StarChefs.com is an awardwinning
online culinary magazine
celebrating its 13th anniversary in
2008. A leading destination for original,
chef-focused culinary content, it has
25,000 published pages, over 20 million
hits per month, 10 million page views and
600,000 unique visitors. Staged this year
from September 14-16, The StarChefs
International Chefs Congress will be a
three-day annual culinary symposium
held in New York City, where the world’s
most influential and innovative chefs
present the latest techniques and culinary
concepts to up to 1,500 of their chef
peers. Writer Gerry Dawes interviewed
Antoinette Bruno, CEO & Editor-in-Chief
of StarChefs.com recently, and presents
highlights from their wide-ranging
discussion of Spanish cuisine, chefs and
ingredients.
GD: Could you give our readers
your opinions on the overall Spanish
influence on today’s tastemakers, Spain’s
contributions to modern cuisine, and
influence on American chefs using
Spanish techniques?
Antoinette Bruno: I think the food
revolution in Spain has brought new
ingredients, new techniques and
new philosophies to the forefront of
international cuisine. Whether you call it
avant-garde, molecular gastronomy or the
new term techno-emotional, I think the
style of cooking in Spain has ushered in
a new movement in food that is currently
being defined and codified in a way that
French nouvelle cuisine was in the 1960s
and 1970s in Europe. It's paved the way for
new international food scene players such
as Carlo Cracco (Italy), Heston Blumenthal
(London), Grant Achatz (Alinea, Chicago)
and Wylie Dufresne (WD-50, New York),
to name a few. The most important thing
about Spanish influence is that it made
food into an experience. Now, things
happen on the plate and what meets the
eye is not always what you expect to hit the
palate. Plating and service combinations
are hyper-creative, too, making eating an
intellectual as well as well as a gustatory
adventure.
GD: We see Spanish chefs at conferences
like Madrid Fusión, San Sebastián and
Starchefs' International Chefs Conference.
What is their influence outside of Spain?
Antoinette Bruno: The culinary powers of
Spain have created a culinary philosophy
with three main areas of focus that
have deeply changed the way we think
about food. The way Spanish chefs have
approached them has forever changed
food all over the world. The first is the
ingredients, second is history–be it
emotional or cultural–and the third is
technology. Ferran Adrià (El Bulli) and
Andoni Aduriz (Mugaritz) focus on
natural ingredients and manipulate them
to make each ingredient more of itself,
making it shine and causing the diner
look at it in a different way.
The second tenet that changed the way
we look about food is history. The cooking
of Spanish chefs such as Arzak and Dani
García, for instance, is deeply rooted in
the histories of their regions. Arzak updates
traditional Basque flavors and dishes in a
hyper-modern way. Dani García creates
distinctly Andalucian food, focusing on
the area's produce--mainly the area’s
excellent fish and superb pork, which
evoke familiar memories of very typical
flavors and experiences. The approaches
of these chefs prove that there doesn’t
have to be a conflict between soulful,
rustic food and hyper-modern food and
that the Spanish movement is seriously
rooted in memory and history.
The third tenet which Spain has deeply
influenced is technology. A new set
of tools and techniques have been
introduced by Spanish chefs. For instance,
Encapsulation (mango, peach and pear
caviars; encased Spanish olive oil drop
'pearls'; and encapsulated liquid 'olives')
is one of the most popular of all the new
techniques.
Other points of influence include such
things as decor and tasting menus.
When I first went to Madrid Fusión
2003, Spanish restaurant decor is one
of the very first things I noticed. It was
much slicker and more modern than
restaurants you would see in the United
States. Decor was the first visual clue for
guests that they were in a very modern
restaurant and that the action was on the
plate. We have had tasting menus in the
United States, but nothing like Spain's
menus de degustación, which inspired
tasting menus now all across the country.
GD: From culinary events such as your
own Starchefs International Conference
and others such as The Culinary Institute
of America-Greystone's (Napa Valley)
Worlds of Flavor Conference on Spain,
people from restaurants, restaurant and
hotel chains come looking to pick up
good ideas, then Spanish products and
techniques begin to pop up in mainstream
restaurants.
Antoinette Bruno: Yes, Spanish wines,
for instance, are now widely available
throughout the United States, as are
cheeses from Spain, Spanish ham (Ibérico
and Serrano), and Spanish olive oil. One
new trend we are seeing is Spanish olive
oil tastings, because Spain has a wide
diversity of different flavors in olive oil.
I am not talking about flavored olive
oils, but oils that come from different
regions of Spain and taste so dramatically
different. And how about the whole
concept of small plates? That's really a
Spanish tradition and not one created by
the hyper-modern chefs. But the attention
on hyper-modern chefs brought people to
Spain, and started this entire revolution in
dining in the United States, with restaurant
after restaurant in serving small plates.
~ Gerry Dawes
