Menu of the Month

Spoon

Like everyone else, we admire Alain Ducasse whilst remaining somewhat wary of the man's seemingly endless empire-building. Every few months a new place opens or a new concept is born, all of which takes Ducasse further away from the stove. Call us old-fashioned, but we reckon stoves are where chefs should stay, if they want to call themselves chefs. But Ducasse hasn't cooked in years, preferring instead to orchestrate his empire by using his name at every juncture. In this sense, Ducasse is more like a model than a cook: he is a face, a brand, a concept, much the same as Liz Hurley or Christy Turlington.

His most successful recent idea, Spoon, is already open in Tokyo, Paris, London etc etc, but Spoon is a nifty idea. Basically, the menu is an offer where choices are numerous, and you can mix and match them whatever way you want. The style is to offer a series of techniques ­ soups and salads; steamed fare; food on spoons; pastas; sandwiches; cereals and grains; meat and poultry, cheeses and desserts, and you can choose to eat them in any order you like, and to mix combinations any way you like. Everything has been tested with everything else on the menu, so all flavour combinations are supposed to work. The internationalism of the culinary concept is very clever (note, only one French wine on the bento wine list), and will prove to be influential.

So, what would you mix and match from the following? Click here to view the menu

View the Spoon website at www.spoon.tm.fr

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text © John & Sally McKenna
illustrations © Ken Buggy