Alimentaria Barcelona 2006

[Rogelio]

For those of you interested in the program of this food and beverages exhibition, Here it is.

The forthcoming Alimentaria, which is due to take place from 6 to 10 March 2006 in Barcelona, will mark the exhibition's 30th anniversary. In this time, it has already reached second place in the international fairs' league table for the industry through steady growth based on the twin concepts of a comprehensive macro-exhibition in partnership with the industry and maximum sectorial specialisation keeping a watchful eye on every detail of the market

Differential values

A long list of parallel activities makes Alimentaria a fair where there is always something to see and do: congresses and scientific activities that reveal the latest trends, pinpoint market openings, explode myths and build the future. The International Food Forum, the Congress on the Mediterranean Diet, the innovation show Innoval and the Business Co-operation Projects are just some of the most important.

In addition, Alimentaria offers visitors various recreational, demonstration and educational events that are staged in the different shows. They include Spain, the Land of 100 Cheeses, Vinorum, The Spain of the Olive Oils and the Meeting of Contemporary Cuisines - BCN Vanguardia.

Differential values

A long list of parallel activities makes Alimentaria a fair where there is always something to see and do: congresses and scientific activities that reveal the latest trends, pinpoint market openings, explode myths and build the future. The International Food Forum, the Congress on the Mediterranean Diet, the innovation show Innoval and the Business Co-operation Projects are just some of the most important.

In addition, Alimentaria offers visitors various recreational, demonstration and educational events that are staged in the different shows. They include Spain, the Land of 100 Cheeses, Vinorum, The Spain of the Olive Oils and the Meeting of Contemporary Cuisines - BCN Vanguardia.

Edited March 7, 2006 by Rogelio (log)

[Saborosa]

Thanks Rogelio

I'm sure we'd all be interested in a report of the Vanguardia section's activities if anyone went yesterday to see the chefs do their thing. Particularly, Adria, Aduriz and Raúl Alexandre of Restaurante Ca’Sento. I'm also curious about the fabes v faves session - whether it brought up any interesting insights to the contrasts and similarities between the Asturian and Catalan traditions... or not!?

Is anybody who was there willing to share?

k

[Judith Gebhart]

Thanks Rogelio

I'm sure we'd all be interested in a report of the Vanguardia section's activities if anyone went yesterday to see the chefs do their thing. Particularly, Adria, Aduriz and Raúl Alexandre of Restaurante Ca’Sento. I'm also curious about the fabes v faves session - whether it brought up any interesting insights to the contrasts and similarities between the Asturian and Catalan traditions... or not!?

Is anybody who was there willing to share?

k

←

Thanks for the website location! I am equally interested. A firsthand report would be much appreciated. Thanks again. Judith Gebhart

[Revallo]

I was there on Monday; we watched the elBulli presentation as well as Andoni and Charlie Trotter.

Ferran started by explaining his philosophy on the books and documentation of elBulli. The way of photographing everything from the new products that comes in to the restaurant to each step of the new techniques. Also he presented the new book 2005 and a "molecular gastronomy" glossary that was published by elBulli and Alissa, a public laboratory that will be opening this next year. He showed a few simple techniques such as using a juicer, as well as a few plates from 2005.

Charlie Trotter and Andoni did a fantastic presentation. Trotter started by explaining the Caesar Salad, its history and how it is classically prepared. Then went in to telling us how he would serve it today in his restaurant in 2006, by deconstructing it to its bare elements. The romaine in to a creamy green sauce that serves as base of the plate, garlic prepared 3 ways, the eggs in to a creamy meringue, the popular technique of cooking an at 62 degrees centigrade, and then rolling it in crumbs of brioche. This was the first time I have seen Trotter presenting, and he really made me proud to be an American working in Spain…

Andoni went through the philosophy of his restaurant, to me it is very similar to Michel Bras by the use of herbs, and how deeply integrated the restaurant is in nature. And also a few of the new techniques such as using the essential oils of plants and herbs. He took basil and deconstructed it in to 5 different aromas, each one different. But together they are the complete basil aroma.

I only have Sunday and Monday off and for this I was able to get down to Barcelona…

[Culinista]

I missed the fabes/faves presentation, unfortunately. I thought it was interesting that Ferran Adria stressed the importance of separating new techniques that are merely spectacular from new techniques that are important. I'm not sure his blind followers heard, however.

As for Trotter, I personally thought he was a disgrace. How could he have thought of coming to Barcelona and explaining how to cook an egg at low temp with an immersion circulator? Deep fried anchovy ice cream? Pureed lettuce? Please. His contemporary Caesar was a grotesque caricature, and the goal seemed to be to sling as many mismatched texture/temperature contrasts as possible on the plate in hopes of confusing the diner into thinking this was something good to eat. His using pre-made dressing in his "traditional" version shows what little understanding he has of the fundamentals of the dish in the first place. The Caesar is not just a tossed salad with cheese, egg and anchovy; it was meant to be tableside theater. Trotter completely missed the point.

Andoni, on the other hand, was spectacular. His restrained, Zen-like minimalism made Trotter look all the more ham-fistedly baroque. I love the way he is creating a whole new aesthetic universe of flavors on the plate, maybe even a new philosophy of our relation to eating and the earth. Romaine is not an interesting ingredient? Trotter purees it or orders designer greens (available only to chefs, he tells the crowd smugly), while Andoni goes off into the woods and looks for wild edible plants or grows the greens himself.

I had goosebumps afterwards.

[Judith Gebhart]

I missed the fabes/faves presentation, unfortunately. I thought it was interesting that Ferran Adria stressed the importance of separating new techniques that are merely spectacular from new techniques that are important. I'm not sure his blind followers heard, however.

As for Trotter, I personally thought he was a disgrace. How could he have thought of coming to Barcelona and explaining how to cook an egg at low temp with an immersion circulator? Deep fried anchovy ice cream? Pureed lettuce? Please. His contemporary Caesar was a grotesque caricature, and the goal seemed to be to sling as many mismatched texture/temperature contrasts as possible on the plate in hopes of confusing the diner into thinking this was something good to eat.  His using pre-made dressing in his "traditional" version shows what little understanding he has of the fundamentals of the dish in the first place.  The Caesar is not just a tossed salad with cheese, egg and anchovy; it was meant to be tableside theater. Trotter completely missed the point.

Andoni, on the other hand, was spectacular. His restrained, Zen-like minimalism made Trotter look all the more ham-fistedly baroque. I love the way he is creating a whole new aesthetic universe of flavors on the plate, maybe even a new philosophy of our relation to eating and the earth. Romaine is not an interesting ingredient? Trotter purees it or orders designer greens (available only to chefs, he tells the crowd smugly), while Andoni goes off into the woods and looks for wild edible plants or grows the greens himself.

I had goosebumps afterwards.

←

Your characterization of Andoni's culinary direction is exquistely and sensitively described. We are thrilled that you observed and articulated his great affinity to his terroir and his desire to replicate its flavors and textures in his food. Thank you for your astute observations.

It is most unfortunate that Charlie failed to comprehend the less than stellar offer of serving a deconstructed Caesar salad. His efforts to re-interpret this old salad by deconstructing it are uninspired at best. In my recollection, Charlie has never served a Caesar salad, nor re-intrepreted this recipe in his Chicago restaurant. His efforts in Barcelona apparently failed to affirm his culinary authority.

Thank you for your thoughtful report. Judith Gebhart

Edited March 9, 2006 by Judith Gebhart (log)

[Corinna Dunne]

I thought it was interesting that Ferran Adria stressed the importance of separating new techniques that are merely spectacular from new techniques that are important.

←

This does sound interesting. Do you have any more detail on it?

[Culinista]

I thought it was interesting that Ferran Adria stressed the importance of separating new techniques that are merely spectacular from new techniques that are important.

←

This does sound interesting. Do you have any more detail on it?

←

One major qualifier here: My grasp of Castilian Spanish is shaky at best, and Ferran's in particular I find hard to follow, especially since the mike kept flickering--and I was in the front row. If anyone finds an error in my description of his comments, I'd be grateful.

Ferran himself did not go into too much detail, but he made a concerted effort to include seemingly simple demonstrations with implications outside the usual gastrotech eyepoppers that so enthrall the crowd. For instance, he deep-fried mackerel innards and spoke of stewing chicken wing tendons to create new foods from cheap, everyday parts normally overlooked. It was my impression that the crowd didn't seem to know what to make of this unexpected deviation from the gastrotech dog-and-pony extravaganza, admittedly a brief part of the presentation that soon swung back into blowing huge bubbles and sphericizing everything. However, I think this thrifty concern for finding new ways to avoid waste and discover new flavors was one of the "important" techniques in our day and age.

Another comment that I found interesting was that Ferran backed off a little from his previous stance (in a private conversation in about 2000) that he is interested only in pure innovation, which he defined as avoiding copying. I am not sure if he was referring to a defense of his own cuisine, which has been criticized for plagiarizing Japanese and other techniques, or it was a comment about the need to curb unbridled and bad-tasting creative wildness in the search for culinary innovation. Chefs are like musicians--not every great performer is cut out to be a composer. Second, he defended his use of artificial or industrial ingredients. In the first point, he said that if a surgeon adopted cutting-edge techniques developed by someone else, no one would ask him to justify why he was "imitating" another. In the second, he pointed out that practically every domesticated animal or cultivated ingredient is not "natural" since it has been manipulated by humans for a very long time. (I would add that we have been adding chemicals and preservatives like salt forever.)

During Ferran's presentation, he repeatedly said that this or that technique was suitable for prepraring for any number of people, including huge banquets of 1,000. I felt it was interesting that his mind seems to be turning to more and more mass-replicable food, although many of his techniques remain so technically difficult that even his virtuoso right-hand guy Oriol failed several times. The thought occurred to me that most of these techniques are almost designed to continue widening the gap between home and restaurant cooking. That said, I bought one of those cool sphericization kits and brought it home to play.

I was in BCN for an unrelated roundtable discussion among foreign journalists for a Catalan audience (!!!) about how contemporary Calalan cooking can be defined and how it is seen abroad. Catalans are justly proud of having claim to the world's most important chef and are enjoying the media attention, but they are concerned that outsiders are largely unaware of or dismissive of traditional or non-Ferran Catalan cuisines.

I realized in the course of the discussion (but was perhaps unable to explain in my pidgin castellano) that for all its tsunami effect on international kitchen technology, El Bulli has for the most part not transmitted a single integral, signature dish abroad. His ideas have caught on because people seized on his techniques and applied them to their own native dishes. What is now called modern Catalan (or, even worse for the local hosts, Spanish) cooking is really a compendium of vanguardist kitchen techniques, not an idiomatic regional cuisine that is recognized by your average foreigner. In Catalunya, for example, people are re-inventing the suquet, the escudella, escalivada, cap i pota, etc, but most of these words remain gibberish to my non-eGullet general readership.

I didn't know how to break it to my Catalan friends, but the nuances of Catalan cuisine remain almost unknown among my husband's business associates, for example. That reflects more on our own abiding ignorance and is no reflection at all on the inherent greatness of Catalan culture. Everyone by now has heard of Ferran, however. Perhaps Ferran is sucking too much oxygen for the comfort of his more nationalistic compatriots? Some of the chefs in the roundtable audience (including some very notable names) were sounding distinctly Salieri to Ferran's Amadeus.

In a way, Catalans might be grateful to be spared seeing their wonderful dishes bastardized in the manner that bolognese tagliatelle, paella, and sushi have been as they transitioned into mass-market international cuisine. However, those who want to create a rigid definition of "authentic Catalan" cuisine--no doubt as another battlefield of modern identity politics--have a lost cause. All the great, non-subsistence cuisines got that way from constant enriching contact with foreign influences--the tomato, potato, and chocolate are all cases in point. Ferran Agullo' in the "Llibre de la Cuina Catalana" said that the very power of Catalan cuisine resided in its ability to assimulate influence. Another writer, Josep Pla, said cuisine was landscape in a pot. We should remember that while a river looks eternal, it is always flowing from somewhere to somewhere else, and over a great deal of time, you would never recognize the place.

One woman, I assume a restaurant chef, said she didn't need to have the American press come tell her how to cook. I wouldn't presume. And as long as Catalans like her feel that way, Catalan cuisine has no fear of ever losing its unique flavors and identity.

Edited March 9, 2006 by Culinista (log)

[Judith Gebhart]

I thought it was interesting that Ferran Adria stressed the importance of separating new techniques that are merely spectacular from new techniques that are important.

←

This does sound interesting. Do you have any more detail on it?

←

One major qualifier here: My grasp of Castilian Spanish is shaky at best, and Ferran's in particular I find hard to follow, especially since the mike kept flickering--and I was in the front row. If anyone finds an error in my description of his comments, I'd be grateful.

Ferran himself did not go into too much detail, but he made a concerted effort to include seemingly simple demonstrations with implications outside the usual gastrotech eyepoppers that so enthrall the crowd. For instance, he deep-fried mackerel innards and spoke of stewing chicken wing tendons to create new foods from cheap, everyday parts normally overlooked. It was my impression that the crowd didn't seem to know what to make of this unexpected deviation from the gastrotech dog-and-pony extravaganza, admittedly a brief part of the presentation that soon swung back into blowing huge bubbles and sphericizing everything. However, I think this thrifty concern for finding new ways to avoid waste and discover new flavors was one of the "important" techniques in our day and age.

Another comment that I found interesting was that Ferran backed off a little from his previous stance (in a private conversation in about 2000) that he is interested only in pure innovation, which he defined as avoiding copying. I am not sure if he was referring to a defense of his own cuisine, which has been criticized for plagiarizing Japanese and other techniques, or it was a comment about the need to curb unbridled and bad-tasting creative wildness in the search for culinary innovation. Chefs are like musicians--not every great performer is cut out to be a composer. Second, he defended his use of artificial or industrial ingredients. In the first point, he said that if a surgeon adopted cutting-edge techniques developed by someone else, no one would ask him to justify why he was "imitating" another. In the second, he pointed out that practically every domesticated animal or cultivated ingredient is not "natural" since it has been manipulated by humans for a very long time. (I would add that we have been adding chemicals and preservatives like salt forever.)

During Ferran's presentation, he repeatedly said that this or that technique was suitable for prepraring for any number of people, including huge banquets of 1,000. I felt it was interesting that his mind seems to be turning to more and more mass-replicable food, although many of his techniques remain so technically difficult that even his virtuoso right-hand guy Oriol failed several times. The thought occurred to me that most of these techniques are almost designed to continue widening the gap between home and restaurant cooking. That said, I bought one of those cool sphericization kits and brought it home to play.

I was in BCN for an unrelated roundtable discussion among foreign journalists for a Catalan audience (!!!) about how contemporary Calalan cooking can be defined and how it is seen abroad. Catalans are justly proud of having claim to the world's most important chef and are enjoying the media attention, but they are concerned that outsiders are largely unaware of or dismissive of traditional or non-Ferran Catalan cuisines.

I realized in the course of the discussion (but was perhaps unable to explain in my pidgin castellano) that for all its tsunami effect on international kitchen technology, El Bulli has for the most part not transmitted a single integral, signature dish abroad. His ideas have caught on because people seized on his techniques and applied them to their own native dishes. What is now called modern Catalan (or, even worse for the local hosts, Spanish) cooking is really a compendium of vanguardist kitchen techniques, not an idiomatic regional cuisine that is recognized by your average foreigner. In Catalunya, for example, people are re-inventing the suquet, the escudella, escalivada, cap i pota, etc, but most of these words remain gibberish to my non-eGullet general readership.

I didn't know how to break it to my Catalan friends, but the nuances of Catalan cuisine remain almost unknown among my husband's business associates, for example. That reflects more on our own abiding ignorance and is no reflection at all on the inherent greatness of Catalan culture. Everyone by now has heard of Ferran, however. Perhaps Ferran is sucking too much oxygen for the comfort of his more nationalistic compatriots? Some of the chefs in the roundtable audience (including some very notable names) were sounding distinctly Salieri to Ferran's Amadeus.

In a way, Catalans might be grateful to be spared seeing their wonderful dishes bastardized in the manner that bolognese tagliatelle, paella, and sushi have been as they transitioned into mass-market international cuisine. However, those who want to create a rigid definition of "authentic Catalan" cuisine--no doubt as another battlefield of modern identity politics--have a lost cause. All the great, non-subsistence cuisines got that way from constant enriching contact with foreign influences--the tomato, potato, and chocolate are all cases in point. Ferran Agullo' in the "Llibre de la Cuina Catalana" said that the very power of Catalan cuisine resided in its ability to assimulate influence. Another writer, Josep Pla, said cuisine was landscape in a pot. We should remember that while a river looks eternal, it is always flowing from somewhere to somewhere else, and over a great deal of time, you would never recognize the place.

One woman, I assume a restaurant chef, said she didn't need to have the American press come tell her how to cook. I wouldn't presume. And as long as Catalans like her feel that way, Catalan cuisine has no fear of ever losing its unique flavors and identity.

←

Exquistely reported and deftly articulated, your remarkable overview to this forum is invaluable. I am truly impressed. I am also very grateful for your exceptional insight. Thank you. Judith Gebhart