Techique Rick Bayless

Art Culinaire, Summer, 2001

Technique Rick Bayless academia leadership discipline culture technique creativity academia culture discipline leadership awareness academia discipline creativity discipline leadership technique technique creativity Nora Pouillon culture academia creativity leadership culture David Burke academia discipline awareness culture discipline technique creativity technique culture Alfred Portale culture awarencess academia discipline technique creativity awareness

"Primus inter Pares" First Among Equals This nation, this generation in this hour has man's first chance to build a Great Society, a place where the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor."

Lyndon Baines Johnson

The four virtues of a great chef: Creativity, Discipline, Leadership, and Awareness require an understanding of technique, academia, and culture. In honor of these ideals we present a few of the industry's best who not only help set the standards for the industry, but continue to raise the bar for our profession.

Rick Bayless

The first chef to elevate Mexican cuisine to a fine dining level in the United States

"I went on my first trip to Mexico when I was 14, and I just fell in love. I felt really at home-I was drawn to the culture and knew I would find a way to return," recalls Bayless. He was perhaps most amazed by Mexican culture and the way it intertwined with the cuisine. "Whether it be at their fiestas or in their street food, people in Mexico are really passionate about food," he insists. Bayless attended college as a Spanish and Latin American major, absorbing the history and culture of his surrogate country. He later pursued anthropological linguistics in graduate school but became disillusioned with the academic world, "Many other graduates from my program were having difficulties finding employment and I was becoming disenchanted with the field of linguistics. I took a year off and started a small catering business in Ann Arbor where my wife Deann and I were living." Though Bayless had always cooked to pay his way through school, he rediscovered his love for the kitchen and soon was teaching and writing about food. Bayless and his wife decided to move to Mexico and apply their research skills to the world of Mexican cuisine. "We had planned on staying for one year," Bayless confides, "and ended up staying almost five years; logging over 35,000 miles across Mexico." As luck would have it, the Bayless duo was hired to develop menus for a chain of Mexican-American restaurants in California. In this way, the couple was able to explore regional cuisines. As they lived and breathed Mexico, the markets, the daily food preparations, Bayless grew to understand that dialogue was an important part of understanding the food culture. "I never asked for recipes. I would pose questions. For example I would ask, 'did you make that with chile guajillo or chile ancho, because I've heard...?' and they would respond, 'oh, well I don't like that chile ancho I only used chile gutajillo...' in turn I would say, 'so you used chile guajillo and a little garlic and some cumin...' and they would stop me, 'cumin!? I would never use cumin...' Ultimately I would engage them in a conversation that was already way down the line. If I needed more specifics I would come back and continue the conversation, but I never wrote anything in front of them. I kept everything in my head until I could sit down and write." His research led him down back roads, through churchyards, and to homes to sample some of the most authentic and undiscovered dishes of Mexico. "If you can touch into something in their community, people start telling you all sorts of details," Bayless admits. It was at the markets of Mexico where Bayless uncovered much of his information. "There is always a section in the market known as the horndas, a place for the farmers who traveled to eat before the long trip home. They serve the homiest of food--traditional home cooking. I found that the more funky and interesting dishes of tripe, dried fish, and wild greens came from the poorest, most remote parts of Mexico, not the cities. What I didn't realize, until after my first book, was that I was researching this old fashioned kind of cooking that even most modern Mexicans thought had disappeared." By the end of his five years, he had the makings of a book.

Bayless opened Frontera Grill in 1987, the same year he released his first book, Authentic Mexican: regional cooking from the heart of Mexico Rather than seeking a high profile metropolis for the restaurant, Bayless picked Chicago. "We were coming out of LA where there was a long history of Mexican-American cooking. This was also during a time when the LA food scene had everyone's attention. In fact, Deann and I had picked restaurant space on Melrose Ave. where all the new hot restaurants were opening. We had financial backing and everything, but it just didn't seem like it was the right place for us. We didn't like the LA mentality very much. It was too much like you had to reinvent yourself every year. We wanted to do something that was going to be long lasting," Bayless explains. As a result, the two considered Chicago. It was a place the Bayless' had an affinity for. Though it had a city feel, they both loved the modest size. Chicago also proved the ideal location because it didn't have the history of Mexican fast food restaurants so prominent in California. Bayless adds, "There had been an enormous amount of immigration from Mexico to Chicago over the last ten years prior to our opening the restaurant. As a result, there were many mom and pop restaurants specializing in one specific Mexican dish. This gave us the opportunity to take what people knew as a ma and pa cuisine and provide another offering, one, a step up from what they knew. The opening of Topolobampo in 1991 fulfilled Bayless' vision of opening a fine dining Mexican restaurant. "I tried to give the respect to Mexican cuisine that it was due," Bayless confides. "Most people didn't respect it because they didn't know it. So by offering well prepared, really traditional Mexican cuisine to the American public, I was able to bring it the respect that it deserved."