We can trace the emergence of what has been called The New American Cuisine to the coming of age of American wines. Throughout the world, almost every esteemed cuisine is enhanced with its own wines. Just as America has developed its own distinctive style of music, dance, art, architecture and lifestyle, so too the country is rapidly developing its unique cuisine and distinguished wineries. In this context, the elegant French-derived word "cuisine" refers to the sum total of nutritional resources, the technology of their preparation, and the taste preference of a particular region.

It was Joe Baum who was the first to define the American restaurant when he created The Four Seasons in 1959. He insisted the menu be written in English so everyone could understand it. He worked with James Beard and Julia Child to develop the recipes. He was the first to bring fine art into a restaurant and engage architects and designers to bring an ambiance of theater into the dining experience.

He introduced diners to a dazzling array of new tastes. It included twenty-two types of olives, thrushes, ortolans, turbots, morels, ecrevisses and fraises des bois from France. There was smoked salmon from Scotland, Dover sole and Colchester oysters from England, venison from Norway, fresh grapes and peaches from Belgium, rabbits, salmon trout and Malpeque oysters from Canada, truffles from Italy and France and Mediterranean fish from Marseille.

It cost $7,000 in overtime just to change the decor from fall to winter during a single Sunday. Matches, ashtrays, wait-staff cummerbunds, seat covers -- even the color of the ink used to write the menus reflected the colors of the season, and flowers would be forced to bloom to conform with the rigid timing of the vernal equinox. Many of the elements he introduced to the American diner are echoed in today's contemporary restaurants, though the great leap forward did not reverberate again until fifteen years ago when The First Symposium on New American Cuisine was convened in Louisville by Phillip Cooke and Daniel Maye. Its goal was to define the phenomenon.

At the time, Lydia Shire declared that the effort to fix the concept and draw boundaries around it was as difficult as trying to pet a porcupine. She was right then and right now.