Thanks to Matt Preston, creative director of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, for sharing his exclusive from El Bulli’s Ferran Adria:
I caught up with Mr Adria and a few journos at MadridFusion08 in Jan. His
opening response was to a question about what the big changes in food were
this year. His answer was translated from Spanish so there may be nuances
missed by the translator but the inference was that there has been a
explosion in blogs. “One year ago there were no blogs - now that is a
revolution.”
Matt promises some provocative material from the huge body of interviews from this trip to
culinary congresses in Milan and Madrid.
Meanwhile, an email from local molecular chef Ray Capaldi promises that molecular gastronomy is not dead. We look forward to hearing from him on the artistry-formerly-known-as molecular gastronomy or tecnoemoción (and variously referred to as tecno emoción or tecnoe-moción) as it perhaps is now known.
G'day. If you're new here, and you are interested in the Melbourne food and drink scene you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or the email newsletter below. Thanks for visiting and enjoy eating and drinking in Melbourne. Cheers.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Maybe this is a reflection of the culinary scene on this side of the Tasman or my own purely amateurish online adventures through the culinary blogs of others but I have REALLY struggled to find ‘food blogs’ (for lack of a better term being at hand) worth a repeat visit (yours excluded for obvious reasons).
I love food. I love reading about food and ingredients and the new and interesting and novel ways in which ingredients are used. I just struggle to get that from food blogs.
Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places through the wrong ways.
Apologies for the not entirely on topic comment. It just came to mind after reading the flurry of food blog related posts.
Molecular gastronomy is not dead…just morphing.
To His Whoreness, if http://cookalmostanything.blogspot.com/ isn’t what your looking for, then I’m afraid it hasn’t been written yet.
Whore, I suppose it depends what you are looking or. I find that I don’t read every word of every blog I look at. But with the help of Google reader and subscriptions to 300+ feeds it is pretty quick to scan to find what I want. Obviously there are the few I read more frequently than others but it all depends what you are looking for - blog carnivals, reviews, recipes, styling, humour, plain rudeness…stuff for kids. I think the blog allows people to create super niches that will have small dedicated specialist readerships whereas old media has to be all things to all people.
Neil, I hear you’re going to be doing some reviewing soon.
Exactly what Ed says, you subscribe to hundreds and screen through for what you want or like… with thousands of food blogs out there how on earth could you not find what you need, the choice is endless… maybe knowing what you are looking for is the key and if you don’t know start subscribing and looking until you find what your looking for… it just takes a little time and effort but it is well worth it… Vida
Shhh, it’s a secret.
My thanks for the very helpful suggestions.
Neil, I almost fainted after a quick browse earlier through Cook Almost Anything as it is very close to what I’ve been looking for in food blogs. A number of the pasta recipes are forgettable but the discussions around the recipes are what really interest me. Love the cheese posts too.
Ed and Vida, I long ago adopted a similar approach to music blogs so will now make a better effort of trawling through the many-splendoured food blogs
Ferran Adria: “One year ago there were no blogs - now that is a
revolution.”
One year? Hardly. Try at least five or six or more.
Re the first comment, precisely the reverse is the often the case and one oftens struggles to find a food column worth returning to.
If you strip away the alluring pictures accompanying some published food articles in media - note, I no longer use the word ‘mainstream’ - what is left falls through your fingers like dry grains of sand. This is particularly true of the Sunday supplement kind of white-plate food writing where the recipes are frequently mere combinations and rehashed recipes, photographed in a smoke-and-mirrors minimalist style.
Blogs are a look into people’s lives, paper-published media food writing is a look into a newpaper. I usually turn the page.
KH, Wondered when somebody would spot that.
I’ve given up my glossy magazine habits as I found I was reading less and less. now i buy proper books (novels mostly) instead.
I’m up with a similar but possibly more hostile Fairfax Crowd at the Restaurant08 conference. I thought I could cut out of the paper what I actually read that day. They forget that there is crap and clutter everywhere, on the TV, radio in the cinema and never mention the gems.
The future is about the individual being the editor. This means learning to search properly through Google and manipulate RSS feeds and various aggregators. While media groups do use feeds, they are resisting segmenting but that will be the future.
It will be interesting to see what the future of blogs is really. I find them such a wonderful source for anything food and restaurant related and can see how people use them as an alternative to magazine subscriptions etc. With such an explosion though I’m starting to wonder whether they will last. People are turning to blogs instead of journals and there is now so much out there, most of which is probably barely ever seen. If everyone creates a blog we may get to a point where there is an overload and interest is evaporated, or maybe I just have no idea what I am talking about. I’m sure that newspapers will dissappear in the not too distant fture replaced with e-papers and it will be interesting to see how this affects blogs. I guess this is where content filtering comes in. If people are producing something different and interesting it will possibly still remain popular or valuable, even if only to a tiny niche audience.
After all most people seem to find us by googling a term, some of whom like what they see and will return as loyal readers. Anyway enough of my rambling for now - it will be interesting to see what other people think about this.
Jon, Certainly newspapers will evolve online but people still do like to hold paper in their hands. This week has been really stimulating and my conclusion is that Google and search is failing us meaning that it is difficult to find the good stuff unless you have the skills to search deep into the internet and manage a large number of feeds. Even social sites like DIGG fail us as we all want niche information and not the most popular. It’s given me an idea. But I also am making this up as I go along. This is a frontier and we are all trying to find what works. But I think it it is the only viable place for niche interests - in Australia at least.
I second the sentiments of kitchen hand, i get more value and insight from food blogs than the glamour and gloss of magazines or newspaper columns. This is not to say i don’t read or buy the odd Gourmet Traveller and/or Delicious issue, or regularly read the Epicure, but i find a lot of the content in these publications to lack any real substance on the subject matter they feature. Quite often there’s more advertisment than actual objective content and for someone who just wants the facts it can be annoying. Blogs will never replace the glossies but to outright denigrate their existence as if the personal thoughts and views of ordinary food fans don’t matter, and are in fact a bloody nuisance, is quite unfair in my opinion.