I can understand, on one level, the desire to push the envelope with cuisine. I can understand it. I don't like this style, nor really the folks who push this sort of thing, because it's flash in the pan and all about novelty, and novelty can only get you so far. I prefer tradition. Even if you're doing fusion cuisine, you're still grounded by the cuisines you're drawing upon. Cooking is often, most often, about history and tradition. You're drawing on not just history, but also memories--making them and bringing them back. Yes, there's wonder involved--the first time you hand egg in a basket to a child, that's a look that is satisfying as heck, as you hand a plate over that just knocks someone's socks off--and we should all be striving to put out a bit of wonder with our food, but likewise, there is a solidity to the experience. It's feeding people. It's about as basic as you can get. It's sense memories, it's filling a belly, it's comfort. You can go entirely over the top, and just pile on slathers of truffles, rich sauces, flavor layered on flavor, and add flame and style, and increase the drama, but at heart, it has to fill the belly in my book. That's me. I can understand that some folks will want something different, but molecular gastronomy is just pale and wan shadows of cooking, turning it instead into an art removed from that basic purpose. It is the performance art of cuisine, and light and airy, and not for me, anymore than going to see some guy explode balloons filled with paint at a canvas or an actor sitting at a table motionless for 40 minutes before saying one single word. Some folks want to pay for it, fine. But don't expect the rest of us to follow your lead.

Feepit: I've found that when food becomes too much like art, I'm reticent to eat it. It makes me feel like I'm destroying something beautiful. Transforming a magical thing into what is quite literally poop. :(

That sort of is the thing. It's a very Zen profession at its heart. The best that you produce, no matter how elegant or precise, the best you create, in the end, all you have at the end of the night are empty plates. I like to think of what we do as not creating food so much, as memories. Of a time, a place, with friends, and using food as that vehicle. That is really what is at the heart of the modern hospitality industry. Yes, you serve the body, and you provide nourishment, but in the end, the best you create, your best work is at its heart, ephemeral. Which is why I can understand the interest in this sort of cuisine, but it lacks something in my book. Heart is part of it. It's hard to be proud of a nori foam, other than the cleverness of its creation. It's a shallow sort of thing, but I can understand the interest. If it's all going to be clean plates at the end of the night, why not do something that is a challenge, right?  But I'm in the camp that prefers a bit more substance to my food.