Patrons Pay Big Bucks for the Taste of...Ash - Food News - Cooking

Patrons Pay Big Bucks for the Taste of…Ash

No Comments | Written on August 3, 2012 at 1:00 pm, by Lesley Kennedy

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We’ve heard of coating your food in Corn Flakes. Or panko crumbs. Or bacon. (Mmmm….bacon…). But ash?

We normally try to avoid charring our dinner.

It may sound bizarre, but the powdery residue more commonly associated with, say, volcanoes is being used as a way to add new flavors to fancy dishes. And people are willing to — uh — burn through their money to try it, the Wall Street Journal reports.

At L’Espalier in Boston, folks fork over $200 for an edible-ash tasting menu, which can include anything from oysters to venison to veal ternderloin covered in ash. Chef Frank McClelland burns veggies in a trough at his organic farm for a food addition that “awakens that primal, caveman part of your brain,” he tells the Journal.

Apparently cavemen like ash.

Fancy schmancy restaurant Aquavit in New York uses ash from hay to flavor dishes; Blackbird restaurant in Chicago sells a “toasted hay ice cream” served with hay ash; and at San Francisco’s Aziza, you’ll find ash-flavored yogurt, according to the Journal.

“It’s about trying to do something that no one has done before,” Bret Thorn with Nation’s Restaurant News tells the newspaper. “Americans are finding out that food is supposed to taste like something.”

“Taste” is great. But paying big bucks for that burnt hot-dog flavor? Really? We’re gonna go ahead and pass on the ash.