Imitation, it has been said, is the most sincere form of flattery.
Phooey, argue city chefs.
They think there's nothing complimentary about cooks who duplicate their dishes. No wonder. There's nothing they can do about it — except, of course, get mad.
Ask Scott Conant, chef-owner at the award-winning Italian restaurant L'Impero. When the establishment opened 10 months ago, customers couldn't get enough of the zeppole filled with risotto "sweetened and perfumed" by vanilla beans and orange zest.
Most customers, anyway. One young woman who dined there loudly dissed the unusual dessert. "I was mortified," Conant says. "It made me very unhappy."
Three weeks later, a new coat-checker arrived for her first day of work and sampled the zeppole. "She said, 'I had the same thing yesterday,'" Conant recalls. "But you just started working here today," he said. "She said, 'My roommate is a pastry chef. She's doing these at her restaurant.' "
Holy cannoli! Turns out the woman who had ridiculed the confection re-created a near-clone. "It didn't bother me that she stole it," says Conant, who won't name names. "I doubt it would impact my bottom line at all. She was just so catty about it. That's what was so offensive."
The zeppole is off L'Impero's menu. Demand was too high, says Conant, who claims not to know if the restaurant that served the copy still does — or if it's even still open. (They do. It is.) With a laugh, he reveals his feelings for the pastry pilferer: "She can get hit by a truck for all I care."
Harsh words, even when uttered in jest. But the restaurant business is dog-eat-dog. When someone dreams up something original or even a tad innovative — yes, fresh ideas are still out there, insiders insist — poachers are quick to sniff them out. Some of them tweak the original. Some, however, go the Xerox route.
"I can honestly say I've never stolen a complete dish," says OLA chef-owner Douglas Rodriguez, "but I'm not going to say I've never borrowed from or been inspired by another chef.
"There's no code of ethics or honor" among chefs, he continues. "It's the dirtiest, most back-stabbing business. You get stabbed by ex-employees. People steal people. People steal ideas. People steal dishes. That's the way it is."
Yvan Lemoine, pastry chef at Fleur de Sel, got "ticked off" when elderflower syrup — which he added to "freshen up" a strawberry parfait — cross-pollinated its way into competitors' desserts. So much so that he weeded the dish from his menu.
Was this a case of coincidence? Great minds thinking alike? Larceny? Each explanation is possible. "Word spreads," says Lemoine, who acknowledges that chefs and other restaurant workers dine out like everyone else. "The other people [using elderflower] are my peers. I respect them. But it's a very touchy subject. To see something of yours somewhere else really messes with you."
Even renowned chef Daniel Boulud isn't immune to feeling messed with. "No chef likes identical copying," he says. "It's inevitable, I know, but I'm never happy about it."
Case in point: the DB Burger, which he famously stuffed with foie gras and braised short ribs. "A cook who worked for me went to a restaurant in Florida and made an exact copy," says Boulud. "I don't want to name names, but I thought, 'This is too much.' "
Unfortunately, serving a subpoena or ladling up a lawsuit won't help, because chefs can't copyright a dish. "There's no such thing as a copyright for physical, three-dimensional combinations of food," says copyright attorney Quinn Heraty. Trademarks, meanwhile, cover logos and names, not recipes.
Protecting a dish by obtaining trade-secret status — Coca-Cola's recipe is sheltered this way — can be overly time-consuming and expensive. To patent a dish, you must reveal what goes into it and how to make it. So why bother?
Why, indeed? "The whole philosophy of cooking is sharing," says Jacques Qualin, 37, ex-executive chef of Le Perigord. His new restaurant, The French Corner, opens next month in Stone Ridge, N.Y. "I don't think of recipes to my dishes as something secret to hide. I went through that, and I'm over that. I always give my recipes."
Like other seasoned pros, Wylie Dufresne, chef-owner of WD-50, isn't afraid to let less-experienced cooks apprentice in his kitchen. "The whole process of learning this skill is about copying before you can create," says Dufresne, who trained with Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
But he won't make things too easy on potential pilferers. Apprentice cooks must commit to spending a week in the WD-50 kitchen. "I'm very suspect of guys who come for one day with a notebook, take notes, and [you] never see them again," he says. "I saw people like that when I worked for Jean-Georges. You know that they're there to steal. No one appreciates being flat-out ripped off."
Snackbar chef Nicholas Tischler won't argue that point. In fact, he'd copyright his signature canape made with white chocolate, Parmesan cheese, apricot and rosemary, if he could. Still, he says, "Chefs aren't selling widgets or staples or refrigerators. How can two dishes ever be exactly the same? It's impossible to literally copy another chef's recipe. Any chef who makes a dish is going to cook it differently."
Which is precisely why megachef Boulud, in the end, wasn't that concerned by the brazen burger burglar. "I don't care," he says. "No one makes it better than me."
Repeat performances
The following five dishes and concepts have been much-mimicked.
# Miso-glazed black cod. Before Nobu Matsuhisa made this a signature dish at his self-named Tribeca restaurant, few chefs paid black cod much mind. Once it became a must-have at Nobu, knockoffs abounded.
# High-rise food. The sky has always been the limit for any chef, but Gotham's Alfred Portale gets credit for making stacked dishes — like his seafood salad or poached chicken and grain salad. "It's nice to have an influence," he says. "But I dislike it when somebody has a dish that's silly and credits it to me."
# Potato-wrapped sea bass. Daniel Boulud was cooking at Le Cirque when he created this dish — tater-draped fish served with leeks and red wine sauce — in 1987. Soon around town, it was monkey sea bass, monkey do.
# Tableside guacamole. "Rosa Mexicano is the originator on making guac at the table in New York," says Douglas Rodriguez, who acknowledged the Aztecs did this centuries ago. "Everyone from L.A. to Minnesota to Washington, D.C., has copied the idea. It's an awesome one."
# Turbot with comte crust. Most would consider coupling fish with this smoky, nutty cheese, well, nutty. But Jacques Qualin made headlines — and spawned fish-and-cheese replicates — when he put it on Le Perigord's menu. He "borrowed" the recipe from his mother, who used Northern pike in her version.