FOOD FIGHT
ILLUSTRATION LADISLAV KOSA
The knives are out in Spain as the country’s top chefs square off over the merits of scientific versus traditional methods. Sally Howard reports from the front line
THE FUTURISTS
Leading the charge: The “world’s top chef” and owner of elBulli restaurant,
Ferran Adrià.
Believes in: Food that marries science and art through new textures and flavours. Most likely to say: “More liquid nitrogen and garnish with some essence of the idea of jámon.”
On his side: Global names in cuisine, such as Charlie Trotter and Anthony Bourdain; Euro-Toques, the 4,000-strong European chefs organisation; Spanish premier José Luís Rodriguez Zapatero; and Adrià’s many protégés, including Carles Abellan and Andoni Aduriz.
THE TRADITIONALISTS
Leading the charge:
Santi Santamaría, owner of Can Fabes, near Barce lona, and Sant celoni, in Madrid, the first Catalan chef to gain three Michelin stars.
Believes in: New twists on classic dishes and letting simple local ingredients shine through. Most likely to say: “Baste the finest cut in pork fat simmered for six hours.”
On his side: The public mood against “Frankenstein food”, as seen in reader Jorge Gutiérrez Berlinches’ letter to El País where he made the case for: “Pasta with tomato, a nice plate of potatoes, a fried egg and blood sausage.”
FOOD FIGHT
The red kitchen versus the blue kitchen – the staple format of TV cookery shows, where top chefs fight it out, vegetable knives glinting. Last year in Spain, real life began to imitate these artificial confrontations, as two of the country’s gastronomic stars rolled up the sleeves of their chef’s whites and got stuck in.
Each is a leading member of one of the opposing culinary tribes into which modern Spain is divided. Representing the food futurists is Ferran Adrià, while the traditionalists’ champion is another Catalan, Santi Santamaría. Their disagreement has now become symbolic of the wider battle between old and new schools that has ignited heated discussions around the most fashionable Spanish dinner tables.
Santamaría threw the first knife. In 1994, Can Fabes, his fine dining restaurant in Sant Celoni, was the first in Catalonia to land a third Michelin star. His sure hand with classic dishes, such as melting roast Bresse chicken slow-cooked al vació (under a vacuum), and red shrimp ravioli with oil of ceps, has helped prompt a rediscovery of Catalan cuisine by the wider world.
In La Cocina al Desnudo (The Kitchen Laid Bare), Santamaría’s recipe book cum manifesto, published in May last year, he launched a frothing verbal assault on Adrià and his disciples. He reserved particular scorn for their “Frankenstein-like” use of synthetic additives including gels, thickening agents and the nitrogen which helps create Adrià’s famous delicate foams.
Santamaría claimed that such theatrics came at the expense of locally produced, organic ingredients. “I believe the interference of industry in haute cuisine has reached new levels, in part because of your work,” he wrote in the book’s introduction, addressed to Adrià. He added an edge to his argument with the suggestion that “a chef who uses chemical or synthetic products made in a laboratory is like an athlete who dopes”.
Two months later, at a literary awards ceremony, Santamaría continued his attack. “Chefs should not legitimise forms of eating which are inconsistent with healthy dietary habits,” he thundered, announcing his “conceptual and ethical divorce” from Adrià’s school.
To many, Santamaría had laid it on a bit thick. Adrià may be eccentric, but this self-styled “molecular gastronomist” has done much in recent years to put modern Spanish cuisine on the map.
His defining dishes present distilled flavours through insubstantial textures, such as espuma de humo (foam of smoke) and aire de zanahoria con coco amargo (air of carrot with bitter coconut). Tucked away in a picturesque Costa Bravan cove, elBulli – the restaurant Adrià heads, and where he started out doing his work experience in 1983 – was voted Restaurant magazine’s world’s best place to dine three years running (including in 2008). His success famously prompted The New York Times Magazine to publish a lavish cover story – with Adrià pictured on the front – declaring that Spain had become “the new France” of haute cuisine.
So what of Adrià’s response to the charges? After a two-month silence, Adrià mounted a spittle-flecked defence of his world-famous cooking. “This is the biggest madness in the history of cuisine,” he railed in an interview with the BBC. “Lies, lies, lies! Obviously, if you consume too much of anything it’s bad for you – too much roast beef, sugar or salt is bad. But 80% of the products I use are organic, and the additives under discussion account for just 0.1% of my cooking.”
Regarding his experimental approach to food, he said: “In the past, there was no real dialogue between cookery and other disciplines – like art, design, science and ecology. So what I’ve done is initiate that dialogue. But no one should ever dispute that I’m a chef. Ever.”
The argument was kept boiling by Santamaría’s suggestion that restaurants should be compelled to include a detailed list of additives used in their food on their menus, while a number of the world’s leading chefs lined up behind Adrià. By mid-summer even Spain’s prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, had entered the fray: “Ferran Adrià is recognised as the best chef in the world,” he said in a national radio interview. “And I think the products we consume in our top-end cuisine are absolutely healthy and cause no problems.”
In press coverage of the argument, leading nutrition-ists were called in to support this point and reassure any jumpy diners. They confirmed that the additives used in Adrià’s cooking, and the kitchens of restaurants serving similar cuisine, were “safe and strictly regulated”.
Santamaría later upped the ante by dismissing all celebrity chefs, himself included, as shams. “We’re a gang of frauds who work to distract snobs,” he said. “The only truth that matters is the product that comes out of the earth, passes through the ovens to the mouth of the eater, and is then defecated.” This comment was later summarised in the press as “to eat is to excrete”.
For now Adrià retains the moral high ground and has won popular support by dismissing his attacker’s criticisms as a distraction from “the thousands of genuine problems with our day-to-day nutrition” such as “obesity and poor food in schools”.
But it’s a row that, like any good chef’s consommé, looks set to simmer on and on.
TRY IT
SANTAMARÍA’S TRADITIONAL CUISINE
His restaurants:
Can Fabes, 6 Sant Joan, Sant Celoni, +34 93 867 2851,
Santceloni, 57 Paseo Castellana, Madrid, +34 912 108 840,
FUTURIST FOOD
Ferran Adrià’s restaurant elBulli, Ap. 30 Cala Montjoi, Roses, Girona, +34 97 215 0457. Or his city spin-off elBulli carmen, entlo 2a, 15–17 Carmen, Barcelona, +34 93 342 5616,
Andoni Aduriz’s restaurant Mugaritz, 20 Aldura Aldea, Errenteria, near San Sebastián, +34 94 352 2455,
Carles Abellan’s restaurant: Comerç 24, 24 Carrer Comerç, Barcelona, +34 93 319 2102,
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