It was a beautiful fish. Just about the most beautiful I've ever seen, lying so shiny on its bed of ice that you couldn't help wanting to reach out and touch it. "An admirable salmon," said Jon Rowley, taking chef Gilbert LeCoze, owner of what is probably America's most famous fish restaurant, New York's Le Bernardin, off to inspect it. LeCoze lovingly ran his hands along the surface. "Yes," he said.
The next I heard about the fish was at breakfast the next morning. Alice Waters was discussing it with Madeleine Kamman. "I looked at the fish," said Waters. "I was thinking about buying it for the restaurant. I want it, but we don't really need it."
"If it's a white salmon," said Kamman, a woman of decided opinions, "you must buy it."
Imagine spending four days with a group of people who do nothing but talk about food. Constantly. Passionately. Knowledgeably. They sip coffee in the morning and discuss its fine points. They peel a shrimp at lunch, frown and say "cooked last night." They take a sip of wine, swirl it in their mouths and mutter "good wine, but wrong for the dish." They can happily spend 20 minutes debating the question of the greens on their plates: Are they baby garlic shoots or merely infant scallions? Food is the subtext of everything they do--they are a group obsessed.
You have just imagined the conference on gastronomy held last weekend in the Napa Valley. The fate of the fish was just one of the many weighty issues that hung in the balance as the American Institute of Wine and Food gathered for its fifth national conference. It was a sort of summer camp for foodies, and for almost four days close to 100 speakers considered the state of food in America. Between seminars with titles like "The Hispanic Influence on the American Market Basket" and "A Case Study in Regional Producers--Midwest," the 525 participants ate. And ate well--some 45 star chefs came from all around the country to tickle their palates.
The opening night was a tasting of the best foods of the Napa and Sonoma valleys. Producers of local foie gras , specialty produce, Napa Valley cheeses, olive oil and breads, wild game and the like teamed up with such chefs as Cynthia Pawlcyn (Mustard's and Fog City), Judy Rodgers (Zuni Cafe), Barbara Tropp (China Moon Cafe), Patricia Untermann (Hayes Street Grill) and Annie Sommerville (Greens) to show off the bounty of the area. Thirty-six wineries poured their wines. It was, by all accounts, a smashing success. One reporter--me--showed up just in time to watch them folding their tents. (How can it possibly take seven hours to fly from Los Angeles to the Napa Valley?) "No problem," said one sympathetic chef, hearing my hungry cries. "I'll be back in my restaurant in half-an-hour. I'll cook something for you."
Despite the fact that the participants had been eating for three hours, ears all around pricked up. A group quickly gathered and trooped off to the beautiful new Tra Vigne in St. Helena, where chef Michael Chiarello regaled us with wonderful little goat-cheese pizzas and fat grilled shrimps and artichokes stuffed with pine nuts. There was pasta of all sorts. Dish after dish came out of the kitchen--it was a perfect way to begin an eating marathon.
The next day there was a fight--a good one--at the seminar on fresh fruits and vegetables. Warren Weber of Star Route Farms (and president of the California Certified Organic Farmers) was extolling the merits of air freight. "We can get anything anywhere in the country the next day," he enthused.
"That's just the problem," countered Rob Johnson, owner of Johnny's Selected Seeds in Maine. "People no longer eat with the seasons. Everything's the same everywhere you go. It's a shame." Johnson had earlier passed some produce around to the astounded audience. His cabbage was gorgeous, its leaves almost translucent. But that was not what amazed the group. When you picked the vegetable up, you almost fell over. "It's the densest cabbage ever grown," said one man, struggling with a normal-size cabbage that must have weighed close to 20 pounds.
New York produce broker Gary Feldman was not impressed with the argument. "It's fine to talk about seasonal food," he said, "but if you run a fancy restaurant in New York City, it's hard to charge $65 for a \o7 prix-fixe \f7 meal and offer your guests nothing but cabbage and potatoes in the winter."
In the ensuing argument, someone from the audience leaped up. "I'm a commercial grower," he said, "and we could grow better vegetables than we do. But the fast-food chains take part of the responsibility for what we are producing. They specify that tomatoes be firm and red but they never mention flavor."
In the hallway between seminars, someone is congratulating Evan Goldstein, sommelier at Square One in San Francisco, on recently becoming the youngest American ever to pass England's master sommelier examination.
