Reader: Ryan Leinonen shows that chefs aren't uneducated kitchen monkeys

Although they may disagree with his definition of pasties, readers appreciated the Chef and Tell interview with Ryan Leinonen, the chef who opened Trillium, a Scandinavian restaurant, last month. And Leinonen appreciates chefs, particularly Escoffier. "Le Guide Culinaire was the first book I read when I decided to take my...

By Patricia Calhoun

January 17, 2012

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Although they may disagree with his definition of pasties, readers appreciated the Chef and Tell interview with Ryan Leinonen, the chef who opened Trillium, a Scandinavian restaurant, last month. And Leinonen appreciates chefs, particularly Escoffier. "Le Guide Culinaire was the first book I read when I decided to take my culinary career seriously," he says. "Even if you've read it before, read it again, because it humbles you. Here's this chef, in the late nineteenth and twentieth century, cooking amazing things -- and thinking up amazing things -- without any of the modern conveniences that we have today.... He was the inspiration for every stellar chef today like Thomas Keller and Ferran Adrià, and should be a big part of every chef's inspiration."

Comments like that inspired this from Cook1:

A well spoken chef. Always good to have that shown to the public sector -- we're not all just a bunch of uneducated kitchen monkeys. We have brains too!

Read the complete interview with Leinonen here. And then tell us: What do you consider authentic pasties?

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Patricia Calhoun is editor-in-chief of Westword, the alt-weekly she co-founded in September 1977. She’s been inducted into the Colorado Press Association Hall of Fame, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia Hall of Fame and the Colorado Restaurant Association Hall of Fame. She’s also received dozens of local, state and national awards for writing, including first place for feature writing and first place for column writing with the Society of Professional Journalists. Patricia is a weekly commentator on Colorado Inside Out, PBS 12's public affairs roundtable, which has won two Emmys.

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