Pete Wells has a nice article in the New York Times about how liquor companies are co-opting the cooking processes popularized by Ferran Adria, Wylie Dufresne, Homaro Cantu, and Grant Achatz for the bar. Cointreau bubbles, anyone? What’s really interesting about the article, is that Cointreau’s consultant on the project is Dale DeGroff. DeGroff is a cocktail legend, kind of like say Charlie Trotter in the bar world. I can’t imagine Trotter experimenting with say transglutaminase, especially since he’s basically dubbed post-modern cooking a house on stilts, etc. I wonder if it’s fair to say then that bartenders are more open to experimentation? It may just be that DeGroff is an open minded guy, and he’s still relevent, because he hasn’t stopped learning, while a lot of “old school” chefs let ego get in the way and still rely on their name and past achievement to carry them through.