George Lang on Creating Salmon Four Ways

Appears in

Published 1989

“When I opened the Café des Artistes in October of 1975, I wanted to invent a dish that would answer the following requirements and specifications:

It could be eaten as an appetizer, a main course, or an anytime snack.
It would have to be fish or seafood to get away from red meat.
It had to be a comfort food, but at the same time it had to have something about it to titillate the imagination and the palate.
The presentation would have to be the kind to start the gastric juices flowing, and also indicate the elegant informality of the Café des Artistes.
This new dish would have to be the type that both gluttons and thoughtful epicureans would dream about.
Since the seventies (and heaven knows, the eighties as well!) could be characterized as an age when people wanted to experience everything at the same time—and instantly—it would have to be several tastes and textures within one presentation.
Ever since I can remember, ‘variation on a theme’ was what gave me the most pleasure in music, love or food, and in this instance I was trying to come up with playful variations on a basic food.”