Melbourne chef Robin Wickens has made the papers for all the wrong reasons. He has copied signature dishes from a handful of American chefs and put them on his menu. eGullet got hold of it and their discussion board has been running red hot, mostly with righteous indignation mixed with a few legal opinions.

Just how bad is what he did?

If we were talking art or literature it would be very bad indeed, so bad he would find himself facing the law. But we are talking cooking here and chefs have been borrowing from each other to a lesser or greater extent since Apicius was a boy. Indeed, it is a convention amongst chefs, and not one could honestly tell you he or she has never cooked another's recipes. Rick Stein summed it up pretty well when he was talking about how chefs 'acquire' recipes and pretty much said "....we rip them off really." He actually went to the trouble to put on one of his shows the creator of saffron potatoes, a dish that Rick had put on at his restaurant and this guy was banging on about provenance, not getting the fact that this was his chance to set history straight.

Signature dishes are being knocked off all the time. I can remember eating at Jacques Reymond's restaurant here in Australia twenty odd years ago, and ordering pig's trotters stuffed with morels and sweetbreads, which was the signature dish of Pierre Koffman at La Tant Claire. Was I troubled by this? Not at all, I wanted to try the dish, but I didn't want to fly to London to have to do it. Another person not troubled by this is Marco Pierre White. In his cookbook White Heat, he gives a recipe for this same dish, naming it Pig's Trotters Pierre Koffman, but if you didn't know who Pierre Koffman was, you would naturally believe it was Marco's dish. Very clever.

Steven Shaw, aka the fat guy, at eGullet tries to make the point about attributing, giving the example of the molten chocolate pudding as a dish that has passed into common knowledge therefore not requiring attribution, but the signature dishes, featured by Robin Wickens, because they are cutting edge, need to be attributed. The problem with this is, who decides what and when to attribute? When is the exact point something becomes common knowledge? Does the maker of the shrimp noodles give a nod to the ancient Chinese noodle makers upon whose idea he built? Where does it all end?

I think a few people should get a grip. Chefs borrowing, stealing or ripping off is a convention and a very long standing one, there is no need to become precious about it. It is the means by which cookery moves forward. Personally I like the idea that I can have a taste of a signature dish here in my home town. By all accounts Robin Wickens didn't claim the recipes as his own, he just cooked and served them.

It's time a few people got off his back.