Mark Miller: a study of flavor
With his background in anthropology and cultural studies, world-renowned chef Mark Miller looks deep into the psychology behind flavor, and where it's headed.

Interview by Cathy Nash Holley

Q. What is your definition of flavor?
I see flavor as a cultural dimension of experience, rather than a taste profile. Flavor is not a passive thing, it's not like taking a piece of litmus paper and putting chemicals on it and then reading it.

To me, there are a number of definitions of flavor.

First, flavor can be read physiologically by a person in terms of eating. This is culturally subjective, and is based upon experience and knowledge. If you give tofu to someone who's never before tasted it, they'll probably say it has no flavor, whereas in Japan, there are 27 words to describe the texture of tofu. Crunchy or harder textures are very positive flavor attributes to Americans.

Flavor can also be defined within a particular culture's concepts, like the comparison of a tomato sauce made in Italy versus one made in Mexico.

And there is an individual's level of flavor interpretation. This varies from person to person, and goes beyond the regular cultural definition. It can be how you perceive the ingredient — its color, texture, and taste.

Miller likes counterpoint in dishes like his crispy rare squab with fermented black bean rice.

Compare foods to a painting — does it need all that color? What is the purpose of those lines? What gives this painting its flavor?

Any good chef's food has a flavor signature. You could blindfold me and serve me dishes of 20 chefs I know and I could be 100% sure of the chef by their flavor signature and the way they use their flavors.

When we talk about flavors, we should ask what the chef is expressing in this dish, or why the diner accepts or rejects it.

When people say a food has no flavor, this means they have no cultural background with which to organize what's being received. "I don't like this" really means "I don't know anything about this." It doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't have good flavor.

Sea urchin is one food that I just don't like, but I realize it's culturally relative, and I just haven't trained myself to accept it.

I do flavor perception classes with companies, and they think that I'm going to come in and tell them what's good. But what I do instead is test their physiological range of what they perceive as good. I want them to ask "What are you actually saying when you say it's not good?"

I have a flavor scale that includes seven profiles: salt, sugar, bitter, sour, hot, aromatic and pungent. I happen to have a huge range of tolerance for bitter. On a scale of one to 10, American foods rate about two on the bitter scale. All cultural foods scale differently on the flavor scale. Japanese like salt and sugar combinations, Americans don't.

Flavor is neither positive nor negative; it's always culturally perceived. Americans are redefining what they accept as good flavors, and are now more willing to experiment world cuisines, outside of their cultural definition of what is good.

Q. What drives your creation of new flavor — the market or your own passion and interests?
A chef is also an educator, presenter, and a retailer. If we always do products that have a demand in the marketplace, then we're limited.

I try to personalize my quest for the expansion of knowledge, and experience what is outside my own culture. I explore and learn other foods and flavors, and then bring them back to the marketplace where I temper them and where they're hopefully read as positives, within the range of acceptability.

I happen to personally like certain flavors, and that's been my drive. I don't cook French food, because I don't find French food that flavorful.

I like a level of intensity in flavor — spicy flavors, bitter, fermented, salted, more extreme flavors. On the other end of the scale, I also like extremely subtle flavors. I can appreciate the 14 varieties of white rice.

There are flavor experiences on both ends of the scale, on the intense side and on the subtle side. I find many Americans don't want to go to either end.

I always try to represent food within a cultural context. There is a respect I have for cultural traditions and I hold to this.

I'm not really interested in cooking food America likes. I'm more interested in pursuing my own culinary expressiveness and definition.

Q. How do you find balance in the flavors of a particular menu item?
I happen to like a lot of counterpoint within a particular dish. I recently served a soup with a gazpacho on one side of the bowl, made with yellow tomato infused with lemongrass, herbs, and ginger. On the other side of the bowl was red gazpacho. I placed a green papaya and mango salad in the center. On top was a lobster salsa flavored with Southeast Asian basil, mint and cilantro. Believe it or not, this dish actually worked.

Within each dish, there's a certain mode of intent, and the individual element of the dish either expresses that intent or it doesn't. Take a lobster dish with ginger and saffron. You need to take into account what is happening to each flavor in the dish. What happens to the lobster? How about the saffron — does it fight or destroy the intent? And you need to ask yourself "Does this dish express my intent?"

I also look for a cultural balance. I say, "Is this dish Mexican, and is it working within the boundaries of my cultural definition of Mexican?" As long as it has a cultural definition and direction, and achieves a certain expression, then it has balance.

Q. How do you incorporate new flavors into your menu? How far is too far with new flavors?
You need to stay within your audience. Coyote Cafe has a meaning to the public. They expect a certain flavor and the food has to express that. If all of a sudden I served a dish from my Loongbar menu, my customers would be disappointed. "This isn't very good" would mean this isn't what they expected.

Commercially, you have to do foods and flavors that have chords and modes that people can understand. You can accent them, but they have to be within certain expectations. I'll use certain flavors and ingredients I call "cultural touchstones." At Thanksgiving, I may use an organic turkey with a chipotle glaze, and kabucha pumpkin, which I find more interesting than American pumpkin. But I need to keep within my customers' concept of what a Thanksgiving meal is.

Diners should have safe adventures. You want to give them something that creates interest, not anxiety.

Q. How do you train your staff to best represent your signature flavors?
We do flavor component tastings. I let my waitstaff taste the entire item, and give wine pairing suggestions, along with a bit of philosophy.

"Coyote Cafe has a meaning to the public," says Miller. "They expect a certain flavor and the food has to express that."

Most of my waiters have been with me a long time, so they know how best to represent my flavors. I have more problems with new cooks who start expressing themselves before they're ready. I've been doing this for a long time now, and I'm still learning about how best to express my signature flavors.

Q. Where do you see the future of flavor going?
Mediterranean is still king, and by this I mean Spain and North Africa. We're going away from France and Italy. I think we'll even go to the Eastern Mediterranean. I'm travelling to Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Greece, and I think these cuisines need to be explored. Kukarri in San Francisco shows you the success of Eastern Mediterranean — it's very different from French and Italian Mediterranean.

Southeast Asia is another growth area. We're seeing high aromatics — basil, lemongrass, and ginger are more pronounced in dishes.

I also think there will be an increased interest in Modern British. This meets the American palate's understanding of simple ingredients like farmhouse cheeses. I know a chef in England who is doing a menu that simply features eight different presentations of cod.

Some Americans have a hard time with more complex cuisines, like Chinese and Japanese, and even Mexican. So chefs are extrapolating a black bean sauce out of a Chinese dish, and serving it with swordfish, something you'd never do in China. While it's okay to simplify things, I think there's a danger in culturally rearranging things to your liking. Does it really express the underlying culture?

Flavor expresses both cultural and individual psychology. There's a danger of allowing individual psychology to be the only definition of what's good or what's not good. People eat hot sauces but they don't understand Indian or Mexican or African foods.

Comfort food is a cop-out for me. It's not about the food, it's about connecting with the past. Would you go to the same movie 10 times? Fifty percent of Americans order the same dish when they go out to eat. Why?

Flavor dimension in a dish is very important to me. I might taste something and find it kind of flat and lacking dimension, but someone else would find it good. But maybe they want to read a comic book, while I want to read Dostoyevsky.

Q. Finally, what is your advice for today's chefs?
There's a disrespect that American culture has for other cultural foods. Many chefs today are following what the public is demanding, but this has made it all too popular to do things without understanding the history and culture behind it.

The problem with young chefs today is that they may not understand the culture enough. For example, I spent a lot of time in Guatemala, where the weaving is a fantastic part of their culture. In one week, all the weaves looked alike. In two weeks, I started to notice differences. Then in three months, I finally began to understand the different weaves, and I could pick out the most creative one.

Personally, I'm trying to expand my own understanding of the areas in which I feel proficient — Southwestern, Mexican, Native American.

I'm also an educator, and I'm trying to teach people about my experiences with these foods, why I'm passionate about this particular food or that particular flavor.

For today's chefs, what's critical is how much are you in tune with the flavor experience yourself. You can analyze tofu or eggplant, but ultimately, you need to transform it into something that is meaningful, something that can be understood.

Flavor is an experience. You can only understand or taste flavor if you really experience it. Otherwise it's meaningless.

 

Mark Miller is a culinary scholar, successful restaurateur, celebrated author and world-renowned chef. Soon after opening his landmark Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe, Mark gained the dual status as the father of Southwest cooking and one of this nation's most influential chefs. He also has a second Coyote Cafe in Las Vegas, and Red Sage in Washington, D.C. markm@coyote-cafe.com