Food as art

My fascination with food extends beyond mere appetite. Through eating at a wide variety of good restaurants and then dining at a fair number of the nation's best restaurants, I've come to appreciate that at a certain level of inventiveness and skill dishes become more than just food; they become art. Similarly, chefs become more than cooks; they become artists.

This realization is hardly new or unique to me; I do realize that fact. I mention it because people sometimes ask me why I bother to spend all the money to eat in these places, why I'm interested in great chefs, and so on. It's not simply because I love to eat, though of course I do; it's to appreciate their art, an art I get to view, smell, taste, and feel as I literally consume it. Wonderful stuff.