A mad rush to taste

I meant to ask Matt at breakfast if the term, "he cooks to the plate" means what I think it means.

Matt owns a restaurant in The Mission, is very well read, and coined the phrase this morning at breakfast, "a mad rush to taste."

He was speaking of the quality of life in San Francisco, the specialness of fairly recent circumstances here that are bringing certain people together in a sort of impromptu celebration of good food and wine in what he is recognizing now as a magical time and which might conceivably be thought of later as part of a shift in deep values, saying, "it's a mad rush to taste."

"Nice," I said. "That should be the title of a book on food and wine--A Mad Rush to Taste."

I knew Matt was using the word mad in its most breathlessly positive incarnation, to denote an era in which there is a discernible, if concentrated, populace eager to experience finer and finer cultural sensations and that this quest wasn't entirely dependent on one's pocketbook, though having money was not necessarily de-limiting. And, most importantly, at least to him, that he was fortunate to be part of it, as participant and purveyor.

"If a book was written about it," Matt said, "it has to be like Henry Miller. That really electric kind of prose."

We talked for over an hour. About terrorism in the Mid-east and the proper Western response; Gore Vidal and Christopher Hitchins; World War II; crime in the neighborhood of Folsom and 21st where his restaurant's located. I forgot however to ask Matt what the term, "he cooks to the plate" means, if it's a term well-known in the culinary trade, and if it's derogatory.

I know it's not close to what "a mad rush to taste" means. A mad rush to taste implies that one can't wait to try something new, even if it's old, with the idea of knowing what makes something either good or bad in order to make all future judgements for one's self. Cooking to the plate means something else. A man cooking to the plate is more interested in how things look than how they actually taste, and is more than happy to serve what's cooked to those who don't know the difference and don't care to know.