Written by Timothy Dugdale
Foodies who followed the fine dining scene in Detroit during the 1990’s will well remember the name Michael Laiskonis. He launched his career as a pastry chef to two of the finest kitchen magicians this area has ever known – Rick Halberg and Takashi Yagahashi. Halberg and Yagahashi were both early proponents of locavore food culture and their disciples, like Laiskonis, are now making witness to that gospel throughout the state of Michigan and the country. Like a proud papa, Halberg keeps a huge binder of all the glorious wine dinners he and Laiskonis prepared at Halberg’s legendary restaurant, Emily’s, in Northville. And anyone who ever dined at Tribute in Farmington Hills knew that the experience of Takashi’s French/Japanese fusion cuisine was not complete without one of Laiskonis’ desserts or an incredible cheese board that Laiskonis painstakingly tended. Even though his signature desert at Tribute was The Egg – chocolate mousse, egg white and sea salt in an egg shell – I always loved Laiskonis’ chocolate orange chip ice cream, a sinful “throwaway” improvisation that epitomized Laiskonis’ attention to detail and dedication to balanced flavors.
Now, a decade later, Laiskonis is the celebrated pastry chef at Le Bernadin, Eric Ripert’s incomparable ode to all things from the sea. You may see him now and again in scenes from Ripert’s TV series, “Avec Eric.” But Laiskonis isn’t a flashy guy; he’ll never be a dancing bear on the Food Network or the Travel Channel. He’s a man of cool determination completely dedicated to his craft. And that craft is making great desserts that look great on a plate. I chatted with him recently about parallels between design and dessert.
You dabble in photography. What parallels do you see between the frame and the plate?
“I began my lifelong flirtation with photography as a high school student- we’re talking the old-school, pre-digital stone age! Working on real film, and then processing that film and the resulting prints, required a great deal of precision, measurement, and patience. Though there was, and is, that technical element, whatever lies within the frame might be deemed ‘art’. As a pastry chef, I find the same diligence and thoughtfulness applies to my craft; in this case the frame or viewfinder is a plate. As long as there is a fundamental respect for the medium, with mastery comes the freedom to stretch the boundaries. Be it harnessing light or manipulating flavor and texture, the potential for expression and creativity is virtually limitless.”
When you’re devising a dish, what considerations go into the plating design?
“Generally speaking, form usually follows function, or rather, the focus is on how well the dish ‘eats’ before I worry too much about how it will look. On the other hand, as a pastry chef, I tend to work with materials in their most primal state- sugar, flour, etc.- so I usually have a fairly clean visual slate to begin with (as opposed to a savory cook, who is limited by the form of his or her piece of fish, for example). Once those flavors and textures are perfected, and their balance adjusted, designing the plate becomes an architectural project, but not necessarily in a strict, literal sense. I try to see the various components’ juxtaposition as a kind of inner architecture, how crunchy interacts with creamy, warm with cold, acid and sweet, and so on. All of those considerations will ultimately inform the structure, and hopefully, how the dish is experienced by the client.”
In terms of visual aesthetics, I think my art training instilled a subconscious eye for composition that I still call upon. I generally prefer asymmetry and clean lines, and over time, I’ve begun to reduce the clutter of too many random drips, drizzles and dots, though old habits do die hard! In recent years I’ve come to admire the work of Alexander Calder, who, beyond the signature mobile, had a knack for combining hard geometric shapes with organic, indeterminate forms. That’s an artistic device I continue to explore.”
When you plate a dish, how do imagine the diner engaging the dish? Do you imagine alternative strategies the diner can use to gain a different experience than the one laid out by the server?
“A few years back, I had a revelation of sorts, that pastry chefs are really just hustlers in what I call the ‘nostalgia business’. Though savory cooks might retain a capacity to tell stories through their dishes, with sweetness we tap directly into our own DNA. From birth, we’re hard-wired with a taste for sweet. Just when we might otherwise mature beyond that physiological trigger, the desire manifests itself in the realm of emotion. With sweetness we begin to associate comfort, pleasure, reward, envy, and guilt. Everyone has their own personal Proustian madeleine that lights up some fragment of sense memory, and I find my work as a pastry chef, no matter how refined, is a potential portal to one’s own childhood. A sense of responsibility surfaced with this realization, but so too did a renewed sense of play and exploration; I enjoy the challenge of interweaving those nostalgic elements in ways that might not be obvious. Each dessert must have broad democratic appeal, but a true ‘dialog’ emerges when an element of a dish tickles the guest in some ineffable way.”
How and when do you know a dish is working or not working?
“There is always a certain course of trial and error that takes place in the mind, well before anything hits the plate. It’s a benefit of experience to some degree, but also a crutch at times, because that mental tasting will often exclude unfamiliar territory in favor of the safe and known. So there are times when it’s important to shed preconception and just start layering and building a dish component by component, laying caution to the wind. Spontaneously discovering a synergy and harnessing a new technique are rarely the outcome of over-thinking and prior planning.
In those cases when something works immediately, well, it’s usually obvious; taste and enjoyment are subjective, but at the level we’re trying maintain, there are also objective traits that are easily identified. Is there a proper balance of sweet with acid and bitter? Do the textures work, and are they pushed to their ultimate refinement? Does the presentation fall under our generally accepted aesthetic? When a dish hasn’t hit the mark, it’s often about flavor; for whatever reason, we didn’t coax enough from the ingredient, or that flavor is obscured by means of the process or manipulation itself. A lot of our recipes are developed by instinct and experience, but there is some reformulation and adjustment to nail it all down. In the end, consistency is king; while I always leave room for a dish to breathe and evolve over time, each component in our repertoire has a sort of built in standard or benchmark.
I have no set method to building a dish. An idea might come to fruition very quickly- within a few hours- or I belabor a concept over the course of weeks or months. Either way, the process creates a personal investment that often makes it hard to step back and properly assess the results. Having the perspective of a fresh palate is always useful for fine tuning the details. In the end, perfecting a dish is a subtractive process. Our tendency is to keep adding, but at some point I find it’s necessary to then start chipping away to reveal an essence. Success is usually measured in that narrow gulf of nothing less and nothing more.”
On your blog, you mention that you’re interested in cultivating your “brand.” What do you consider the elemental signal of that brand – your persona? Your techniques? Your palette of ingredients? Or any combination thereof?
“This is a difficult question to answer, as I’m still grappling with what it all means. I first became really conscious of branding when I began working at Le Bernardin- suddenly there was an awareness and a responsibility in that everything I did represented something much larger than myself, or any one person. More than just a restaurant, the name symbolizes a 38 year legacy since its inception on the outskirts of Paris. As I’ve continued to evolve and mature as chef, that association has brought many benefits, but also the opportunity to make my own contribution to that brand. From that stage I also realized that I had attained a personal identity, separate, but not fully divorced from the legacy. I like the analogy of a successful rock band and the solo side project- both lend a different sort of credibility to the other.
I’m still a bit uncomfortable applying the idea of a ‘brand’ to myself. I can rationalize a certain amount of art or glamour to my work, but at the end of the day, I’m just a craftsman. With time I’ve come to realize that being a great chef is so much more than just being a good cook.
With a certain degree of exposure- whether self-generated or in the press- comes a need to control the aura that emanates from it. For me, that begins with overall conduct, professionalism, and humility, but also extends to how I’m represented by what I put on the plate. It is about the food, and it does entail an overall philosophy, aesthetic, and technical angle. Apart from whatever I might do to lure clients into the seats at Le Bernardin, I’m not really selling anything. I prefer to think of it more as building trust and credibility among a fairly small audience of people who are into what I do. I don’t know that my wish is to fully exploit all that the bubble of foodie culture and the cult of the celebrity chef has to offer, but I do realize I serve a certain niche. In that respect, a lot of what I do on the blogs, for example, is more a form of mentorship and exchange of ideas. I think it’s very important to constantly step back and remind myself what the motivation is, why I’m pursuing this or that project. When the dust settles, all we really have is our integrity, so I constantly keep that in mind regardless of the project.”
Michael Laiskonis is the pastry chef at Le Bernadin, New York. He also
is the author of the blog, Notes From The Kitchen.