Paul Liebrandt & Jordan Kahn, The Role of a Chef, 2006

In lieu of a registration fee, pay-what-you-can donations can be made to C-CAP: https://ccapinc.org/donate/

In his presentation at the 2006 StarChefs International Chefs Congress, Chef Paul Liebrandt posed a few questions: Why do gastronomic restaurants exist? For the business venture? For the customer? In the year 2006, was cooking fundamentally an art or a craft? With the decade came the rise of hyper-creative restaurants such as El Bulli and Liebrandt’s own Gilt. Liebrandt used the term “couture cuisine” to describe this approach to food, as if Gilt offered collections down a runway for the diner to ooh and ah at. “I like to be challenged,” he said. “Food should be fun, exciting, delicious, but at the same time, I think it should challenge you. It shouldn’t be boring.” To illustrate, he showed off techniques that were based on the classics but with new takes: compressed watermelon, tableside-sliced foie gras with hibiscus-beet glaze, lime gel with a base of agar agar, Pacojet ice cream, spinach leaves crystallized with Litesse, and Pastry Chef Jordan Khan’s freeform sablé that could be molded into whimsical shapes.