One of the keys to Jewish culinary history is that the Jewish role was not so much innovation but transition and transformation.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Throughout history, particularly in the last 2,000 years, Jews have been key in adapting local foods to Jewish sensibilities and dietary laws and then spreading them.
Preparing foods from other Jewish communities is broadening. It's interesting to sample the foods of other Jewish communities and see what they developed.
A Jewish food is one that is almost sanctified, either by its repeated use or use within the holidays or rituals. So food that may have not been Jewish at one point can become Jewish within the cultural context.
With cult foods, there is an underlying assumption that the best cooking ideas came generations ago. Yet culinary innovation is nothing to be ashamed of. When a chef tells me he is cooking with his grandmother's recipe, I always wonder why. Did talent skip the past two generations?
All chefs are like Jewish mothers. They want to feed you and feed you and impress you. It's an eagerness to please.
The biggest thing is education for young chefs and how they should focus on one cuisine rather than trying to imitate too many. It's like art - you can see the cycles from many past artists and new artists being inspired by past artists.
I noticed that people were craving a way of reinterpreting tradition and of being Jewish without joining a synagogue.
One generation after another is drifting away from anything Jewish.
The role of a chef isn't to reinvent dishes but to tweak.
The Jews had, as a matter of fact, long been all along the most ingenious entrepreneurs. It was only our own future that we had never built upon a business basis.