© 2001 Cathy K Kaufman Structuring the Meal: The Revolution of Service à la Russe Cathy K. Kaufman Anthropologists tell us that our choices in structuring meals contain a language that reveals other aspects of our social and cultural identity. An abundance of food may be a code for political power, whereas food taboos may express long-forgotten economic policies or notions of purity and danger. While profound cultural currents subtly mark our prandial choices, what about the deliberate attempts by those who prepare food for a living to alter the way we eat? I refer to the nineteenth century evolution from serving à la française to serving à la russe. How has this shift in the way a meal is served changed (i) the dynamics among the guests at table; (ii) the relationship between the cook and the diner; and (iii) our concept of a satisfying meal? Compared to our usual mealtime formula of a single starter, followed by a single garnished “main” course and capped with a sweet, menus for well-to-do folk at any time from the late Middle Ages until the early twentieth century seem staggering. Modern cookbook authors cite health concerns for our more paltry feasts, yet it was precisely medieval and renaissance dietary theories that encouraged a table of many diverse dishes. The gracious medieval host required variety to ensure that each health-conscious diner would find something appropriate for his individual humoral temperament. In effect the diner composed his own menu from the many offerings. The cook worked hard to accommodate: in one fifteenth century recipe, a large pike is divided into thirds, with each section cooked by a different technique and accompanied by a different sauce. The result was a single fish with different humoral properties depending on the section selected. Even as dietetic theories began to change in the early modern era, with parallel changes in the kitchen’s products, seventeenth century authors took for granted that guests with different humoral temperaments, and thus different needs, would be at table. This deeply-ingrained presumption that a diversity of dishes on the table could promote good health is only part of the reason why service à la française could evolve in the seventeenth century. Unlike the comparatively simple processions of foods of earlier generations, service à la française was a self-consciously elegant display with its rule-bound choreography of dishes. It reflected a society in which having “good taste” was paramount. Usually comprised of three, although occasionally more, courses of dishes, service à la française was designed to dazzle the eye as much as feed the stomach. The number of dishes tantalizing the guests at courtly meals might approach one for one in each course, although no diner was expected to sample them all. Many of the dishes were small and never were intended to serve everyone at table. The cornucopia of delicacies expressed the host’s good taste. Specific rules governed the contents, size and placement of dishes, communicating to the diner the importance of the dish and of the meal itself. Symmetry was the key to laying the platters and tureens; the only permitted exception was for the so-called volants, “flying” dishes (such as a hot, fragile soufflé) sent from the kitchen that servers offered to the guests but never placed on the table. It was the relatively rare amphitryon who relied upon his cook to devise menus. At least in the wealthier households, the maître-d’hôtel, the chief operating officer in charge of dining, would consult with the master on the menu and then communicate the decisions to the kitchen. A good maître-d’hôtel knew something about cookery, as he was charged with supervising both the acquisition of foodstuffs and the overall workings of the kitchen, in addition to his many front-of-the-house responsibilities. The cook was a subordinate; rather than being judged by the managerial skills needed to superintend a banquet, one of the cook’s most important attributes was his sense of propreté, meaning cleanliness. With some obvious exceptions, such as Vincent La Chapelle and MarieAntoine Carême, who played the dual roles of maîtres-d’hôtel and maîtres cuisiniers, cooks were domestic servants in the back-of-the-house. While cooks busied themselves with inventing new recipes, the maître-d’hôtel masterminded the meal, setting the menu, selecting the serving dishes and planning the arrangement of dishes on the table. He could be assisted by any one of the many written guides available that formed part of cookery books or manuals for household management. The guides typically provided sample menus and table diagrams and were widely disseminated, so that an experienced diner, while perhaps not predicting the exact novel concoction coming from the kitchen, could anticipate the maître-d’hôtel’s assemblage of game birds, butcher’s meats, ragoûts and roasts among the many choices served à la française. Service à la française was dramatic. No guest entered the dining room until the first course of dishes had been laid; once in the dining room, the “luxuriousness and sumptuousness,” to borrow Carême’s phrase, could not fail to seduce: Is there nothing that is more impressive than a great dinner as currently served in the French style? One must be persuaded by our plan. The rich and elegant platters in vermeil, ornamented with figures perfectly carved; the antique vases, elegant chalices, beautiful golden candelabra, the beautiful crystal to drink our excellent French wines, the beautiful desserts composed of our exquisite fruits, the flowers and the bonbons; then this service of the food, that, being uncovered at the moment when the seigneurs are seated at table, diffuses throughout the dining room a sweet fragrance perfumed by good cookery. One can hear the collective gasp at this denouement Yet for all of its rigorous rules and pomp, the actual mechanics of dining à la française in all but the most formal diplomatic and courtly meals encouraged an intimacy among the diners. While servants were present until the dessert course to lend assistance and perform various tasks, including the orchestrated removal of the first course and re- placement of each dish with its second course counterpart, they rarely performed all of the serving functions. A critical part of the maître-d’hôtel’s job was to make sure that the dishes were properly placed on the table, with similar foodstuffs being strategically separated, so that the servers would need to intrude upon the guests as little as possible. The hosts would serve soup, portion fish and often carve and serve roasts; the diners themselves might assist in the ritual of carving and would add nearby side dishes to individual plates, or pass such smaller dishes as convenient, always returning them to their appointed spot to maintain the visual harmony. The array of dishes made a written menu impractical, and part of the dinner etiquette included questioning one’s tablemates about their preferences and assisting them to those delicacies. Thus the diners actively shared dishes and participated in creating not only their own meal, but that of their companions. Service à la française encouraged a sense of communion among the diners. From a culinary perspective service à la française was deemed flawed, for the food suffered from the difficulties inherent in simultaneously serving many different, hot dishes and from the inevitable wait, once the table was laid, while the diners assembled: This objection, it must be admitted, is very serious; it merits the attentions of amphitryons as well as cooks. Isn’t it regrettable, in effect, that on a table splendidly served, where no expense is spared to flatter the taste and the desires of the guests one eats dishes that have cooled down or lost something of their essential qualities? To combat this deterioration Felix Urbain-Dubois urged the widespread adoption of service à la russe. This style of service, now virtually universal in our contemporary restaurants, generally involves the expedited preparation of complete, individual plates for each diner by the kitchen or service staff. Rather than feasting on multiple dishes within several courses, the meal was divided into a larger number of single-dish courses, the number of which could vary, but might easily run to ten or more. No hot food appeared in the dining room until after the guests were seated and service proceeded briskly therefrom. I do not mean to paint too starkly the shift from service à la française to service à la russe, as it was a process that evolved over decades and with all sorts of variants and hybridized approaches to service. Urbain-Dubois, anticipating objections to an “empty table devoid of luxury” because lacking hot food at the start of the meal, encouraged spectacular displays of cold foods that could symmetrically dress the table, in the best à la française style. He also was reluctant to eliminate completely the luxuries of choice and variety, so fundamental to service à la française. He thus permitted the kitchen in an important meal to offer two choices within each course of the meal and proposed lengthy course menus. Ultimately the diner might feast on as many, or even more, dishes than he actually sampled in a meal served à la française. Urbain-Dubois’ main point, however, was the palate: If the method of presenting dishes to the guests, instead of systematically arranging them on the table, flatters the eyes less that the senses, it obviously has resulted in savoring dishes served at the best temperature and perfect goodness, since they are cut as soon as they are cooked, and eaten as soon as served. Flavor takes precedence over style. The very generalized distinctions sketched between the two types of service are less interesting than what theses distinctions imply about the relationships among the diners and between the diner and the cook. It is perhaps no accident that service à la russe emerged as the dominant public meal structure at the time when vocational cooking was struggling, with limited success, to become a profession in which its more able practitioners could reap the economic rewards and social status attendant to members of professions. To be professionals, cooks must be thought to have specialized knowledge, which entitles their culinary judgments to be relied upon by the non-specialist public. While cooks always needed expert technical skills to execute a complicated service, and good cooks were appreciated as talented craftsmen, or perhaps even as artists, the structure of serving à la française tended to keep cooks in a secondary role. They were, for the most part, following the designs of the maître-d’hôtel, the front-of-the-house face with the power to guide the menu selection. Until cooks could exercise this power in menu planning, thereby structuring the meal and controlling all the workings of the kitchen, cooks would have difficulty reaching professional status. The shift from serving a meal à la française to à la russe changed everyone’s experience of the meal. Looking first at the dinner plate, service à la russe treats all diners equally. The dinner plate is no longer the unique and personally-tailored product resulting from the diner’s selections at table and the solicitous assistance of his companions. There is a whiff of the standardizing assembly line in even the most gracious meals catered à la russe. This uniformity, ironically, eliminates part of the meal’s sense of communion, for while diners share the same savors, they do not physically share the food. The diners do not need to interact with their companions to get their meal and the phrase “please pass…” falls into desuetude. Gone also is the dialogue over preferences among the delicacies and the opportunity for active exchange about how best to construct one’s dinner from the offerings. The diners are, increasingly, an audience for a predesigned plate, rather than participants in structuring their own plate. The need to plate away from the table also puts new responsibility on the kitchen for the elegant presentation of the food. Grimod de La Reynière quipped that “[a] man who knows how to carve and serve well, no matter how little presentable he may be in other ways, is not only universally admitted, but in many houses is valued above all other guests.” Skill in carving and serving traditionally had been class markers, as Grimod, of all people, slyly knew. Urbain-Dubois warned that cooks need to practice and acquire skill in portioning foods neatly, undoubtedly aware that most cooks came from a class where less emphasis was placed on such ceremonial skills. In carving and portioning the food, the kitchen usurped the domain of the host or guest, always the kitchen’s social superiors. The anonymous hands of cooks were unseen guests at table, performing functions formerly performed by the dining peers at table; it was the cooks who acted as the generous host once had, and both cook and diner needed to adjust. The pace of the meal also accelerates, or at least appears to accelerate, because of the constant bustle of the servers removing and replacing a larger number of courses. Charles Ranhofer, the chef at New York’s Delmonico’s, offered the following horrifying timetable in The Epicurean: American service, like the Russian, must be served quickly and hot. As easily understood by the following card, a dinner of ten minute intervals can be served with fourteen courses in two hours and twenty minutes and if at eight minute intervals, in one hour and fifty-two minutes, the same as an eight course dinner of ten minute intervals will take one hour and twenty minutes, so at eight minute intervals it will take one hour and four minutes. Eight courses in sixty-four minutes could be accomplished only if, “[a]s soon as one course is being passed around, the following one should be brought from the kitchen so that the dinner can be served uninterruptedly and eaten while hot and palatable.” Ranhofer’s schedule shifted the decision as to how to pace the meal from the dining room to the kitchen, another telling adjustment in the relationship between the cook and the diner. The cook’s goal was service of the perfect work of culinary art, at least insofar as perfection was judged by the palate. The diner’s role again was as audience member whose job it was to appreciate the art in its peak condition. Not all of Ranhofer’s contemporaries approved of his frenetic pace in the service of culinary art. Auguste Escoffier sensibly urged tailoring the number of courses to the time allotted for the meal: [O]ne can sometimes succeed in organizing an ultra-fast service [of long menus]. But what happens thus is perfectly inconvenient and ridiculous: the guests don’t have the time to touch the dishes that are served to them. The effort is in one server placing a garnished plate in front of a guest while another surges from behind the first and removes it from him. . . . It is one hundred times better to serve a very short menu, but well balanced and perfectly executed, so that the guests will be able to savor without haste, rather than to parade food in front of them and to repeat the torture of Tantalus, a long stream of dishes which they never have the time to touch. Escoffier’s advice is quite radical and underscores the revolutionary shift from serving à la française to à la russe. For centuries a fine meal had been judged by copious offer- ings, if not copious quantities. The fourteen course menus advocated by Ranhofer and many others show cooks trying to reconcile the opulent offerings of service à la française with the relentlessly ticking clock of service à la russe. Escoffier butchered the sacred cow of bountiful variety, offering diners only a few choice cuts, rather than the whole critter, in the streamlined menu. Written menus became an absolute necessity for dining à la russe because, per Urbain-Dubois, guests no longer “see the dishes on the table; here, in effect, social conventions require that the guests be given information about the composition of the dinner, so that they can settle their choice and gauge their appetite.” Responsibility for creating the menu now lies with the chef de cuisine. Significantly Urbain-Dubois uses the term chef in describing the person who formulates the menu, rather than the term cuisinier, which had been the conventional way of referring even to important cooks for centuries and was still used by Urbain-Dubois elsewhere. The chef, while still a culinary practitioner, has assumed the planning role of the maître-d’hôtel, formerly the liaison with the host. The chef now structures the meal. Menu planning became increasingly important as the number of dishes served declined. This is a twentieth century phenomenon, rather than an immediate consequence of the emergence of restaurants, as one might suppose. Menus in the Parisian restaurants of the early nineteenth century read like the table of recipes in cookery books, continuing, theoretically, to offer the diner vast choice, such as 22 different veal preparations. Urbain-Dubois complained that “men of our craft know perfectly well that a dinner of eight entrées pretty much absorbs in its mix all the distinguished elements that we use in cooking, and that to multiply the number in an exaggerated standard finds us forced to use elements worthy at the most of an ordinary dinner.” If one of the raisons d’être for service à la française was the opportunity to display “good taste” in the judicious selection of dishes from a table befitting the Land of Cockaigne, that exercise in good taste now devolved to the chef: Drawing up the menu -- which is all at once a summary of the work and a plan for dining -- is a more serious thing than normally supposed, for it is not only a question of setting up a list of a certain number of dishes according to known tastes or set prices; but to choose these dishes with discernment, grouping them harmoniously and to achieve, with these scattered notes, a flavorful orchestration. A well-composed menu immediately gives the impression of a confident plan, a lofty talent, and a poised spirit knowing all of the resources available to the culinary arts. Ninety years later, a carefully drawn up plan for dining, flavorfully orchestrated, is still the hallmark of fine restaurant dining. A current passion among chefs and gourmets alike is the tasting menu, patterned after the early meals catered à la russe, in which the diner surrenders all choice to the chef and sups on a varying number of petite plates in an order dictated from the kitchen. According to the 2001 Zagat Survey, no fewer than 84 restaurants in New York offer tasting menus, and certain very elite spots, such as Berkeley’s Chez Panisse or Chicago’s Charlie Trotter’s, offer nothing else. That diners are willing to surrender all choice, in generations past their marker of good taste among themselves, suggests a further development in the relationship between the chef and eater, a perception of the chef as professional taste-maker, an arbiter elegantiae. The chef is presumed to possess a specialized insight into structuring a meal that makes acceptance of his or her “flavorful orchestrations” the mark of a sophisticated palate. All of the hoopla over Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli, a Michelin three-star restaurant in Spain, illustrates the point. Revered as serving some of the world’s most creative food, Adrià’s twenty-odd course tasting menus resurrect the frenzied first generations of service à la russe: a diner who briefly excuses himself from the table risks destroying Adrià’s keen tempo syncopating the meal. Dishes often come with the waiter bearing instructions from the kitchen as to the precise number of bites that a diner should take to eat the particular dish: “This is trout-egg tempura. Two bites, quickly.” Thus not only is the diner told what to eat and when to eat it, but is even told how to eat it. I thought that Adrià’s ability “to climb inside my mouth,” as one happy patron put it, signaled the nadir in the diner’s relationship to the chef. I have since learned of even more extreme examples, the so-called international Makwa dinners, “prepared by overthe-top inventive chefs . . . [for] foodies who like to think they’re brave enough to try anything in the name of culinary sensation and experimentation.” Eighteen courses over four hours demanded a bizarre submission to the chefs’ whims, as diners were instructed to rub sandpaper between the fingers of one hand while eating langoustine tartare with the other, bob for sea-urchin smeared foie gras in an icy fish brine with their hands firmly bound, or wear a cheap, scented fiberglass face mask over their nose and eyes while nursing rosewater milk from a baby bottle. The New Yorkers who partook of this feast had it easy, as dinner was served at 8 P.M.; two European Makwa chefs served the identical menus simultaneously, starting at 2 A.M. local time, presumably to bond the palates globally. Eating this meal must have been an inner-directed, intellectual exercise, burdened with more artificial sensory constraints than the most overly-styled table design of a meal à la française. A new Manhattan restaurant, The Tasting Room, has piqued my interest because it runs counter to the à la russe pattern. Abandoning traditional menu divisions between appetizers and main courses and offering no predetermined tasting menu, the restaurant simply lists its dishes with two separate prices, one for a “taste” and one for a “share.” In a specter of service à la française, diners are encouraged to compose a menu from as many of the different dishes as desired; it is presumed that the dishes, even in “tasting” portions, will be shared. As portions tend to be small, diners order more plates than our normal meal structure suggests. The dishes are presented in two courses (save for dessert), in whatever order the diners select. There is even the occasional (completely unintentional) “remove” and replacement of a dish within a course, required by the restaurant’s tiny tables. Of course, there is none of the spatial choreography of dishes that distinguished a true à la française meal; such service is impossible within cramped East Village quarters. Diners’ reactions to The Tasting Room have been mixed, from “welcoming the ability to sample and . . . feeling sated but not stuffed,” to critiques showing some unease with this meal structure: “restaurants are for eating; socializing . . . [is] the province of bars.” Brillat-Savarin said “[t]he truth is that at the end of a well-savored meal, both soul and body enjoy an especial well-being.” This may be part of the reason why service à la française endured for over two hundred years, despite the recognized difficulties of serving food in its peak condition. Once we move past the table artifacts, the jumble of dietary theories and “taste” displays that mandated a variety of dishes, and the need for a maître-d’hôtel to organize the whole event, we are left with the fact that service à la française was a convivial way to eat. It was, in a certain sense, the very quotidian family-style meal writ large, where camaraderie and communion were woven into the fabric of the meal. As described by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century chefs, service à la russe emphasized pleasing the palate more than the eye. The unfortunate by-product was the elimination of the shared dishes and sense of communion in meals served à la française: we break bread with our companions metaphorically, rather than literally, as we no longer share a common loaf. This preeminence of the palate, in its most extreme examples, has created a chef’s reign of terror. To quote Adrià, “when the food starts coming, concentrate on the dish, then speak about the dish.” His acolytes obey and confess to “having discussed nothing but food” over the progress of the meal. My thesis, that the preeminence of the palate underlying service à la russe empowered chefs as never before and contributed to the increased stature chefs now enjoy, undoubtedly gives us much eating pleasure. Yet even Adrià’s fans say that this omnipresence of the chef is “disorienting.” How dear the price of this pleasure is has yet to be determined, but if some of the anonymous naysayers to The Tasting Room’s palimpsest of service à la française are any indication, we have paid too much for good restaurant eating. We have structured our meals at our temples of gastronomy into occasions for feting food, rather than opportunities for communion.