Restaurants and Instititutions magazine has a good podcast interview with Charlie Trotter, and Paul Kahan and Donnie Madia of Blackbird. It’s really enlightening to see Paul and Charlie together. Paul’s approach is humble and self effacing, while Charlie is the embodiment of the Daniel Burham ethos of “making no small plans”. Yet the two of them are probably the most successful culinary faces of Chicago, proving there’s no one way right way to make it.

As usual, there’s the obligatory question about what the two classically based chefs think of the molecular gastronomy movement. Trotter, at least this week anyway, seems to finally have made amends with the idea saying:

Q. You have two of the best-known restaurants in Chicago, yet neither is linked strongly with what some observers now associate most with the city: molecular gastronomy or avant-garde cuisine. Can a restaurant built around that sort of food last for 10 or 20 years?

A. TROTTER: Absolutely it can, but it’s like any restaurant or any business. If your service is great, if the food tastes great and you continue to refine things and evolve things, you can last as long as you’re able to keep on pushing it. It’s another great aspect of what’s available not just in this city but nationwide or worldwide. But yes, in the wrong hands, the quote-unquote “molecular gastronomy” can be a little muddled. But in the right hands it can be very provocative.

Of course a few months and a few years ago he had a different idea, according to this passage from David Tamarkin’s excellent Time Out Chicago article:

Almost since the day Alinea opened in 2005, Trotter has expressed doubts about its avant-garde food. In The New York Times, he famously referred to Achatz’s chemically enhanced cooking style as “nonsense on stilts.” And during the course of our conversations, he makes several thinly veiled references to the restaurant. “It’s great to see other wonderful young restaurants around town,” he says. “It’s fantastic. Bravo. You’ve been doing this for two years, three years. You want to do this for a long time? Let’s see if you have the wherewithal to really be avant-garde for 20 years.”