Sometimes, less is more. Keeping it simple can often still be conducive to creating great food.

I grew up watching a lot of cooking competition shows like Hell's Kitchen, Chopped, Masterchef, and others across Food Network and FOX. One consistent thing that a lot of professional chefs on these shows mention is this idea of "elevating" a classic dish—taking something simple like a burger, chicken wings, mac and cheese, fish and chips, etc., to a refined fine dining level.

My thoughts on this remain the same: why?

Sure, you can serve some lobster mac and cheese and charge people a lot for it. You can be like Gordon Ramsay and serve a burger that has a blend of chuck, short rib, and other parts of the cow in it and charge a lot for it. Doing this, though, takes away the essence and the comfort of the dish, in my opinion. The beauty of comfort food is the simplicity of it.

Some of the best burgers I've ever tasted have come from hole in the wall spots, local dive bars, the kinds of places that aren't gonna receive critical acclaim on a national scale, certainly no Michelin stars, but they commit to doing a simple thing very well. You don't need a special beef blend or some expensive Wagyu to make a great burger. You don't need to french your chicken wings and use some expensive ingredients to make a sauce for them. The same principle applies to barbecue and other comfort classics.

I guess my overarching point is that fine dining certainly has its place in the culinary world. Fine dining restaurants are great for offering unique experiences and menu items that you more than likely aren't going to enjoy every day, but they should stick to fine dining food. Leave the comfort food and the bar food to local neighborhood spots. If I'm going to a fine dining restaurant, I don't want their "gourmet burger" or "gourmet chicken wings." Sometimes, professional chefs can think too much about elevating a classic or a comfort dish and end up trying to unnecessarily reinvent the wheel.