vserna
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But Rafa has achieved quasi-legendary status just in one place in the world - eGullet...
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Anya doesn't seem to be as familiar with Madrid as with other places in Spain. (Plus, one fact about Spain's immigration situation - over the past decade, Spain has been leading the whole European Union in immigrant inflow. There are now more than 4 million foreigners living in Spain, and the one region in Spain with the largest immigrant population is Madrid. This is not politics, Pedro: I'm trying to set the scene for an entirely new situation in which not only the increasingly cosmopolitan tastes of the Spanish population play a role, but the critical mass of the non-Spanish component of the population is enough to explain an explosion in mom-and-pop ethnic restaurants, sometimes as good as the inimitable Don Lay of Madrid, a dim sum heaven.)
Foreign restaurants are Madrid's hidden gem - one category in which this city can confidently consider itself the leader in Spain. And there have been excellent ethnic places for a long, long time, even though the explosion is more recent.
Two years ago we had a discussion here about Ken Hom's enthusiastic Financial Times report on the Asian cuisine scene in Madrid, in which he wrote:
"Asian ingredients such as five spice, star anise, ginger and sesame oil appeared throughout the menus of some of the top restaurants in the city.
What I found surprising, however, was the explosion in numbers of oriental restaurants in Madrid. In the past, it was probably the last city in Europe I would think to go to for Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese or Malaysian.
But times have changed - with delectable results!"
The discussion is here:
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...aded&show=&st=&
In two years much has happened in Madrid and there are many places that are possibly superior to Ken's then-favorites, including Sudestada, Oam Thong, Yuan, 19 Sushi Bar, Miyama, Shiratori, Asia Gallery... and Don Lay, of course.
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As is quite apparent in a different thread, we should add Kabuki for those who don't think necessarily of 'Spanish-style fish'. By now, we all know that Kabuki is neither really Spanish nor really Japanese, but... outstanding in its own personal way in fusing the traditions of two of the most rabid seafood-loving nations on Earth.
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Well, Madrid is one of Europe's best and most unknown destinations for exotic food. Sometimes as exotic as Olsen's (cutting-edge Scandinavian cuisine... via Buenos Aires!) or Sudestada's (southeast Asian cuisines... via Buenos Aires again!) Sometimes as unexpected as genuine Cajun/Creole at Gumbo, modern Peruvian at La Gorda, down-home Mexican at Taquería del Alamillo or serious Armenian at Sayat Nova. And indeed Kabuki is one of the very best restaurants in Madrid - exotic or not.
Some more news - and, remember, you read it here first, as you read about Zaranda - even though it's not so exotic: the cook at Adoc is Belgian, and his long Spanish experience (he was the no. 2 chef at La Broche) shows in an interesting albeit short seasonal menu. Adoc's is one of the most interesting openings in Madrid in recent months, with Sudestada and Zaranda.
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It was my impression that the Spanish govt really gets behind this event.
Wrong impression, AFAIK. This is financed through commercial sponsoring and registration fees. The ol' capitalist way. I do think ICEX, the government department devoted to promoting Spanish food and wine exports, covered part of the traveling expenses for a bunch of foreign wine writers and organized the series of tastings of Spanish wines held especially for them - but this was not properly a Madrid Fusión event.
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I think he was giving 'wild' a wide meaning. These are free-range chickens - but you don't have to hunt them down. We don't have any wild chickens in Spain AFAIK, and no need of a hunting license to catch them...
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Does it make any sense ?
Mmmmmm... No, I think.
PS Welcome to eGullet, Mr. Infantado! Good to see you here.
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Practically all canning operations are seasonal or intermittent ones, Bux. Canneries go from periods of total silence to periods of incredible hustle and bustle, working around the clock. The Mouettes d'Arvor cannery has two distinct brands of (vintage-dated) sardines: 1ères Sardines de Saison (early season: May) and Sardines "Ville Bleue" (summer sardines).
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The best sardine season in the north Atlantic is June-September. The Mouettes d'Arvor cannery has two types of sardines in tins - the 'early ones', canned in late spring, and the regular summer sardines.
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One has to wonder about the extent of Juan Vasquez Liston's dining experience.
This gentleman is described as "a restaurant critic". I'm myself a somewhat well-known restaurant critic in Spain, and probably the one with the longest continuous tenure - and I had never heard about Mr. Vasquez Liston......
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As you can see in the top French commercial web site that I already mentioned (http://www.pennsardin.com/commande/commande.php), in France they vintage-date sardines, 'anchois' (anchovies) and 'lisettes' (Atlantic mackerels). They have the oldest canneries in the world in Brittany (going back to the 1830s), and quite a lot of... well, 'savoir faire' in gourmet canning. If they vintage-date those varieties, it has to be because they can all improve with age. We do very well in Spain too, canning-wise, but we have never done any vintage-dated stuff (AFAIK).
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Are you sure the French know all there is to know about this? Are you sure Ferran won't surprise you with a new take on this (and other) subjects?
Sorry, Alex, but I was specifically responding to this inaccurate statement you made:
Ferran and his peers are trying to find answers to questions never before asked (as far as I know), such as whether a canned sardine in tomato sauce will taste better after 5 yrs.Of course Ferran can pursue the research into the aging of canned sardines further than it's been done to date, and he's certainly capable of doing so. What is incorrect is that these questions have "never before" been asked...
My advice to would-be researchers: start by reading La sardine, de la mer à la boîte.
French sardine lovers reckon that a top-notch vintage will improve in the can for about 7-10 years - then stay at that plateau for quite a while longer.
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Ferran and his peers are trying to find answers to questions never before asked (as far as I know), such as whether a canned sardine in tomato sauce will taste better after 5 yrs, improving with age as a good red wine would.
Never before? You're young, possibly, so this seems quite new to you. And to Ferran, from what you tell (Ferran is still filling some holes in his knowledge of world gastronomy - as we all are, of course)...
The improvement of sardines in can has been studied for decades by the greatest fans of this type of food - the Portuguese and the French. French fans vintage-date their sardine cans and wait for years to eat the contents (one important requisite: turning the can over every five or six months, so that the oil will always permeate the fish). The quality of each subsequent vintage of sardines and its aging pattern is much discussed in French culinary circles...
At the Brasserie Lipp, in Paris, they serve vintage-date Connétable brand sardines(currently the 2001 vintage), packed in extra virgin olive oil, directly from the can.
For a whole collection of sardines (and herring, and other fish), vintage-dated, currently on sale from the top French producers, and going back to the 1997 (that's for autumn anchovies), take a peek here:
http://www.pennsardin.com/commande/commande.php
I still remember about 10 years ago, in London, when I was the first to explain to Ferran what a thing called 'lemongrass' was... Even the great masters don't know everything!
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Adrià, he says, is experimenting with processed foods that can be sold ready-prepared, and he suspects that the diners are being made his guinea pigs.
Konwledgeable admirer? This is a thorough a misrepresentation of what Adrià is cooking up lately as I've read in a long time. I'm not (by a mile) an unconditional fan of his, but he's certainly not doing that.
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Wylie has learned more than just about inside-out steamers in Madrid... I bumped into him and a bunch of other Madrid Fusión characters, including José Polo and Toño Pérez of the brilliant Atrio of Cáceres (two Michelin stars), late one night at the Asturianos tavern. They had already had an official dinner at some modern place, but there they were wining and dining for the second time - Wylie wolfing down a huge platter of home-cooked fabada asturiana. At 11.30 at night, my goodness! I wonder how well he slept after that...
Carme Ruscalleda's sense of community with other Spanish chefs is somewhat - how can I put it? - cast into doubt for the time being. This is after some blistering political statements she made about how Catalonia was sick and tired of financially supporting all those lazy Spaniards. We're left to wonder in what category - financial supporters or lazy bums - she places the hundreds of non-Catalan customers who happily shell out 200 euros apiece for lunch at her (wonderful, BTW) restaurant...
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Yes, he's a great showman. There were two predominant attitudes - the reverential, rapt one, mostly from foreign participants, and the smiles from Spanish veterans - neither mocking nor over-awed, just good-humored because we've known one another for so long - something along the lines of "Here goes our crazy Ferran - at it again..."
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This document, signed by 'El Bulli' and not by Ferran personally (although Ferran Adrià read it and commented on it at Madrid Fusión) is headlined 'A synthesis of our philosophy' and contains these two preliminary paragraphs before the aforementioned 23 articles:
"Lately we have observed that some cooks outside Spain define their style, give it a name, and in many cases that definition includes a mention of our cuisine or, more generally, of high Spanish cuisine. Curiously, and for no obvious reason, we have never intended to give a name to our cuisine. That's why we have now begun asking ourselves if we could give a name, not just to El Bulli's style, but to present-day 'haute cuisine' in Spain. From that point we have contacted some of the friends who have followed us for a long time (Bob Noto, Toni Massanés, Jaume Coll, Pau Arenós and others), and each one of them has suggested names that, for the time being, could serve to launch a debate: post-modern cuisine, trans-vanguard cuisine, reform cuisine, logical cuisine, evolutionist cuisine, etcetera. On the other hand, there are those who say the best name is the one thought up by The New York Times [Magazine] to headline its 14-page report on Spanish cuisine in 2003: 'The new 'nouvelle''.
"But beyond whatever name we may find and agree upon, we also thought it would be interesting to try and put the bases of our cuisine in writing. That is why we have attempted to include in this page a sort of 'manifesto', some principles that will set out our style. Even though distilling our philosophy in just a few sentences has not been an easy task, from all our body of work we have reached these 23 'commandments' which we believe may serve as a starting point to define our cuisine."
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With Philippe Regol and others in an informal e-mail chain he has set up in Spain we're already discussing this 'decalog' (a clumsy name since this refers to ten rules and Ferran is proposing... 23!) There are many things to be thought over, reformed or refined, as already mentioned here: from the unacceptably written point 4 ("all products have the same gastronomic worth, regardless of price") to the methodically uncomfortable mixture of real 'rules' and other points which are merely acknowledgements of the way things are being done, or general claims that belong to modern cuisine as much as they do to previous eras, such as 'nouvelle cuisine'.
That said, I wonder if the purpose isn't in itself futile: things were simpler and more clear-cut 35 years ago with 'nouvelle cuisine'. Now, after so much deconstruction, the very concept of cuisine may have been deconstructed to death, so that the search for a common set of values which all (or most of) the modern cooks could claim as their own may be destined to fail. But of course trying to define these values is a worthy endeavor in itself...
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My memories of Denia red shrimps (the greatest shrimps in the world, I sincerely believe) prepared by Quique in Madrid a few months back are of sheer perfection. No qualms here about undercooking. Yet, I insist: Denia is quite a distance from Valencia, so I don't see too much of a need to include it in a Valencian culinary trek.
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No need to go on a trip to eat well when in Spain's third largest city (and the fastest growing gastronomic hub in the country).
For top-notch modern cuisine (always with a strong regional bent), the leader remains Ca' Sento, followed by La Sucursal and Riff.
For a traditional paella in a fun, kitsch bullfighting atmosphere, Casa Roberto is absolutely the place - best classic rice dishes in town. (It's advisable to order the desired type of paella when booking.)
The Mercado Central (Central Market) is undergoing renovation work, but remains one of the best in Spain (and one of the most appealing covered markets, from an architectural viewpoint).
They have a very good web site, where you can check out, for instance, the 50+ fishmongers:
http://www.mercadocentralvalencia.es/Merca.../principal.html
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Wine serving 101:
A red wine should be cellared at 14º C, in order to be drunk at 16-17º - a temperature it will reach within minutes in a heated dining room, and which is the ideal drinking temperature for reds, certainly much better than the 22º C erroneously proposed years ago by proponents of 'chambrage'. If a wine is served at 16-17º, by the second course of the meal it'll be just too warm.
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Indeed, RGS has mesmerized and subjugated a few Basque chefs, that's true. He likes peas that are peeled twice, not just once - so they peel peas twice. This is not negligible. But a critic's influence on the taste of the public is more important that the critic's influence on the taste of the cook, IMHO. And that's where he's lacking and some other people have been more important than him.
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It's not a matter of defending RGS or not, it's a matter of giving facts accurately, anyavon. The well-documented (and still ongoing) resistance to culinary innovation in Italy has not been the rule in Europe, but rather the exception. French, German, Scandinavian and British critics have largely backed innovation (with the inevitable exceptions) ever since Henri Gault came up with the expression, 'nouvelle cuisine' more than 35 years ago. And that's fact, not hypothesis.
So using the Italian example really is pointless in the context of a thread on the influence of Spanish food writers in Spain. Nor does García Santos' pop icon status among a very qualified minority of people in Italy mean anything in the context of his influence in Spain. It's not a matter of self-esteem or braggadoccio if I tell you that only the two largest national newspapers in Spain, El País and El Mundo, exert nationwide influence in the restaurant world. It's only logical: we're the only two that are widely read nationally. RGS writes for regional media only.
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Their cellar is at 14º C. Where the heck was this red wine, out in the street on a freezing day?
Best restaurant for fish and seafood
in Spain & Portugal: Dining
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Let me give an Andalusian pitch for Alborán and La Giralda I - different strokes for different folk.