Food... family-style

How often do foodies need to be reminded that uber-nitpicky meals may not be the best way to go? What do those who might be considered some of the world's best chefs have to say?

Here, for example, is Thomas (not Timothy) Keller:

Mr. Keller, who throws dinner parties at home about six times a year, likes to pick "comforting, recognizable" dishes. "Cutting-edge or avant-garde should be saved for a restaurant experience," he says.

Mr. Keller stresses that he doesn't "plate," or formally arrange, foods for serving at home. (Source: WSJ)

Then there's Jean Georges:

"At the restaurant, everything is plated," he said. "At home I try to put everything in the middle of the table and have everybody dig in."

Still, depending on whether you take Mark Bittman's approach or Ferran Adria's home cooking may not be all that simple. In Mark Bittman's words:

My position was that you can’t call a dish “simple” if it requires things like premade stocks, sauces and condiments. His (as best as I could interpret it; we were arguing in French) was that anyone who really wants to cook has to have these things around anyway.

I sorta wonder how willing either of them might be to use store-bought versions of some of the above? My guess is probably not. Still... I've never made homemade (e.g.) mayo and don't really see myself doing so anytime in the near future either.