Raw Menus

I’d not heard of them (raw menus) before this week, but it just goes to show that if you stay to the margins of the restaurant scene for too long, you wont notice when it’ll have turned the corner. Charlie Trotter (the guy with the super innovative, super refined restaurant in Chicago) has paired up with Roxanne Klein (from California, where else) to create the perfect raw menu (it’s all laid out for you in the “Wine Spectator,” but it’s not yet online, so no link). The idea is to dice the food, soak it, freeze it, marinate it, dehydrate it –anything but cook it.

Well now, I’m sure this works well for vegetarians living in warm climates. But I don’t know about those of us living up north who like our pork sizzled and crisp (I’m not talking about me: I can’t remember the last time I ate sizzled and crisped pork). You take your great love out to dinner on a cold January night (tonight would qualify) and you say – “here, try this thinly sliced bleeding-heart radish accompanied by air-dried tomatoes”? Sounds very un-Atkins. And cold.

But maybe I’m being rigid and parochial. Trotter (who, BTW, is a home grown boy, having graduated in Poli Sci from UW) says that he gets at least 2 requests for a raw menu each night. So maybe we’re going to see this more and more? Dinner guests who will tell you: “I only eat raw.” Oh, I can’t wait. Cooking for others has become so much fun!

Apart from tastes, textures, and the usual pandering to the bored and restless palates of the privileged, the raw menu apparently has the added virtue that it is healthy. The morning after, you wake up feeling – healthy. Oh, did I mention that Roxanne Klein's cooking, excuse me, un-cooking of food excludes meat, poultry, fish, dairy products, and foods derived from wheat? I’m not even going to comment on that.