Having ostensibly given up sweets, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik goes on a quest to discover the modern world of pastry. Gopnik stops in at various New York restaurants, talking to Alex Stupak of wd~50 and Dan Barber of Blue Hill, and goes to DC to talk to Bill Yosses at the White house, which Gopnik describes as "less like the nerve center of the free world than like a medium-sized, slightly shabby charming resort hotel."
Everyone tells Gopnik he should go to Spain, so eventually Gopnik he makes it to elBulli and asks Ferran Adrià if the future of cooking lies in mixing sweet and savory. Adrià responds, "It can’t be that an American is asking me that! A hamburger with ketchup and Coca-Cola? That's the most intense symbiosis of sweet and savory imaginable. It's your cultural theme."
· Sweet Revolution: The Power of the Pastry Chef [New Yorker]
· All Pastry Coverage on Eater [-E-]
Our cultural theme. [Photo: WTVC]