Spanish chef Ferran Adria, once described as ”the Salvador Dali of the kitchen”, and France’s ”nouvelle cuisine” guru Michel Guerard were holding a tete-a-tete in the Spaniard’s El Bulli restaurant on the Catalan coast.
”I have never dared undo foie gras”, said Guerard, watching wide-eyed as a beige powdery substance that is a symbol of French gastronomy melted slowly into the broth, giving the dish a pronounced taste of foie gras.
It was the first meeting between the pair, two generations apart but both holders of that rare prize — the status of three-star chef handed out by the Michelin gourmet bible. Guerard, aged 69, is one of the 1970s proponents of France’s ”nouvelle cuisine”. Adria, 40 this year, is leader of the ”creative avant-garde” and is considered to be currently the most innovative chef in the world.
Along with French colleagues Pierre and Jean Troisgros, Alain Senderens and Paul Bocuse, Guerard broke with centuries of tradition in French kitchens, rejecting rich heavy sauces and calling on chefs to bring out instead the taste of fresh produce.
Adria calls for ”the regeneration of the senses in the art of good eating” — a new look at produce, a reassessment of the classics and the use of new techniques. The Spaniard is best known for his now-famous foams. He introduces minute bubbles with a syphon to the texture, a technique common for some desserts but previously unknown for savoury dishes.
Guerard, who brought the world of modern eaters ”salade folle” and egg with caviar, said that ”nouvelle cuisine was born of a revolt … not because the food was not good but because the rules were so strict that creativity had become impossible.” Adria’s cuisine, he added at their meeting this month, was ”an atom bomb in your plate.”
”He has broken free of all the constraints, the socio-cultural rigidity of the trade.” Adria, who trained in French kitchens, said his cuisine changed the day that a French chef said cooking was not a question of copying.
The revolutionary Catalan chef, who turns things on their head, transforms sea-water into jelly, gives a quail’s egg a new shape, taste and a golden shell, makes tagliatelle from broth instead of flour, serves rare mushrooms up as powdery pills. ”It is flamboyant and full of fun,” said Guerard, praising the young chef for inventing ”his own principles, his forms, his textures, his colours.”
The meals at Adria’s restaurant ”El Bulli” are an epic, with a typical menu made up of more than a dozen dishes, a variation on the Spanish custom of enjoying ”tapas” or appetizers at bars. Adria said he hopes to ”open a path” like the French chefs who promoted nouvelle cuisine. His cooking, he said, was based on ”taste, contrasts of temperature and texture” and ”the pleasure of the six senses, the sixth being emotion and sensitivity.”
”I want people eating at my table to talk about the food and not about football,” he said. – Sapa-AFP