When I wrote yesterday about the growing importance of molecular gastronomy in the United States, I didn’t realize I had become a prophet. This morning, I opened up nytimes.com’s dining page to find an article previewing Twist– Las Vegas’ next big restaurant due to open on December 4.How is this relevant? The restaurant is the new project of Pierre Gagnaire, the renowned three-starred French chef who is the friend and collaborator of Hervé This – cofounder of molecular gastronomy. The two men have coauthored a book (Cooking: The Quintessential Art) and created a website that presents a new recipe inspired by principles ascertained from the latest molecular gastronomy research each month. Gagnaire supplies the creative, artistic counterweight to This’ scientific discourse, infusing aesthetic vitality into the mechanical framework of molecular gastronomy. The relationship between these two men exemplifies the manner in which molecular gastronomy questions the supposed dichotomy between science and art – chipping away at the barricade that has been socially constructed between the “objective” and the “subjective.”
Twist will be Gagnaire’s first restaurant in the United States, and will supplement his global fleet – including outposts in Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, Dubai, and Seoul. He is still working to articulate his vision for the new restaurant, but told reporter Glenn Collins that “It will not be a brasserie, and not be a gastronomic restaurant. My way of cooking is very poetic and emotional. I would like this to be a place of tenderness — a word not often used in Las Vegas. After all, my only way of expressing myself is through my cooking... I am going to listen to try to understand the psychological profile, and the gourmet profile, of people coming to dinner.”Personally, I am willing to trust his judgment, and am thrilled to see another culinary institution bring attention to molecular gastronomy.
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