El Paso is not at the culinary forefront most of the time, and I’m referring to food trends when I say this. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that while we have some phenomenal home grown signature dishes that I have no doubt we can capitalize on (green chile mashed potatoes, chorizo home fries, etc.), our most popular restaurants focus on bringing home food trends than on creating them.
Don’t get me wrong. This is a good thing. Not everybody can travel, for one reason or another, and even those who travel often have trouble eating out of their comfort zones. So it is important for our chefs and food gurus to bring the trends and the goodies to us. And even then, we are slow to be receptive. Yes, food tastes are subjective, but there are certain food tastes that build up. A person who doesn’t like fish, for example, might begin liking tilapia and slowly build up to cod, halibut, and sea bass. Salmon and tuna have also made the cut on most people’s lists. But a person who likes all of those from the start might want to try something more exciting, like Arctic Char. However, before such a fish can make it on our menus, most of us have to be comfortable with the idea of fish—otherwise, it’s not cost effective for the restaurant. All this to say, we are slowly but surely building up our palates, collectively speaking. And this, ain’t nothing but a good thing.
An effective way to build up the palate, in my opinion, is by bridging what we know and what we don’t know. So instead of asking for people to try a new ingredient as the focal point of a dish, we might give it a supporting role in hopes of doing the groundwork for innovation. Or, we might pair up two familiar ingredients and…innovate, albeit with a safety net of sorts. Case in point, Ripe’s Beet Benedicts. We know eggs Benedict and we know beets with goat cheese, for the most part, but do we know them together?
Yummy Beet Benedicts can be found at Ripe on the corner of Resler and Redd
My hunch is that when Ripe chefs created this dish, it sounded like an odd combination to some. But it’s a dish that appeals to beet lovers, vegetarians, and food adventurers alike. It innovates without any abrasive trailblazing. I have to give props to Ripe for that. While I am happy to see dishes that are the norm and have been for a few years in other cities on our menus, our own capacity to innovate makes me giddy. It makes me think that not only are our chefs are doing their part, but so are we at becoming more receptive to new ideas.
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