rafa Costa e Silva has been giving more prominence to the ingredients that arrive daily at his kitchen. A wooden box set in the marble L-shaped counter where diners sit showcases the "harvest of the day" – most of the produce comes from two farms close to Rio de Janeiro, where the restaurant is located, that supply his vegetable-oriented cuisine. At different moments of the meal, cooks take one of the ingredients from the box to show them to the guests, so they can see and understand what they're having.
Since Lasai welcomes many tourists "who have no idea what chayote looks like," as Costa e Silva says, or who have never seen a leaf of lemon vine, a popular vegetable in parts of Brazil known as ora-pro-nóbis that is widely used in different recipes. "But perhaps the most important move [to show off the ingredients] is precisely to value the quality and freshness of the vegetables we serve at the restaurant," he adds.
The chef says he wants to transform the entrance to the restaurant, which has an entire black wall with dramatic lighting, into a "hall of fame" for the vegetables he serves. "Our idea is to place the vegetables inside glass frames and hang them on the wall as if they were works of art. That way, we can show, point out, and even bring the frames to the table when explaining a recipe," he says. Irrefutable proof of the ingredient-worshipping era we are living in right now.
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