This contribution explores the aesthetic dimensions of culinary practice. Starting point is an investigation of the menu “The Elementary” by the Swiss avantgarde and Michelin-starred chef Stefan Wiesner. The methodological interweaving of phenomenology, speech act, pictorial, and design analysis points to an innovative cooking mindset which takes on shape in the menu “Elementary”: Wiesner renders nature experienceable with regard to taste in an essential manner. It is based on a concept of radical simplicity, which he calls “monotype”. “Monotype” mimicries neither (...) existent nature nor conventional cooking styles. Rather, Wiesner sets out from very few elements which he then unfolds inwards taste-wise. The sequence of courses creates a spatio-temporal reference field that is inspired by nature but does not replicate it, instead it takes us through a culinary transformation of its elements. “Elementary”, so my argument, develops a new definition of the relationship between nature and food through a singular cooking practice out of which derives a desideratum for a culinary aesthetics. (shrink)

In this essay, I will present one part of a theory on haptic that is moving along the path and that will be narrated more broadly in a future book. Here, I will connect the haptic to the topic of hot/cold, making first some general considerations about it, then proposing arguments and examplestaken from the domain of food and cooking. Hence, I will restrict to some reflections with the haptic perspective under the lens of the temperature issue with respect to (...) the case of nutrition. It is true, however, that hot and cold are directly related to food since the very beginning of the humanity. It is well know that, from Vico to Lévi-Strauss, the invention/the discovery of fire for cooking has been considered as one, or the, turning point for the “beginning” of humanity or, more in general, the relation between animals and humans. In my opinion, the haptic perception is a broad field of research that consents to reconsider important issues connected also to this point. (shrink)