Dick,
If the idea of accessible to more people is your idea of the height of art, then the finest restaurant in the world must be Denny's.
I probably shouldn't knock Denny's. It's the only restaurant you can go to with a crowd of twenty people, ranging from strict vegans to rampant carnivores, epicureans to the proudly meat-and-potatoes types, and have everyone able to order something they'll be reasonably pleased with. Not thrilled with, but reasonably pleased. I generally have the sampler appetizer platter and a carafe of grapefruit juice cocktail.
However, if you want folk to be thrilled, you go to a place that's more angled "for folk who like that sort of thing." And sometimes you even go to a restaurant that's not a massive chain where you have an executive chef who invents dishes that are not only to his taste, but those of the local patrons. And we're not even getting into the further specialization of the home chef, who cooks for the taste of himself, his family and occasional guests.
I cook the way I write poetry. I have twenty-five gallons of mead in my garage, waiting to be bottled. If you go to Medieval Times or the Excalibur in Las Vegas, you can't even order it. (I have a friend who tried.) Instead, they give you a mai-tai in a mug shaped like a knight's helmet. This to accompany your "medieval" game hen and baked potato. (Though I'll admit that a game hen is just a miniature chicken, and flavor-wise, that's perfectly fine for medieval cooking. I have one I'll probably be cooking for dinner tonight, with rosemary, lemon and lavender. And you can't get swan for love or money, so even the Society for Creative Anachronism just roasts a turkey and looks the other way.)
I've got a collection of rare spices--things like grains of paradise and long pepper, not seen in European cooking since the middle ages--and I use them in cooking the same as I use obscure words, archaisms and poeticisms in my poetry. Folk who like that sort of thing may be charmed or enchanted by finding something so rare and exotic. My spoiled nephew may be somewhat less charmed by something odd and unfamiliar, but even he has been known to chow down on dishes that would not be out of place at a medieval banquet or a roman feast.
I can also cook a really good burger or write an amusing limerick, and sometimes I'll admit that's what I'm in the mood for myself and will go to restaurants or books that have that sort of thing. But I refuse to limit myself to these as an artist, or pretend that since they're to the taste of almost everybody, they're the paragon of the arts.
As for Billy Collins, I think they went out of their way to find a Poet Laureate who the current president could comprehend, or at least who fit with the folksy populist motif the current administration has been selling. As for being accorded status among his peers, by definition, peers tend to be more educated and sophisticated about their art than the general populace. As such, having Wolfgang Puck or Martha Stewart compliment you on your cooking means more than similar praise from George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld.
[This message has been edited by Kevin Andrew Murphy (edited March 08, 2005).]
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