Vanina Leschziner

At the Chef's Table

Culinary Creativity in Elite Restaurants

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Vanina Leschziner is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 3. Juni 2015
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 156mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 524g
• ISBN-13: 9780804787970
• ISBN-10: 0804787972
• Artikelnr.: 41750395

Autorenporträt

Vanina Leschziner is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
1Exploring the World of Elite Chefs
chapter abstract
This chapter begins with the central question of the book, namely how chefs
navigate a context where they have pressures to show creativity and
originality, and conform to tradition to appeal to customers and run a
profitable business. It then presents an overview of the themes explored in
the book, beginning with a brief description of the elite restaurant worlds
of New York and San Francisco, and the jobs of chefs. The five
characteristics that comprise a Mode of Cultural Production are introduced
and explained, followed by an outline of the characteristics of cultural
fields and of culinary fields specifically. The chapter ends with an
overview of career structures in cuisine, including occupational ranks and
the organization of restaurant kitchens.
2Career Paths in High Cuisine
chapter abstract
This chapter analyzes the career paths of elite chefs. It begins by
describing how chefs choose this occupation, a choice typically experienced
as unintended, driven by early experiences working at restaurants as
temporary employment or growing up in a food-loving family. There are
multiple ways to enter the occupation (culinary school is not requisite),
and a variety of means to move up the ladder, including within a kitchen,
across restaurants, and across culinary fields. Careers in kitchens do not
follow a standardized path; culinary professionals go though different
positions to become executive chefs. Internal mobility and social networks
are the most common means for mobility in cuisine, where careers are
episodic, made up of particular highlights-jobs often obtained somewhat
randomly. This chapter describes the career paths in high cuisine in New
York and San Francisco and analyzes the factors that lead to the career
patterns in these cities.
3Categories and Classifications in Cuisine
chapter abstract
This chapter analyzes the role of categories and classifications in
cuisine. The cuisine chefs choose has significant consequences both for the
dishes they can put out, and how their restaurants will be reviewed and
rated in the media. Categories and classifications matter in any cultural
endeavor because they influence how creators understand their work, how
arbiters evaluate it, and how consumers perceive it. Ingredients and
techniques are the elements that define culinary styles, classifying them
into regional categories, and with regard to innovativeness. Restaurant
critics and the media have a large stake in the classification of chefs and
culinary styles, determining how they will be perceived, and the
ingredients and techniques chefs will be able to use without breaching
boundaries. This chapter explains how chefs develop their understandings
and narratives to control and manage their classification projects.
4Managing a Culinary Style
chapter abstract
This chapter examines how chefs strategize to differentiate from others.
Chefs look for new ideas to navigate the balance between originality and
conformity to established styles that is necessary to survive in a cultural
field. At the same time, they need to manage a fitting distance from other
chefs. Like creators in any field, they borrow ideas from others to obtain
inspiration, but unlike creators in many fields, they have no means to
publicly give credit for the borrowed ideas. Developing a style that is not
too derivative and managing relations with peers is much harder where
creativity occurs through minor changes, and the difference between styles
is fuzzy. This chapter analyzes the different strategies-culinary,
cognitive, and rhetorical-chefs engage in to avoid the impression that they
are too closely derivative, and highlight their difference rather than
similarity from other chefs.
5Cognitive Patterns and Work Processes in Cooking
chapter abstract
This chapter describes the cognitive and practical processes whereby chefs
design dishes, from an initial idea until a dish goes on the menu. How
chefs go about creating dishes is tightly associated with their views on
cooking and their culinary styles, and with the cognitive patterns through
which they think about food and work on new ideas. Chefs approach cuisine
as either a conceptual or practical activity, and this informs how they
conceive of new ideas and create dishes. Some chefs choose a special
context conducive to deliberative thinking to play with ideas and create
new dishes. Others are more improvisational and create dishes at random
times and places, without much deliberative thought about how they assemble
ingredients to make a new dish. In describing the processes whereby chefs
create dishes, this chapter engages with understandings of dual-process
models of cognition, dispositions, and creativity.
6Culinary Styles and Principles of Creation
chapter abstract
This chapter explains how chefs use culinary styles to position themselves
vis-à-vis others in their field, and struggle to gain legitimation and
recognition through their food and representations of their styles.
Culinary styles are means for chefs to position themselves in the field in
terms of status, but also to associate or dissociate from other chefs,
hence to encourage or discourage relations with them. Chefs thus use
culinary styles strategically in view of where in the field they want to be
and where they want to take their careers. What is the nature of the
relationship between chefs' reputation and their dishes? What leads chefs
to turn away from the food they were trained to cook? Why do they innovate
on culinary traditions? How do they earn legitimacy and reputation? These
are some of the central questions answered in this chapter.
7Mapping Out Creative Patterns
chapter abstract
This chapter places chefs in their field to explain the patterning of
relations between culinary styles, self-concepts, and field positions.
Through the analysis of the distribution of culinary styles and
self-concepts in the culinary fields of New York and San Francisco, the
chapter explains chefs' choices about their styles and representations, and
compares the internal logics and social organization of the two fields.
Chefs' actions cannot be explained without according independent analytical
weight to self-understandings. But chefs develop a sense of who they and
where they want to go from their field positions-it is from here that their
logics of action develop and guide them in navigating the field. The
chapter closes with a discussion of the analytical and theoretical
implications of this study of culinary fields, with a focus on the tenets
of field theory, contributions of pragmatism, routine behavior, creativity,
and self-concepts.
Appendix: Methodological Appendix
chapter abstract
The methodological appendix describes the research conducted for this book.
It first describes in detail the nature of the fieldwork, the objectives of
interviews with chefs and observation in restaurant kitchens, and it
outlines all the complementary and supplementary data collected for this
study. This is followed by an explanation of the sampling strategy to
select and classify restaurants into categories, and the sources used to
create the sample in each of the two cities. This section of the appendix
closes with the basic interview questionnaire used for interviews with
chefs. The appendix also includes a description and explanation of the
content analysis of critics' evaluation of innovation in restaurant
reviews.