vserna

We don't have many 'dimmed light kind of places' in Spain - thank goodness! Not being able to see what's on your plate is a favorite sport, seemingly, in such places as New York. We are not so sophisticated here. To us, dining means enjoying every aspect of your food - including its looks. If you want dim lights to enhance the romantic atmosphere with the person you're with, you can always go to a club later. But dining is too serious an experience to cut away part of it.

An interesting alternative if you have wheels is just a few miles outside Seville in the new La Boticaria country hotel (on the Alcalá de Guadaira-Utrera road): the Molino Blanco restaurant is welcoming, luxuriously vast, and offers Mikel Uría's delicate Basque-Andalusian cuisine (with such things as a salad of onion-topped cuttlefish, monkfish medalions with black olives or a sweet rice soup with tangerine sorbet. Rather better than Seville's so-so overall culinary level.

What Nick Lander, the Financial Times' restaurant critic, wrote after a recent visit: http://www.jancisrobinson.com/categories/nick/nick050910

Barcelona, San Sebastián and Bilbao... Some people I know would say you haven't been to Spain at all, John...

Personally, I'm basically interested in the quality of food. If, on the other hand, the service was discourteous or the bathrooms unclean, we'd appreciate hearing about that. But all-encompassing disqualifications of a "sacred cow" (???), and then not giving any details because they "wouldn't be believed"... that smacks of character assassination.

Hardly an exclusive Barcelona trait. Indeed, it's an apt definition of Spain as a whole these days. Culinarily and otherwise.

Well, both Gerhard Schwaiger and Joachim Koerper garnered two Michelin stars, which isn't easy (only 10 two-star restaurants in Spain, a very small number considering that there are four three-star ones, but then Michelin is ridiculously stingy in this country), so both should be considered as top guns among the German expatriate group. Koerper is an alum of L'Ambroisie's Bernard Pacaud. He is a veteran who's been working since the 1970s (and since 1990 in Moraira, after he married his Spanish wife), and he has a wonderfully delicate touch, but lacks perhaps that stroke of genius, of originality, that distinguishes the truly great chefs. He tends to be rather traditional, but he has incorporated all the elements of the Mediterranean cuisines very smartly. Some of his 2005 dishes in Moraira (where I haven't been in several years) have been: crispy mille-feuille with tapenade and cream cheese; beef carpaccio with parmigiano (told you he was traditional!); anchovy mousse with tomato and capers; sardine velouté with almonds and cauliflower; crayfish carpaccio with a bell pepper chutney and a curry-lemongrass vinaigrette; sardine terrine in 'escabeche' with grilled vegetables, cream cheese and chorizo oil; asparagus velouté with mint and black pepper; filets of the catch-of-the-day fish with mange-tout peas and a wasabi risotto; partridge cutlets with green cabbage, juniper essence and rosemary mashed potatoes; strawberries with rhubarb and a champagne ice (he's a strawberry freak). His cheese trolley is always superb. As it happens, our Barcelona restaurant critic, Xavier Agulló, reviewed his new Gigantea restaurant yesterday in El Mundo, just a couple of weeks after Koerper moved there. He rates it 16/20. He says Koerper's cuisine is "somewhat baroque, taking us back to the fastuous 1970s", with "an academic creativity, nostalgic flavors and an immaculate technique". He mentions the prices are lower than at Girasol. Abelló writes that the foie gras terrine was fine but should have been a bit more delicate, and describes his sea bream roll with spinach as impeccable, his mango sorbet as a typical mid-meal Koerper taste-breaker, his rack of baby lamb with couscous and crunchy vegetables as glorious. He mentions the light home-made madeleines and the simple but just-ripe pineapple carpaccio. It's just a first glimpse, of course. Then again, there are few surprises in store with such a solid veteran as Koerper. The hotel, BTW, is indeed worth the visit - it was designed in 1922 by one of the best Modernista architects, Lluís Domènech i Montaner.

Yeah, right. Start with a thick béchamel and add some frozen surimi... Yecchhhh!

It won't be a mere "supervision". Koerper has moved to Mas Passamaner - lock, stock and barrel.

Not out yet. The local government department in charge ran out of money, or so it seems, and it was delayed. May be out for Christmas.

Andoni is a great, great talent indeed. But he is also going through a peculiar, introspective, quasi-vegetarian, herb-obsessed period in his career (reminds me a little of something similar with Alain Passard a few years back...) that translates into sometimes disconcerting results. Spain's leading restaurant guide may cut his rating in 2006, I hear. That said, I much admire Luiz for knowing so much about the Spanish restaurant scene that he can state from São Paulo that Aduriz is "the best chef in Spain"! Me, from Madrid, I can't say really which one is, because there's a couple I don't know yet and a few that I know too little. But, hey, it's good to hear a clear-cut opinion. From my modest viewpoint, the best chef in Spain is still a guy called Ferran Adrià - and I have my points of disagreement with what he does!

Steve: Re magazines, Sobremesa is IMHO the best food publication; I write for Sibaritas (which is more wine-oriented), so it wouldn't be appropriate for me to rate it! Re books, Marimar Torres' books on Spanish and Catalan recipes, written for the American public, are very useful. There are a zillion good cookbooks in Spanish; the paperback '1080 Recetas de Cocina' by Simone Ortega is the most popular cookbook ever in Spain. The various books by El Bulli's Ferran Adrià are iconic publications - much discussed already on eGullet.

Makes me think - there's always been a group of highly distinguished German chefs in Spain, much backed by Michelin, but they never seem to fully connect with the local clientele or even with a foreign one. I have just heard now of the demise of one of these acclaimed German-owned restaurants - Girasol in Moraira, north of Alicante, which sported two Michelin stars to the very end, closed on Sept. 19. It seems that its owner/chef, Joachim Koerper, will now move to the presumably more popular Gigantea restaurant at the Mas Passamaner Hotel in La Selva del Camp in southern Catalonia, west of Tarragona.

Well, if you don't mind eating a well-disciplined German chef's dishes, Gerhard Schwaiger's Tristán at Portals Nous is probably the best restaurant on the island. Also noteworthy are: the very smart modern-Majorcan cuisine of Bens d'Avall at Sóller the well-known restaurant run by the reliable Basque-born chef Koldo Royo in Palma the rather inexpensive, Majorcan-themed Es Baluard in Palma, with a very solid cuisine and a sentimental favorite of mine, Ca'na Cucó, in Calviá,an honest, down-home Majorcan kind of place in a country house

Remember that no top Madrid restaurant will serve you lunch before 2 PM, and that you must be at the airport by 3.45 PM for a 4.30 PM flight. Looks too tight to me. Támara-Restaurante Lorenzo is a 5-minute taxi drive to the airport, so that would be one (iffy) possibility.

Spain's leading restaurant guide will have just one addition to its list of top-rated (three stars) restaurants for 2006 - Ca' Sento. Great place. That said, I feel it's such a neck-and-neck competition with El Poblet for regional supremacy in the Valencia area that IMHO it's too close to call! They're different and they're both great. (And I think the El Poblet service is a bit more polished by now, Bux!) I don't know too many chefs with a greater culinary culture than young Quique Dacosta, and this wisdom percolates down into what he's concocting. The general oomph of culinary activity and creativity between Valencia and Alicante is one of the great stories in Spain these days... (I wish this would extend north to Castellón, where I usually go in the summer, but not too much seems to go on there - sort of a semi-desert, culinarily speaking, between the great hubs of Valencia to the south and Tarragona to the north!)

Not a good year for mushrooms in Spain. Worst drought in 60 years. Yes, there are porcini and the like, but look at the labels: they come Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Moldova...

It's interesting how this whole thread revolves around fusion with Asian elements only. In Spain we have perhaps the earliest pioneer of fusion cuisine in Europe, Abraham García of Viridiana (he's been doing it for more than 20 years, much earlier than the actual appearance of the word 'fusion' to define the movement). Perhaps because of his influence, Spanish fusion tends to be widely encompassing - its main elements being Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Moroccan, Turkish, Mexican and Peruvian, with a Scandinavian dollop here and there. It doesn't always work, but when it clicks it gives a glimpse of the future (as is the case with fusion everywhere, of course). It seems to me that, outside Spain, fusion cooking isn't making a great splash in continental Europe - but I may be wrong, of course. Last week in Paris, I enjoyed Chamarré's French/Mauritian fusion a lot!

I wholeheartedly agree. Heck, I remember playing soccer on Sundays at Gaelic Park in the Bronx, as a teenager, in the mid-1960s. The only hot meal available in the area were those tiny square White Castle burgers. Boy, that was baaaaad........ (I understand they enjoy some sort of cult following in certain circles? Well, that's proof that the human being can be made to love just about any food.)

BTW, this leads me to extol the virtues of a British restaurant chain, Pizza Express (as it's known in the isles)/Pizza Marzano (as it's known in its continental expansion). It's not just the 30-eurocent donation to the Nelson Mandela Foundation with every meal, it's not just the usually pretty good live jazz, it's these guys' obsession with ingredients: mozzarella di bufala, parmigiano reggiano, ripe marzano tomatoes for the sauce... Even the beer is always Peroni. So in Madrid and Toulouse now, the kids insist on having their pizzas in a British chain restaurant, of all places! And it seems to be profitable. So there is a discriminating public out there that will appreciate such efforts from a multinational.

Planning too little can be just as bad - or worse!

Please forgive my shaky command of English. But I wouldn't call what you describe, with such fear-inducing detail, "dining". The masses that populate those chain restaurants and supermarkets surely don't "dine"? They are fed, and that's it. I have always believed that the English term "dining" entailed a minimum of civilization and was not a mere synonym for "having dinner". But I may be wrong.

OK, I'll clarify all this 'here' and 'there'. 'Here' is western Europe, and more specifically Spain, where culinary innovation currently resides thanks chiefly to my pixieish, unpredictable friend Ferran Adrià. 'There' is the United States, where the restaurant industry is more important, more professional and more developed than anywhere else in the world. Not to make this long and boring, a few points on what I think is an important aspect of the future of dining - the differences of concept between Europe and the US: - Every French, Spanish, British and Italian restaurateur now looks to the US as an example of what to do, as the pioneers in the newer concepts of restaurant dining. The stuffy 'luxury' European restaurant is a dying breed because, first, it's too damn expensive and far-removed from 21st century lifestyles, and second, because the less formal, more fun but equally professional, modern American restaurants have become everyone's model. So whatever the future holds in store, one thing is pretty sure - we'll see it in the US first. The admiration for the rhythm, the atmosphere, the excitement, the pizzazz of the better, modern restaurants in the US is widespread throughout the world, IMHO. - As to what we'll be eating in these Americanized restaurants worldwide, it's such a fast-evolving scene that predictions are quite difficult. Ever more high-tech-aided 'molecular gastronomy'? I don't know. Even in Spain, the supposed beacon of technological light, I see that my colleague the journalist Rafael García Santos, the greatest mover and shaker of the El Bulli revolution in the media (and through his yearly symposium, Lo Mejor de la Gastronomía), is starting to despair about so many young cooks producing culinary caricatures with lots of sous-vide and liquid nitrogen. - This was to be expected. Ridiculous excess killed Nouvelle Cuisine (or, at least, Nouvelle Cuisine's glamorous image) 25 years ago. The same may happen in Spain and perhaps elsewhere in the near future. Me, I believe in blatant eclecticism to keep the fun going and, at the same time, to keep in touch with our roots. So a restaurant (thinking here of places like Celler de Can Roca in Spain or like Blue Hill in New York, where Bux and Mrs. B took me a few months ago...) where they would offer, on the same menu, wisely balanced dollops of sheer, brilliant (scarce!) raw materials, of high tech (for me, a little bit of liquid nitrogen perhaps, and a lot more of sous-vide, which is a great technique), of cheeky but well-judged fusion that works, and of a little raw, unadorned tradition that can't be improved on... That would be my idea of a nice food experience in the 21st century. With wines chosen with the same eclecticism, that would enhance the one defining, decisive aspect of the whole experience: Pleasure! - Lately, in Madrid, I've noticed how two chefs who come from totally opposite ends of the spectrum, Abraham García of Viridiana (traditional low-tech training, little interest in foams and syringes, but an open mind to fusion for more than 20 years) and Sergi Arola of La Broche (Adrià's No. 2 man for years, and a child of high tech) are actually coinciding in their interest in fun and 'real' food, which translates into their refined versions of 'street food' from Spain, Turkey, Morocco or Mexico... - Then again, unpredictable things happen in dining: something is deemed unsafe, or politically incorrect, and we change our eating habits. The other night at Viridiana, with the charming proprietors of Frascati, the fine San Francisco bistrot, we enjoyed Abraham's terrific signature dish, duck foie gras (house-smoked on maple cuttings, served on rich brioche with a few drops of sweet Pedro Ximénez sherry and a rose-petal chutney) as if it were the last platter of foie gras in our lives! This was because, as they reminded me, next year there will be no more foie gras in California... Victor de la Serna El Mundo, Madrid

I would suggest asking this question in the Mexico subforum, not here.

One simply has to go to Etxebarri near Bilbao for the greatest cuisine based on the simple wood-fired grill to be found in Spain, and possibly anywhere. Of the 'non-anointed', up-and-coming stars, the other musts are certainly Fagollaga in Hernani and the brand-new Iñigo Lavado restaurant in Irún, both near San Sebastián. Of the 'anointed' ones, I'd say Zuberoa is currently the most disappointing. Had only time for one evening of tapas at San Sebastián last month while touring the French Basque country. We hit Ganbara first - and we never left. Amazing quality.