One Frenchman's take on things in Spain

[vserna]

Pierre Casamayor, the outstanding French wine taster (a professor at Toulouse University and a member of the tasting committee at La Revue du Vin de France) has been tasting with me the past few days at the Bacchus wine contest in Madrid - Spain's foremost wine festival. It's been held at the spectacular, 'Belle Epoque' Madrid Casino on calle de Alcalá, where the Michelin-starred La Terraza del Casino is also located. I offer here some comments Pierre was making today, because I think they offer some food for thought:

"I've had dinner at La Terraza. Enjoyable, mainly because it stresses the fun part of high-tech modern cuisine. [Liquid nitrogen reigns supreme at this Ferran Adrià franchise.] But then I have also had dinner at Goizeko Wellington, Jesús Santos' place, and that was a real feast. They stress top-notch ingredients, including amazing fish, cooked with utmost precision, and with just enough innovative touches to keep things interesting. A wonderful, immensely enjoyable experience."

I pointed out to Pierre that La Terraza has one Michelin star, and Goizeko Wellington none (and its sister restaurant Goizeko Kabi lost its star last year), pointing out that Michelin was rather clueless in Spain. His reply: "It's not just in Spain. In France they're drifting aimlessly. They went from being exaggerated keepers of the orthodoxy to being exaggerated promoters of far-out innovation, and now they don't seem to have a clear set of culinary values."

[docsconz]

Interesting observation, Victor. Thanks for sharing them. I love today's innovations food and I love the bastions of tradition. I do not see that as being mutually exclusive. I would deplore life without either. I daresay that it is easier for a fan of innovation to enjoy and appreciate tradition than a stalwart tradionalist appreciate innovation, but why? Great food IMO should be all that matters. It is too bad if Michelin or other guides don't see it that way in France, Spain or wherever.

[vserna]

One important fact, John: Goizeko Wellington is no bastion of tradition (the strange name stems from its Basque heritage and from the fact it's in the Wellington Hotel, that bastion of the bullfighting world). It gladly gets into the techie, tongue-in-cheek thing - terrific raw oyster salad with a gin tonic granité; tempura of curry-marinated langostino prawns and vegetable rings; low-temperature turbot with a turbot-head consommé and wild mushrooms... It's just that Jesús just propels the beautiful piece of fish or meat, the spectacular vegetables, to the center of his dishes and puts all the rest, technique included, at the service of that center piece. So his terrine of sautéed goose foie gras just gets a dose of the now unavoidable 'spherics', but these are made with the great Casta Diva sweet muscat from Alicante, and the combination rocks and makes the goose liver even brighter.

It's not a battle of traditionalists vs. modernists, in my mind. It's a dispute between people with a 'classic' sense of real gastronomy (whatever their attitude to innovation or to roots - this can vary widely, no problem!), i.e. people with a sense of taste, of pleasure, of palatability, of respect for great natural textures... vs. the fashion victims. Jesús Santos is modern, but a 'classic', not a fashion victim. So I'm with him.

[docsconz]

One important fact, John: Goizeko Wellington is no bastion of tradition (the strange name stems from its Basque heritage and from the fact it's in the Wellington Hotel, that bastion of the bullfighting world). It gladly gets into the techie, tongue-in-cheek thing - terrific raw oyster salad with a gin tonic granité; tempura of curry-marinated langostino prawns and vegetable rings; low-temperature turbot with a turbot-head consommé and wild mushrooms... It's just that Jesús just propels the beautiful piece of fish or meat, the spectacular vegetables, to the center of his dishes and puts all the rest, technique included, at the service of that center piece. So his terrine of sautéed goose foie gras just gets a dose of the now unavoidable 'spherics', but these are made with the great Casta Diva sweet muscat from Alicante, and the combination rocks and makes the goose liver even brighter.

It's not a battle of traditionalists vs. modernists, in my mind. It's a dispute between people with a 'classic' sense of real gastronomy (whatever their attitude to innovation or to roots - this can vary widely, no problem!), i.e. people with a sense of taste, of pleasure, of palatability, of respect for great natural textures... vs. the fashion victims. Jesús Santos is modern, but a 'classic', not a fashion victim. So I'm with him.

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Victor, I was previously unfamiliar with Goizeko Wellington, although based on your description it sounds marvellous. My experience with Goizeko Kabi in Bilbao is that it is a restaurant centered on traditional cooking. Your point is that the issue is really one of good food (traditional or creative) vs. "fad" or "fashion victim food" is a good one and doesn't contradict mine. Good food is good food regardless of the style or even whether it is part of a fad following the influence of others. Not all fads or fashions are bad and if done well such as how you describe the use of the "spheric" can still be transcendant. The problem with "fashion victim" food is when it gets distorted from its original context and becomes a cliche of itself. Some fashions become tradition because they truly work. Ultimately, I do not believe we are in disagreement, but saying similar things in different ways.

[vserna]

No disagreement at all, John - I was just trying to describe and explain the restaurant that so impressed Pierre Casamayor. It could certainly have been a truly traditional Basque 'asador' (grill), like Imanol, but it was Goizeko Wellington, and there we have a more progressive and creative type of a place.

Indeed, the crucial test IMHO for identifying truly fine cuisine lies in ascertaining which innovations bear the hallmarks of a future classic, and which ones are destined to fade from the culinary scene sooner rather than later...

[anyavon]

Voila, another Frenchman, Francois Simon from Le Figaro, framing his impressions of a recent eating trip to Spain as "10 lessons from Spain to France" Very amusing...

http://www.madamefigaro.fr/cuisine/20060320.MAD0002.html

[vserna]

Well, Simon did make one mini-trip to Valencia - good for him! All of his nine other recommendations are in Guipúzcoa and Catalonia: two great culinary regions, no doubt, but hardly a picture of "Spain" as a whole giving France some lessons...

[Bux]

Victor, I suggest you miss a point or two from the French perspective. It's not simply that Spain has something to teach France, but that one doesn't have to go far to take lessons. Perhaps it's not that these nine restaurants are meant to represent Spain, but that one doesn't have to drive far, nor take an arduous journey over the highest mountains, to learn a thing or two. Excellent lessons are close at hand and very accessible in neighboring provinces connected by good roads. There's no excuse for a Frenchman in the Midi not to cross the border for a good meal at a reasonable price. I think it's not that Simon discredits the rest of Spain but that he chides his fellow Frenchmen for not seeing what's directly under their eyes.

[vserna]

I don't think so, Bux. If that was his intention, what's he doing mentioning Ca' Sento in Valencia? His text doesn't mention immediate proximity ("En commençant là-bas, de l'autre côté des Pyrénées. Pour les amateurs de bonnes tables, la distribution y est proprement passionnante. Les adresses abondent et on y rivalise de bonne humeur, de trouvailles et de faconde. Voici une jolie pincée avec le secret de leurs succès".) "De l'autre côté des Pyrénées" is generic French lingo for... Spain.

[Bux]

. . .  "De l'autre côté des Pyrénées" is generic French lingo for... Spain.

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Agreed, but perhaps in a manner not so dissimilar as "the other side of the Hudson" (River) is gneric NY lingo for either New Jersey or that small stetch of land (as it appears on Steinberg's drawing) between the Hudson and the Pacific Ocean. Let's back track by saying I agree with you that it's "hardly a picture of "Spain" as a whole." Furthermore, there's no indication that Simon has a working knowledge of food in Spain as a whole. My point is only to express the view that whether Catalunya or Guipúzcoa has the best food in Spain, the worst food in Spain or whether or not it has food representative of the country as a whole, one only needs to step across the border at the most acessible points to learn that France has lessons to learn from restaurants in Spain. Simon is not so much telling his countrymen where to look in Spain, as much as telling them to start looking at Spain.

I can very much relate from my own perspective. I traveled widely in Spain for a month in 1965, albeit on a very tight student budget, and was rarely charmed by the food. One can examine my route and choice of restaurants and come up with the reasons perhaps. Certainly I spent little money and was generally clueless as to where to spend it, but I think the fault could be found in the food of a country that was ecomonically depressed and cut off from the rest of Europe. We became Francophiles and didn't return to Spain until the offer of a free night at the Maria Christina in San Sebastian lured us away from France for precisely one night. Lunch at Arzak however, enticed us to take another look at the country which has in the past decade drawn us back again and again. I didn't even really know how much good food there was in Guipúzcoa, let alone in the entire country of Spain, but I was convinced I needed to look at Spain as a gastronomic destination. That attitude paid off. Encourage more Frenchmen to cross the border and I suggest two things will happen. Their expectations of good food, and particularly good food at a good price, will increase and they will be lured beyond the foothills of the Pyrenees, further south and inland than Valencia.

[anyavon]

Well, if you're a busy guy like Simon, have 5-6 days and want a crash course in new Spanish cuisine, where would you go? Sanse and Catalunya seem like the obvious places, with the biggest concentration of talked-about restaurants and great traditional food cultures. Besides, as a service journalist, he wants touristy regions close to the border where his reader will actually go. Seems pretty logical.

On this post, where are all the threads about Manolo de la Osa--who will actually schlep to Las Pedroneras?--and his acolytes in la Mancha? About Raul Aleixandre, Quique Dacosta, Tono Perez and Francis Paniego, about new-wave chefs in Aragon or Asturias. About the rice culture in the Valencian hinterlands or the asados of Castille--just to throw off some random examples.People seem to go to Madrid, Guipuzcoa and Catalonia and talk about Ferran, Andoni, Arzak and Santi.It's odd...not even Martin or Ruscalleda get a lot of chat.

A "picture of Spain? in 5 days? You can have amazing food all over the country, both new and traditional but for a quick immersion, Arzak, Mugartiz, Rocas, Ca'Sento and Elkano isn't bad. Guess you can do Madrid--as a microcosm of Spain--but if you are a critic eating anonymously (like Simon does) and don't have insiders guiding you around, it can be tricky...

[pedro]

Anya, there are threads in this forum that cover the topics you pointed out. Sure, some topics are more popular than others and lately Arzak, Adria and Aduriz are getting a lot of exposure but that doesn't mean that they're the exclusive focus of the forum. As a not so random example, let me bring this topic to your attention:

On asados

[anyavon]

Pedro, I didn't suggest that they were the absolute exclusive focus. However, just from a cursory glance at the first couple of pages of this site, Madrid, Basque Country and Catalonia seem to dominate in a pretty big way. (The asado thread you site is from 2004) There really doesn't seem to be a million posts about, say, Quique Dacosta or Dani Garcia who--at least in my opinion--deserve every bit as much discussion as Andoni. I'm not critisizing the choice of topics....I'm merely suggesting that Simon's choices of regions and restaurants reflects a general and a rather obvious trend...

[vserna]

No, it does not IMHO. It reflects the interests of a majority of participants in eGullet - which is not such a large group, and is basically made up of residents in the US, where fixation with a few very precise Spanish subjects really is more marked than in other places. Simon qualifies as an honorary eGulleter, of course.

But, I insist: he did include Ca' Sento in Valencia. So his geographic restrictions were not so tight. His in-depth knowledge of the subject, OTOH, does seem faulty.

[anyavon]

I don't think Simon claims any serious expertise (he hasn't been to Spain all that much) and had any particular restrictions other than time constraints. (Valencia is a quick side trip from BNA) But it's great that the French are coming...

And...just curious, what "group" then has an in-depth knowledge of Spain?I meet food reporters from all over, both in Spain, at Lo Mejor and MadridFusion, and abroad and they seem to all talk about the same restaurants too. 9If they talk about Spain at all) Maybe the Japanese? There is one Tokyo journalist, Maki Kimura who's been absolutely everywhere and written about it, and she doesn't even speak a word of Spanish!