Baby Fruit

The upper end of the restaurant market is flooded by baby fruit and vegetables. Baby coconuts, Baby pineapples Baby courgettes, Baby every-single-fruit and vegetable-you-can-imagine. In today’s market only the products that catch the attention of consumers have a chance of becoming economically succesful. Playing with size is one of the tricks of the trade. But there is also something a little more profound about changing the size of things. Martijn Jansen, chef of The Disproportionate Restaurant explains: ‘Every time one of these very small ingredients passes through my hands I get a strong sense of its value, much more then if I would be preparing regular size food.’

And this is not just because mini-vegetables are relatively expensive, or because they are small and ‘cute’. To understand our future relationship with ingredients more clearly The Incredible Shrinking Man will hosts an ostrich dinner party, where we’ll prepare and roast an ostrich in much the same way as we do with a chicken today. Interestingly enough, the sense of value that occurs while handling small ingredients, again occurs during the handling of something very large. Size opens our eyes. The Incredible Shrinking Man is not just a rational solution to future challenges involving man’s existence on earth, it’s also about re-evaluating our present-day relationship with all (living) things on the planet.