Tom Cruise towards the end of the movie Jerry Maguire says to Renee Zellweger, “You complete me.” A truer word has not been spoken when it comes to food and wine.
As my experience in the restaurant business has taken me to many different places the understanding and wisdom I have realized through that portal of the culinary arts has helped me in many different facets of life.
Attention to detail, communication through the discerning eye of the guest, and of course the humbleness when you realize the vast subject you’ve undertaken. All of these nuances gives your life outside the culinary world a perspective of three things:
- How much you know.
- How much you don’t know.
- How much you don’t even know what to ask.
So that leads to a quest to find the knowledge that will create an experience for the guest that goes beyond their expectations. This starts with trust. When a guest asks you your opinion regarding the pairing of food and wine this sets the stage for an interesting communication, and remember its not important what you like.
The art of this communication is to ask the questions that will lead you to what the guest is looking for. It is important that the pairing of food and wine is kept simple and straight forward. I have realized, after talking with several Master Sommeliers, this is not a game to prove how much you know. This is the expertise of leading the guest to style and structure providing the perfect solution for the ultimate goal.
That goal is to enhance the food experience with a wine that tastes better because you correctly paired the perfect wine based upon the guest preference and the knowledge you’ve acquired through years of learning this very task. There are several indicators as to how to choose the wine with the food the guest has chosen.
Is their preference red or white wine? Dry or sweet? Do they prefer bigger or more subtle wines? And so the dialogue continues until you’ve arrived on a category. Within that category comes the question most don’t like to ask but must be considered, price point.
Obviously if they like white burgundies but only want to spend a $100.00 they perhaps can be gently persuaded to move to a more realistic category. A category that would provide a better product than a $100.00 bottle of white burgundy for half the cost of a comparable product. This would lead them to a California chardonnay.
The gentle movement of regions from France (old world) to California (new world) can be achieved by telling them that in 1976 at the now famous “Paris Tasting” the 1972 Chateau Montelena chardonnay produced by winemaker Miijenko Grgic (now Grgich) beat all white burgundies in a blind tasting thus creating the platform for international recognition of new world wines.
As the barrels are important to the production of wine so are the kitchen tools used to enhance the food chosen by the guest. There are no greater culinary tools than the PAZAZ ™ kitchen tools. The Non-Stick Silicone Baking Mat, the Heavy Duty Aluminum Baking Sheet Pan, and the Steel Mesh Cooling Rack.
You will find when you go to pazazshop.com and purchase the PAZAZ ™ kitchen tools… they complete you.