Inuit Cuisine - Whale Blubber, Seal Liver, Michelin Stars, And The inevitable Demise Of Food Chic

Rene Philippe was chef and owner of Le Hibou, a boutique restaurant in the Mission, recently given a Michelin star for its 'unique Pan American fusion, an eclectic but creative blend of tastes from the North Slope of Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.  

 

Philippe was born and raised in Santiago de Chile, son of a renowned chef who was one of the first in the South American capital to forage for ancient Indian roots - a cuisine of the Mapuche, Aymara, and Diaguita Indians who had inhabited the Pacific coastal regions of South America more than a millennia ago.  He and ethnologist Jose Miranda de Cabeza de Vaca with support from the Department of Anthropology of Isabel La Catolica University in Santiago, carried out extensive research into the culinary culture of the early Indian tribes of the pampas and coastal waters. 

Not surprisingly, Philippe and his team came up with little - only the ordinary forager's wild sea grasses and lichen, the primitive hunter's sea rat (rattus maris) and Paleolithic fish wader's brackish cockles. Nevertheless, the wealthy, sophisticates of San Francisco always looking for something new, unusual, and unique, flocked to Le Hibou.  Wine Advocate gave it special mention in its edition on Chilean wines saying that it 'broke the barriers of old and new, ancient and modern, indigenous and popular'. 

Now, much of the attraction had to do more with cultural cachet than the cuisine itself.  The Mapuche coraille de mer, basically a barnacle ceviche with low tide undertones and served with an ocean fluke puree, would have been inedible to anyone wandering off the street looking for a filling supper; but the clientele of Le Hibou, aware of provenance and food history, far from being put off by the nasty bits, tough mollusk cartilage, and randy sea innards, raved about them.  They were, after all, eating something of uniquely indigenous origin. 

 

Philippe had spent time in the Amazon jungle, hoping to find some traces of early Jivaro cuisine, but the forest cui - a wild muskrat-sized rodent grilled over hibiscus root and banyan coal - just wasn't up to his standards.  No matter how he prepared it, forest cui never lost its peculiar gaminess, said to be derived from its fondness for bat ordure.  This species of cui was more scavenger than forager, and its diet was noxious. 

In any case, Philippe had had enough of South America and turned his attention to the far north and the Eskimo populations above the Arctic Circle.  There, in the harsh, spare, inhospitable environment of the ice, there was only whale blubber and seal meat to eat with the occasional Spring-foraged and -cured seaweed. Far above the tree line, fire was an impossibility, so everything was eaten raw without seasoning; and so making a palatable entree for patrons in San Francisco would be a challenging affair. 

Yet Philippe knew his clientele and how mind-over-matter was the ethos of American haute cuisine. It mattered less what the offerings tasted like than what they looked like and more importantly their history.  To enjoy the same meal that the Inuit ate in Inukjuak their farthest north Arctic settlement was a particular treat. 

Now, eating a slab of whale blubber straight would not be in the cards, no matter how much its indigenous origins prevailed, so Philippe took some liberties and his presentation was worthy of Rene Redzepi, the Danish forager and culinary innovator par excellence.  Philippe carved the blubber into geometric shapes, arrayed them in designs reminiscent of the whalebone scrimshaw carvings of the Inuit, and garnished them with sprays of early sea grass sprouts.  Salt was offered as a garnish, to be taken lightly before each mouthful of blubber and offsetting the dense fat taste of the 'meat'.  Vodka was obligatory. 

Le Hibou was so successful that reservations were taken only three months in advance with the caveat that no menus would be published until the day before dining.  Diners would have to trust Phillipe and his growing reputation. 

Few diners were disappointed and willingly spent the $300 for the standard prix fixe menu.  The cadre of the restaurant added to its appeal.  Never trendy or kitschy in a tribal way, Phillipe's art director collected the most exemplary pieces from Amazon and Alaskan tribes mixed in with Hopi, Ute, and Apache traditional beadwork.  It was an ensemble of cadre, atmosphere, ornamentation, presentation, and history that kept patrons coming back. 

Coincidentally at the same time of the rise of Le Hibou and other imitative restaurants in the Bay Area, there was a counter-revolutionary movement called Back To Basics - comfort food, home cooking, and the fragrance of Mom's kitchen and baking bread. 

Tom O'Neill of the independent Bay Area Journal set the table, i.e. lambasted the pretentious, absurdly priced, nonsensically crafted offerings of San Francisco's nouvelle cuisine in a recent article:

Foraging is no more than a high pretense charade fueled by gullibility, credulousness, and ignorance.  The tomfoolery at Le Hibou is vaudevillian, popular bottom feeding worse than blackface, the Three Stooges, and Freaks all put together.  Who could possibly fall for the gross, inedible offerings of the place?  Holding back gullet spasms and involuntary retching is the most one can hope for at $300 a pop.  You can fool all of the people all of the time, said P.T. Barnum of 'a sucker is born every minute' fame, and Le Hibou and its host Rene Philippe were prime examples.  

Following in a series on a return to home cooking, O'Neill went on to praise meatloaf, mac 'n' cheese, pot roast, Salisbury steak, butterscotch pudding and much more.  A new restaurant in the Mission, Dot's Kitchen, featured these and other familiar items from the Fifties and became the retro hit of the year.  The decor was Formica counters, steel-and-plastic chairs, plastic tablecloths, friendly service and no fanciful preambles about provenance or animal history.  

No 'My name is Bruce and I'll be your waiter tonight', no miniscule detail about garnishes, coulis, or chef's inspiration.  Just plain meals on plain plates in a homey atmosphere. 'Finally', wrote San Francisco Chronicle food critic, Abel Nikken, 'a restaurant we can all enjoy'. 

Foodies sniffed at the very idea.  They had left the soggy, floury, bready, unappetizing meals of the Fifties far behind, or so they thought; and were surprised at a) how successful Dot's kitchen and its spawn had become; and b) how the patronage of Le Hibou and its ilk dwindled to almost nothing. 

'Fickle', said one Sausalito foodie who had recently redone her kitchen with a six-burner Viking stove, a walk-in refrigerator, two spacious food islands, track lighting, two bakery-quality ovens, a sous vide cooker, and a Japanese fermenter and spent thousands in the process. 'Food connoisseurs will be back' but the return never happened.  Le Hibou went out of business, Rene Phillipe went to upstate New York  to work at his American family's lumber company, and Dot of Dot's kitchen turned her small SF enterprise into a national chain.  

What goes around comes around, goes the old saw; and after years of exploring the outer reaches of the food culture, Mom's pot roast and apple pie were back.  It was about time, but also predictable. Classic Renaissance cuisine turned Baroque and then in a final paroxysm became Rococo.  After that overdone, excessive, self-indulgent period, food returned to normalcy, or at least some semblance of it. 

American cuisine followed the same trajectory and although Rene Philippe did not know it, he was the last of the Rococo restaurateurs.