Between saying and doing lies cooking. At San Sebastian Gastronomika, Albert Adrià claims sincere adherence to the mantra of seasonality and sustainability (read vegan cheeses) as he unravels the new Enigma through a couple of dishes.
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Proximity, seasonality, sustainability: it is the mantra of contemporary cuisine. But is this really the case? Albert Adrià (back on track after thinking several times about retiring), who, unlike his more famous brother, prefers to work with the products of the moment when it comes to creating a dish, asked himself this on stage at San Sebastian Gastronomika. "It's something that many say, but few do because it requires a lot of effort."
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He certainly doesn't cut back, as he adds, "I'm cooking eleven hours a day, I'm living my second youth." But even during the pandemic break, he never stopped continuing to experiment. For example, vegan cheeses made from soy milk, including burrata, stracciatella and scamorza, or newly minted spherifications.
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Caviar cube
The younger Adrià also shed light on the new Enigma, which given the tumultuous changes from the original formula, in his opinion, should have changed its name. This is the only restaurant he currently runs alone, then there is Cakes & Bubbles in London and Little Spain in New York with José Andrés. His numbers are 700 square meters, 45 employees, 50 diners for 5 services per week, and 15-20 elaborations per customer, which equals 800-1000 per day, paperless. "The idea is to create a language because at 52, after all, we've been through, I want to have fun and make the customer happy." Sort of a middle ground between Tickets and the old Enigma.
Among the dishes presented is melon sashimi, made through the technique of "impregnation," by filling the empty space in the melon and served with Montseny wasabi. Then there are the small packets of squid, incised in the Japanese way into handkerchiefs and stuffed with ham fat and 3 grams of caviar because you don't skimp on the food cost. It sounds easy, yet it is not.
Melon sashimi
"Otherwise, everyone would do it. But the difficult thing is not to make a dish but rather to know when it is finished. I need a base on which to build a language, a style, something that is not accomplished in a day." The key, he says, is the invisible technique. "I like to propose a cuisine without reference points, to create discrepancies and for the beginning of the meal to be a statement of intentions."
Source: La Razon
