Concept Refocus: Blogging the Art of Food and Cooking

People often ask me when I started my blog and I don't have a definite answer for them. That's mainly because I've always been blogging, either about food or other aspects of my life. It's been a natural activity for my ever since ExPage (a dinosaur of the internet age, predating Geocities) and Xanga (where I'm relatively inactive now). I technically started working Blogger mid 2003 just before graduating from high school, but blogging is natural to me.

Food blogging keeps developing and changing with every week, especially in the fast-paced restaurant world that is Los Angeles. Despite dismal news about the economy, restaurants and bars keep opening. My friend Tai Kim at Scoops theorizes that this is because these businesses have been in the works for years and can't pull the plug now.

I've tried briefly to keep up with these trends but I have neither the financial means nor personal desire to discover every restaurant or eatery in this massive city. The eating opportunities in this city are staggering and an entire lifetime would barely afford me the chance to try every noteworthy place. That said, I've realized I relish most of all in commenting on the scene and ruminating the art of eating and cooking. I'm more interested in why something tastes good, or why a restaurant is successful rather than "what." I could care less if I'm eating a tri-partite emulsion of ligonberry, cardamom, and white truffle or a slathering of barbeque sauce. Well, of course I care, but I'm not just interesting in reporting. I'd like to dig deeper and put some "meat" or "seasoning" to the overall eating experience. Often less is more, like focusing on just one dish instead of a degustation. Degustations have their place, but our short-term memories often fail to exceed anything beyond the number of Seven (so says psychology).

I think the three course meal isn't just an accident, it's the result of how our mind likes to remember things. Think of a sonata, which is an A B A, or an A A B A. Yes, I've realized that A A B A is four, but really the second A is just a repetition of the first A. Think Verse, Verse, Chorus, Bridge. Or in art, things come in trios or duos or fours. Even in science Chaos theory has shown that even things as complex as the branches of a tree reduce to a simple divisionary number. The human mind isn't built for sensory overload, despite MTV's flash-tastic music videos (well, MTV2 or its derivatives not MTV).

Of course variety and multiplicity are traits of a growing global, postmodern culture that embraces the immensity of selection and choice. Think Man Bites World, whose now 75-day romp through the world's cuisines have occured within the confines of the Metro Los Angeles Area. Such a feat was perhaps only in the imagination of Science Fiction writers who perceived an gargatuan pastiche of cultures within modern metropoli.

But I want to illuminate the singular, the one restaurant, the one dish, the unique ingredient that's remarkable. I'll still post about restaurants, but only the ones I think are doing something interesting. I'll post more about a type of coffee or a style of sandwich or a variety of cheese. I'll ponder the qualities of a burger or pan-fried bao, or perhaps discuss the intricacies of my native Korean food to a curious readership. I want to think about concept of a restaurant, cuisine, or dish - the strength or weakness of such, and why that makes a difference to foodies.

I'm trying to follow Jeffrey Steingarten, my spiritual (writing) father. Yes, reverance to a man is off-putting but he was only following the foodsteps of MFK Fisher, who was in turn following the steps of Brillat-Savarin. Brillat-Savarin was following the classical writers of Greece and Rome and Middle-Age greats. Thus, my attempt is to blog the Art of Food and Cooking. Harold McGee wrote a seminal work on the Science of Food and Cooking, but I'll humbly start my foray into exploring the Art, the Beauty, the Splendor of Food.

Lunch time. Now, what to eat? These things come to mind...