THE ALGORITHM AND THE ALCHEMY

Will the sweep of AI fan the culinary flame or douse the fire of creation?

- Suvir Saran

Once upon a stovetop, a chef learned to cook by kneeling at the altar of French technique. Sauces whispered secrets in mother tongues—béchamel, velouté, hollandaise—each a step in the sacred choreography of cuisine. To be a “real” chef meant to master the classics: the stiff whites of culinary school, the ballet of knife skills, the reverence for Escoffier. That was the gospel. That was the gold standard. That was cuisine.

And then there was everything else.

The food of the Global South—fiery, fermented, fragrant—was boxed up and labeled “ethnic.” A word that didn’t just define origin, but diminished it. These were not cuisines, they were curiosities. Not disciplines, but deviations. Dosa was never a doctrine. Mole was a mystery. Kimchi, curry, injera, pho—delicious, but never “refined.” These foods, these mother cuisines, motherships of flavor and tradition, were seen as spice-laden sideshows to the main act. Northern Europe had “gastronomy.” The rest had “ethnic food.”

That schism—soaked in colonial echoes—became culinary canon.

But the kitchen is a living thing. And now, the walls are cracking.