What is avant-garde cuisine?

When we mention ”avant-garde cuisine”, terms like “deconstruction”, “transformation” or the latest food fads come to mind. Unorthodox, experimental, radical…

However, culinary avant-garde is not about ultramodern styles, but the forward-thinking of chefs and their styles or cuisines. “Avant-garde”, originally used in the military sense, literally means “advance guard” in French. This term was later adopted by the Arts to describe “pioneers or innovators of a particular period” (Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper).

An avant-garde approach to anything usually promotes concepts, ideas or techniques ahead of its time, and is often shunned at first due to its glaring deviation from what we consider “normal” and within our comfort zone. Take the advent of information technology for example and how its inception raised all sorts of fears, of “supermachines” taking over the world, or something along those lines.

Cooking is about deconstruction and transformation – analysing each component of a dish, recreating and re-presenting them in new ways. Forward-thinking chefs or followers of the culinary avant-garde movement do so by focusing on flavour, texture and temperature. The end result may look familiar but taste better, or look unfamiliar but taste the same, or simply take you by surprise. It is up to the chef to know where to draw the line between the familiar, the unfamiliar but pleasant, or just plain nonsense, while always, always respecting the basics of cookery.