California Cuisine?

Mexican, Chinese, American, Brazilian, there is an endless list of cultures you can turn to for great cuisine. Thanks to increasing globalization, most anyone in a city of even modest size can find a dizzying variety of regional food. Here in the US, we have sub-genres of food that are well known, such as New York Pizza, Chicago Ribs, Louisiana Gumbo, but what about the west coast? Website Sf.Eater.com recently attended a "Taste Talk" at the San Francisco Cooking School in California, where renowned chefs from around the country sat down to try and answer the questions, "What is California Cuisine?". More than just free-range, gluten free, organic and local, these industry experts mused over California's edible identity and came up with some comprehensive answers. So what makes California cuisine unique? According to chef Joyce Goldstein, California's offerings are "fresh, seasonal, local, sustainable, original". With health consciousness on the rise, and increased access to locally sourced ingredients, California is the perfect place for such a movement. However, while those descriptions may accurately represent the idea of California's culinary craft, the actual food is more difficult to pin down. Chef and owner of Rich Table (San Francisco), Evan Rich describes California's sub-genre as "chef-driven", rather than being based on a traditional region, such as Italian or Thai. Ingredient inspiration comes from far and wide, and the label "Californian" creates a unifying theme for a restaurant whose menu covers a wide breadth of typical food categories. To some chefs, California's food scene is one that is characterized by "renewed interest in and dedication to old methods, but with a new twist". For other industry professionals, the west coast's cuisine culture owes credit to America's iconic, peaceful and earthy demographic, Hippies. "They started back-to-the-land; the started 'organic." Conclusion? When applied to food, the phrase "Californian" means a lot of different things to different people. The overlapping theme in the middle of all these opinions has to do with ingredients. Prepare them meticulously, find them nearby, and treat them right. Check out SF-Eater.com's original article in the source link below for the full story. Source: "So What is California Cuisine?"