cuisineart
...melon, cucumber
and aroma of mint
WHEN THE TERm “CAlIFORNIA CUISINE” WAS COINED
over thirty years ago, it promised to usher in a
brave new cooking era, one in which the
constricting shackles of conventional thinking
would be thrown off in favor of a style as wide
open and vast as the Western horizon. (Smoked
salmon pizza. grilled fish with fruit salsa! Beet and
goat cheese salad.) In hindsight, it seems the
party was premature: mashing together culinary
traditions that evolved elsewhere over generations
does not a new cuisine make.
When we describe the food at Coi as
“Californian,” it tends to raise eyebrows; our
cooking does not much resemble the kind of
food the moniker has come to represent. In our
kitchen we create dishes that are new but speak
clearly of our place. To us it means working with
local products, both wild and cultivated, and
understanding how those ingredients have
historically been used. It means referencing local
culinary tropes without being bound by them. It
means re-imagining what “California Cuisine”
