Dining With Michael Pollan

Scrabbling through a bookshelf the other day I came upon this article from 2013; Smithsonian Magazine asked me to sit down with Michael Pollan to discuss his new book, Cooked. As you can see, we covered a wide range of topics from a pig named Kosher to worker’s rights and the delights of disgust. We could have talked all night. Won’t you join us at the table?

(By the way, Bell and Anchor, the restaurant where we were dining, is now called The Prairie Whale. It is still owned by Mark Firth, and other than the name very little has changed).

After that happy story from what now seems like a faraway land - an optimistic time when we thought Americans were going to be “paying more attention to the workers -I suggest you read Hannah Goldfield’s recent piece in the New Yorker. It’s about what the brutal ICE raids are doing to restaurants- and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

That conversation took place in 2013, so I went looking for a menu from that year. And look what I found!

Sunday, July 7, 2013
Francis Lam and Christine Gaspar were married last night in the most moving wedding ceremony I've ever attended. We gathered on a New York rooftop for the vows, and their love for each other shone so brightly that I'm pretty sure the skyline grew momentarily blurred for all of us.

Afterward we trooped downstairs for a menu prepared by some of America's most celebrated chefs. The food was wonderful, but what really struck me was that fifty years from now this menu will speak volumes about the way we ate in 2013.

The first dish to hit the the table was grilled octopus with cauliflower dreamed up by Grant Achatz, Dave Beran and Eric Rivera.

It may not look like much, but it danced joyfully about in the mouth, a little waltz of flavor and texture. It was followed by Swiss chard with chocolate and Chinese black beans that was fresh and utterly surprising.

Next came this “oyster salad”….

featuring salsify, which is sometimes known as "oyster plant." Indeed, the cream-colored root had a flavor so surprisingly saline I could have been convinced it came straight from the sea.

We went on to braised seaweed with tofu and pumpkin, another little dance of textures, followed by broccoli rabe with dried