“In that Empire, the Art of Cartography achieved such Perfection” (wrote the eternal Jorge Luis Borges), that a tire company already decided to include restaurants in its guides with travel maps a hundred years ago. They started with those of their country, but later they conquered others. Seeking more precision, or perhaps just concreteness for these gastronomic geographies, they invented a simplified language based on symbolic stars.
Decades passed in which wars and hardships devastated the continent. With a certain well-being recovered, a new, more direct and less orthodox style of cooking took center stage. To map it, a couple of rebellious critics dared to propose their own guide that questioned the order established by the star. They managed to achieve a certain glory, but, over time, the powerful pneumatic guide and its constellations once again represented the canon.
Other guides arrived with different routes, capacity for influence and territorial scope, although another decade had to pass to see how a new attempt to assault the power of gastronomic prescription shook the foundations of the canon.
A brand new culinary revolution had dared to question any limits of classical scholasticism in the name of creativity. It expanded throughout the world, overflowing the borders of the nation state, first to the south – supported for a time by a certain prestigious yet feared author’s guide. Then north… Finally everywhere.
With the new millennium, a perceptive island initiative took advantage of the moment, proposing to represent this new gastronomic paradigm in a list announced with a large media apparatus. It achieved its impact in a communicative framework that demanded extreme simplicity and competitiveness.
It went from good to best. But the exclusive excludes and the excluded do not usually conform. This discontent fueled the proliferation of alternative lists and rankings. Not only restaurants or chefs, but also products, dishes, sweets and other categories.
Digital technology also made it possible to democratize the dissemination of opinions and comments. Anyone could finally issue their criticism, which, added to so many others, generated evaluation rankings. Nowadays, with enough followers it is not even necessary to add it, the influencers are the high priests of the mobile cult.
The new digital communication space has no limits, making it impossible to satisfy your hunger for fresh news. It is a bottomless pit, a click junkie, capable of instantly swallowing and projecting any novelty, distinction or recognition.
In short, the profusion of new rankings, the results of new contests, the announcements of new recognitions continue to proliferate in an apparent exponential acceleration.
Will gastronomy end up becoming a kind of Babylonian lottery with countless prizes in every imaginable or absurd category? For the best left-handed chef of the year, the best racialized chef, committed pastry chef, biodynamic waiter, winner of junior, senior or celebrity contest edition 1,2, 3… Cheesecake, lemon in English, bread, bun, donut, tomato, tapa, salad, skewer, tripe, truffle, steak, label… of the neighborhood, region, continent or universe… “No decision is final, they all branch into others.”
Perhaps so many lists, lists of lists, and rankings of influencers will become the unlimited, although periodic, online Library of Babel. While in the physical library, guides, guides of guides and other colorful copies filled with stars, suns, suns, moons, meteors and other celestial bodies coexist with incessant editions of author’s recipe books, family recipes, traditional cuisine, traditional cuisine seen by the author, of author’s cuisine remade by another author – The technique of deliberate anachronism -, of copies without recognition of authorship or even without awareness of the copy itself.
