Brandon Lord had grown up with meat and potatoes, fresh milk from the cows in the barn, a chicken from the coop, and snap peas and green beans from the garden. His mother, busy with a hundred other farm chores and caring for his twin baby sisters and a younger brother, had plenty to do other than think creatively in the kitchen. Her cooking was good, simple, staple, and filling, and no one ever complained.

Everyone was hungry at five o'clock - Brandon's father worked the fields from sunup to sundown, Brandon walked the three miles to school and back, and the babies caterwauled until fed. The only variety in Ma's cooking was which meat she would prepare, and that depended on whether a hog had been slaughtered or a chicken pulled from the roost. Beef remained on the hoof - the cows provided ample milk for a growing family and earned a tidy income by selling it to the local dairy- they had no goats ('rancid, nasty-smelling things'), and deep in the heartland, far from river and stream, fish was a rarity.
Ma was whiz in the kitchen, efficient, quick, and careful. As a young boy Brandon marveled at the way she chopped and diced carrots, trimmed meat with a surgeon's precision and dancer's grace, watched and stirred three pots on the stove, and cooked everything to taste. Those were the days before medium rare, but even if that cuisson were known, Ma would still have cooked the roast well done - a lot of give that way, and served with a thick, rich, rendered gravy and mashed potatoes, anything medium rare would have been lost.
Brandon liked to help out in the kitchen and especially liked cutting the meat into cutlets, steaks, or rolled roasts, stuffing the chicken, or whipping the pureed turnips. He had a good sense for complementarity, and the family appreciated the little herbal flourish he gave to the meals - never too much, of course - this was still meat-and-potatoes land after all - but a hint of the marjoram that he had planted in far corner of the garden added a bit of interest.

One thing led to another - an Iowa state scholarship to Harvard, mathematics, a PhD in number theory from MIT, and an assistant professorship at Berkeley.
In all this, he had never lost his interest in food, cooking, cuisine, but was uninspired by the food around Harvard Square, student food, pizza, and bangers and mash at the Irish pubs up and down Cambridge Street; so when he moved to the Bay Area flush with the nouvelle California cuisine of Alice Waters - local ingredients cooked simply but with arrangement and interest - he was delighted. Waters had taken farm food and made something of it. Never in million years would he ever have thought of garnishing meat with quince or a raspberry coulis, and he had never tasted duck, rabbit, pheasant, or squab; but now that his palate had been tempted and opened, he never looked back.
Like everything American, the new cuisine could simply not be left alone, and over the years architectural towers, fanciful Art Deco arrangements of edible flowers and pine, and decorative presentations of sea urchin and foie gras took over. The meals, while pure Kyoto in their minimalism, were perplexing. Where, in that fragile, high, complex tower of thin radish stems, pea shoots, hibiscus, and cockles should one start? And if one was still hungry after three courses of the same, was it uncouth to ask for bread?

Slowly but surely prices rose, edible content diminished, and the service became precious, gay, and impossible. When he saw Bruce smile and approach the table, Brandon looked away; but the waiter had been trained to be attentive, never obsequious, and always knowledgeable.
'Hi, my name is Bruce, and I'll be your server tonight', the young man began. 'Do we have any allergies?', and with that Brandon adjusted his napkin ring, took a sip of sparkling water, and wondered why he had come.
Unlike French waiters for whom waiting is a profession, as noble and respected as any other and who take food seriously, Bruce was stumped after the first rambling overture. Bruce knew no more about food preparation than the man in the moon.
'Tonight's specials', he said, 'are crispy skinned Branzino in a light ginger-miso confection, garnished with periwinkles and local sea grasses, and finished with a spray of Meyer lemon infusion. Second, we have....', and Bruce went on and on. 'Print the fucking thing', Brandon said to himself, tuning out the whiny, importuning voice of the waiter and waiting to order from the menu.
Impatient and hungry, pissed that he had agreed to even come to the restaurant, and finding nothing but indecipherably recondite offerings, he asked Bruce if he could order a steak. Bruce sighed, flicked a piece of lint off of his dark blue, freshly-ironed linen shirt, and smiled. For a moment he was nonplussed - nothing in his practiced patter was even close to a response to this patent absurdity, and nothing in his fey, self-assured, twitty little manner prepared him in the slightest prepared for such an improbability.
Brandon's frustration had been brewing for some time, and because he had seen potential in Alice Waters' vision of local, unusual, fresh ingredients presented in a simple but attractive way, he persisted, only to find one restaurant more absurdly pretentious than the next. Of course San Francisco had its share of steak houses and oyster bars - the Ferry Building's Hog Island bar serves a variety of Pacific Coast oysters and excellent grilled fish and chowders - but it seemed like everything from Sonoma to Carmel was nothing but an assortment of flighty, frivolous, offerings.
Foraging was perhaps the longest and strangest reach for innovation. Rene Redzepi, a Danish chef known for his innovative creations harvested from local waters, marshes, and estuaries, is perhaps the most well-known exponent of the trend. Photographed in his sunhat, wading boots, long gloves and foraging tools, poking among the tidal pools of the North Sea parting the high grasses of nearby wetlands, he looks part safari bwana, part birdwatcher, and part weekend walker; but he is deadly serious, and picks with care among the tiny crustaceans, sea weed, and marsh grasses to come up with dinner at his restaurant, Noma.

The waitlist is months long, and the diner gets very much what he expected - a marvelously-presented pastiche of greys, greens, and browns, a scent of the sea, and curiously edible stalks, strips, and shelly things. The anticipation is so great and the event so long in coming, that satisfaction is guaranteed, so great is the willing suspension of disbelief.
No one in his right mind would find this potpourri of barely edible weeds, straw, and snails appealing, but the reputation of the chef is enough to dispel any doubts. The meal ipso facto has to be good.
Brandon of course was not the only one at the end of his rope when it came to eating out. The satiric television series Portlandia had a go at faux haute cuisine, and in one sketch gave two patrons a biographical sketch of the chicken they were about to eat - 'cared for in best of conditions, even loved, Isabella was an example of the respectful, almost spiritual nature of our mission...' and so on and so forth.
A restaurant near Washington, DC, The Restaurant at Patowmak Farm, touts its home-grown produce, meats, and fish; and invites patrons to have a walk around the property, the free-range chickens, the pastured cows and goats, the herb gardens, and the trout stream. 'All husbanded, grown, cultivated, and harvested with love and respect'.
Classic art of the Renaissance gave way to the Baroque and then the Rococo - a period of flounce, flourish, and artistic exaggeration, horror vacui, leave no space unfilled - and it seems that every cultural movement must go through these phases before it dies out; and so it will be with American 'haute cuisine'. With Redzepi, Portlandia, and The Restaurant at Patowmak Farm, American cuisine is in its final Rococo phase, and R.I.P.

Ma's pot roasts and mashed potatoes might not become the fare of Bay Area restaurants, but at least there will be some comfort food on the menu, some refuge from the exorbitance and absurdity of food fancy. The best restaurants will get rid of the architecture and the painterly presentations and stick to simplicity - local ingredients to be sure when possible, but the international marketplace is abundant with fish, meat, vegetables and fruit. The ethos will be once again, good, fresh, properly prepared food at a reasonable price. Not exactly Iowa farm fare, but a good approximation
It's only a matter of time.