JONTILLMAN.COM | Part of the problem since 1976

I have given some more thought to what I wrote yesterday about cooking at home instead of going out to a restaurant, and thanks to Seattle Simplicity’s post about her upcoming $243 dinner at The Herbfarm I am now able to explain in greater detail why our change recent of attitude towards restaurants made me so happy.

As I said, I am a huge fan of world-class chefs. What I didn’t explain is that in a previous life, I have had the good fortune to work for a couple of them, and I have been a sous chef in a couple of excellent but unknown dining rooms, so I am quite familiar with the mystique and craftsmanship that makes up an upper tier kitchen. I love finding a chef, or a particular dish on a particular day by a particular chef that, as I said yesterday, makes you …cry in joy over what has just been served to you…

I love every meal I have had at Wolfe’s In The Warehouse in New Orleans (now finally reopening), at the Chinese restaurant in midtown Manhattan that the Communist Party owns, at a particular Cuban Restaurant in Miami that is accessable only through a door next to a loading dock in an alley, at Andre’s in the Palms in Las Vegas, and at several other places, including a very special local’s secret right here in Myrtle Beach, and I will continue to have enjoy these trips into culinary wonderland.

The thing that all of these restaurants have in common is not a hip celebrity chef, with the exception of Tom Wolfe (of Peristyle, Brennan’s and Emeril’s fame), but a chef who is so passionate about food that you feel more as if you are going to church than to dinner. As a former sous chef, I know how easy, and cheap, it is for a decent chef to make passable food that most of the diners will rave about. I also know how hard it is to create truly astounding food that other chefs will rave about, and in the case of every place I listed above, I was directed to them by either a chef, or a gastronome who could have been a chef.

So, the reason that our recent dinners at home have excited me is that now, with the hold of lower tier restaurants, and (even lower) chain joints broken, not only will I get more opportunity to exercise and refine my culinary skills, we will have more money that can be spent on truly unique and fantastic dining experiences. No more $75 dinners at middle-class restauarants for us; from now on it is world class cuisine cooked by chef that is passionate about his craft, or world class cuisine cooked by me.