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Fast food hijacked for fancy haute cuisine makeovers
By Michael Hill |
September 6, 2009, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AT FancyFastFood.com, dashboard dining gets a serious -- and seriously upscale -- makeover. Big Macs are transformed into elegant strips of "McSteak." Cream-filled Dunkin' Donuts are scooped out to make "Boston Kreme Brulee." And Nathan's hot dogs are mashed into faux foie gras.
The Website is the brainchild of Erik Trinidad, a Brooklyn resident who buys fast-food dinners, deconstructs them in his kitchen and then reassembles them into meals resembling haute cuisine.
The site, which features toungue-in-cheek recipes and luscious photos, has received plenty of media attention in the three months since its debut. And while it may not represent a full-blown culinary trend, it illustrates the appeal of playing with food.
"Every day I'm thinking about how absurd it is," Trinidad said. He posts new creations about once a week, covering the major fast-food groups of burger, pizza, chicken, taco, hot dog and doughnut.
The restaurants rotate, but the process is the same. He brings a meal home, pulls it apart, then puts it back together (a food processor is often involved) to make it look like a gourmet dish.
He has converted fried chicken from Popeye's into "Spicy Chicken Sushi," Taco Bell burritos into a tortellini dubbed "Tacobellini" and Domino's veggie pizza into "Dao Mi Noh Chow Mein" (reducing the Diet Coke to syrup in a wok for the "hoisin sauce").
As for the taste? "They all pretty much taste the same," Trinidad said. He is a freelance interactive designer and writer with no formal culinary training.
It all started when he ordered a Big Mac Extra Value Meal and decided to trick out his dinner. He sliced the patties into spears, pureed the French fries with bits of bun for the potatoes and poured the Coke into a wine glass. He garnished it with the pickle slice and sesame seeds plucked from the bun. Voila: McSteak & Potatoes.
Subsequent Fancy Fast Food dishes have become more ambitious.
He has de-cobbed kernels with a corn stripper, used his bamboo sushi roller on a chicken wrap and caramelized doughnut custard with a kitchen torch.
However, there's nothing new about mutant culinary creations. Contestants on the Bravo TV series "Top Chef," for instance, are sometimes given rolls of quarters for vending machines and told to create bite-sized hors d'oeuvres.
The Website is the brainchild of Erik Trinidad, a Brooklyn resident who buys fast-food dinners, deconstructs them in his kitchen and then reassembles them into meals resembling haute cuisine.
The site, which features toungue-in-cheek recipes and luscious photos, has received plenty of media attention in the three months since its debut. And while it may not represent a full-blown culinary trend, it illustrates the appeal of playing with food.
"Every day I'm thinking about how absurd it is," Trinidad said. He posts new creations about once a week, covering the major fast-food groups of burger, pizza, chicken, taco, hot dog and doughnut.
The restaurants rotate, but the process is the same. He brings a meal home, pulls it apart, then puts it back together (a food processor is often involved) to make it look like a gourmet dish.
He has converted fried chicken from Popeye's into "Spicy Chicken Sushi," Taco Bell burritos into a tortellini dubbed "Tacobellini" and Domino's veggie pizza into "Dao Mi Noh Chow Mein" (reducing the Diet Coke to syrup in a wok for the "hoisin sauce").
As for the taste? "They all pretty much taste the same," Trinidad said. He is a freelance interactive designer and writer with no formal culinary training.
It all started when he ordered a Big Mac Extra Value Meal and decided to trick out his dinner. He sliced the patties into spears, pureed the French fries with bits of bun for the potatoes and poured the Coke into a wine glass. He garnished it with the pickle slice and sesame seeds plucked from the bun. Voila: McSteak & Potatoes.
Subsequent Fancy Fast Food dishes have become more ambitious.
He has de-cobbed kernels with a corn stripper, used his bamboo sushi roller on a chicken wrap and caramelized doughnut custard with a kitchen torch.
However, there's nothing new about mutant culinary creations. Contestants on the Bravo TV series "Top Chef," for instance, are sometimes given rolls of quarters for vending machines and told to create bite-sized hors d'oeuvres.
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