Show 177, June 25, 2016: Patric Kuh, Restaurant Critic, Los Angeles Magazine & Author of Finding the Flavors We Lost

Finding the Flavors we Lost by Patric KuhWe hear the word “artisanal” all the time—attached to cheese, chocolate, coffee, even Subway sandwiches—but what does it actually mean? Now, from Los Angeles Magazine restaurant critic and multiple James Beard Award winner Patric Kuh comes FINDING THE FLAVORS WE LOST: From Bread to Bourbon, How Artisans Reclaimed American Food. It’s an arresting exploration of the cultural demand for “artisanal” foods in a world where corporate agribusiness has co-opted the very concept. Patric is our guest.

Spanning almost the past hundred years, Kuh begins with the stories of countercultural “radicals” in the 1970s who taught themselves the forgotten crafts of bread, cheese, and beer-making, moving back to the development of mass-produced food and giant corporations that spurred them on, then to the present, hearkening back to how these 1970s trailblazers became the inspiration for today’s crop of young chefs and artisans.

From a cheese-making farm in Wisconsin to the Maker’s Mark distillery in Kentucky, Kuh examines how a rediscovery of the value of craft and individual effort has fueled today’s popularity and appreciation for artisanal food—and the transformations this has effected on both the restaurant menu and the dinner table.

Throughout the book, he raises a host of critical questions. How big of an operation is too big for a food company to still call themselves “artisanal”? Does the high cost of hand-crafted goods unintentionally make them unaffordable for many Americans? Does technological progress have to quash flavor?

Show 177, June 25, 2016: Patric Kuh, Restaurant Critic, Los Angeles Magazine & Author of Finding the Flavors We Lost. Continues..

Finding the Flavors we Lost by Patric KuhPatric Kuh, in addition to being a writer, is a Paris-trained chef who has worked in preeminent restaurants in France, New York, and California. He has written for Gourmet, Esquire, and Salon.com and is the author of two previous books, An Available Man and The Last Days of Haute Cuisine: The Coming of Age of American Restaurants.

Kuh is a winner of the James Beard Award for Writing and Literature, and has been nominated for the James Beard MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award and the James Beard Award for Magazine Series. He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and two children, where he works as a food critic for LA Magazine.

With a deeply personal emphasis on individual people and restaurants and a keen journalistic approach, FINDING THE FLAVORS WE LOST is a funny, personal exploration of what constitutes artisan food as we know it today—and what its future may be.

One of the great (relatively unknown) stories in the book is Nancy Silverton’s (Mozza) travails in perfecting her original recipes and starters for La Brea Bakery in 1988. Nancy had studied with the legendary bread bakers in France but was having difficulties back in Los Angeles adapting American flour to her French-based recipes. Also developing workable measurements for her dough batches was proving challenging. Under the most unlikely of coincidences enter retired bread baker, Izzy Cohen, Nancy’s Angel of the Starter. Izzy also taught Nancy how to make world-class bagels.