THE past week had been an all-Spanish week due to the staging of Madrid Fusión Manila 2016 at the SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia Complex, in Pasay City from April 7 to 9, 2016.
But days before that, the featured foreign chefs from Spain, Peru, South Korea, Japan, the United States and Mexico started arriving in Manila, and one of the first to arrive was two Michelin-starred Spanish Chef Dani Garcia, who owns and runs Restaurante Dani Garcia in Puente Romano Beach Resort, Marbella, Spain. This was because, in the evening of April 4 and 5, he was preparing a 10-course dinner for the Dinner with the Stars with Celebrity Spanish Chef Dani Garcia at the New World Manila Bay Hotel. The Dinner with the Stars series, with dinners in different hotel venues featuring different chefs, formed part of Madrid Fusión Manila 2016. Chef Dani’s two-night dinner engagement was the first among the eight Dinner with the Stars offerings opened to the dining public at premium prices. His was priced at P10,000 per person, and it was full on both nights—a testament to his stature in the culinary world.
Chef Dani, after all, isn’t a two Michelin-starred chef for nothing. He is considered as one of the top chefs of modern Spanish gastronomy and is known for popularizing the use of liquid nitrogen in preparing haute cuisine. He is of the same rank as world-renowned Michelin starred Spanish chefs Adrià, Arzak, Ruscalleda, Santamaria, Subijana, Roca and Berasategui. In fact, he became an apprentice of Martin Berasategui after finishing school at the La Cónsula Hospitality School in Mάlaga. His talent made him shine brightly in the culinary scene and soon he started leading the way for new Andalusian cuisine by using tons of imagination and scientific techniques to bring out the Andalusian essence in his creations. He first attracted media attention when he took over the kitchen at the Tragabuches restaurant in the mountain town of Ronda and demonstrated his passion for culinary innovation. But he reached the pinnacle of success when the Meliά hotel group got him to set up the Calima restaurant in Marbella. There, he collaborated with Raimundo Garcia del Moral, professor of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Granada, and Chef Dani became the first to develop the culinary use of liquid nitrogen at -196˚C. For a time, he was the only European chef, aside from Blumenthal and Adrià, to take advantage of the properties of nitrogen in cuisine.
Chef Dani’s unique culinary skills and scientific innovation based on the principles of molecular gastronomy came to the fore during his two-night run of Dinner with the Stars with Celebrity Spanish Chef Dani Garcia last week. The avant-garde menu was inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince, and it allowed Chef Dani the space and creativity to play with his favorite concept of contradiction by combining contrasting hot and cold elements and opposing textures and flavors.
The first course came in a dimly lit “sublimation” room lined with wall-to-wall LED screens showing videos of splashing waves and seascapes. The long table in the middle of the room, lined with presumably LED glass tops, lit up a bit as diners were ushered inside the room in groups of 10. The table was lined with mounds of Tartar de Atún Aliñado al Momento (Tuna Tartar Seasoned a la Minute), with a piece of Jamon Serrano ham fat hanging over each mound. As soon as he started heating each piece of fat with a blowtorch, the contrasting element of fire, albeit only a lighting effect, started creeping up and engulfing the whole tabletop. The melted fat dripped onto the tuna mounds and he spooned a mixture of frozen soya and olive oil onto the tuna tartar, and the effect was pure bliss on the palate.
Led out of the sublimation room so other batches can “experience” it, diners were ushered into a bigger room, where animated scenes of The Little Prince played on the wall-to-wall screens that surrounded the room. The cocktail tables teemed with platters of freshly shaved Jamon Serrano and the branches of a tree-shaped sculpture by Impy Pilapil had guests plucking the olives crusted with jamon sugar from the hooks. Open-top “eggs,” standing on egg holders, formed a circle around the cocktail tables. It was Egg No Egg, which contained what looked line soft boiled egg white around a yolk, but there was no egg at all in the egg shell but lychee cream.
After everyone shall have experienced what the sublimation room had to offer and had a few bites—and drinks—at the cocktail area, it was time for all guests to take their assigned seats at the main banquet reception, where the rest of the courses were served sit-down style.
Patata Moάi (Moάi Potato) was Chef Dani’s interpretation of the premise that “all humanity could be piled up on a small Pacific isle.” The black mashed potato took on the shape of a human face and sat on black caviar, with dollops of black mayonnaise and chili sprinkles around it.
Gazpacho Amarillo con Tomate Nitro (Yellow Gazpacho with Nitro Tomato) had a very interesting metallic looking tomato sitting in the bowl with different varieties of mini and cherry tomatoes. A quick check with the head waiter revealed that the tomato had been dipped in liquid nitrogen to make its skin look metallic, and inside it was tomato juice. As soon as the gazpacho was poured into my bowl, I curiously placed the nitro tomato in my mouth, and it was like my childhood treat of eating a piece of aratiles by popping it in my mouth and bursting it there.
Next up was Carpaccio de Gamba con Manzana y Miel de Trufa (Shrimp Carpaccio with Apple and Truffle Honey). A question played in everyone’s mind as the soup-looking dish was placed in front of every guest: Where’s the shrimp carpaccio (or thinly sliced raw shrimps)? Well, it’s hidden in the mousse with pinenuts sprinkled on top. Making it more exciting was the fact that the bowl was served over a bigger bowl of smoking dry ice.
Afilando el Lάpiz (Sharpening Our Pencil) was another totally fun dish, where the smoked eel mousse was frozen and then shaved into curls to look like debris from sharpening a pencil, presented on top of orange yogurt. Since it’s frozen and shaved, the smoked eel mousse simply melted in the mouth.
Lubina Frita la Pimienta Negra (Fried Wild Seabass with Fresh Cracked Pepper) turned out to be a visual spectable, as a big fillet of seabass was creatively cut in all the right places so that after being fried, it looked like a golden flower, served with drizzles and specks of teriyaki and balsamic sauce.
Black food on black plate was the drama that came with Arroz de Pulpo y Calamares en su Tinta (Black Rice of Octopus and Calamari). It’s rice cooked in squid ink with slices of octopus and squid rings, sprinkled on top with “unsweetened sugar” to look like the ember from a dying flame.
Then there’s the Ravioli de Rabo de Toro con Consome al Jerez (Oxtail Ravioli with Cherry Flavored Consommé). Besides the oxtail ravioli, the plate looked like a beautiful floral garden with microgreens and colorful edible flowers on top of the ravioli, with shavings of truffle all around.
As if Chef Dani knew the Filipinos’ sweet tooth, two desserts, Meteorito (Meteorite) and Se Nos Ha Congelado el Limón (Our Lemon Froze), served as a fitting meal-ender. Meteorito was a platter of chocolate mousse and chocolate brownie with a “meteorite” made of sugar candy, and filled with white chocolate, Mandarin orange and vanilla, sitting on top of a heap of metallic-looking chocolate shreds. Se Nos Ha Congelado el Limón was a half lemon served on a glass zester. The lemon looked real but it was only made of sugar candy and filled with a sorbet of lemon, gin, calamansi and Japanese lime.
After the desserts had been served, Chef Dani Garcia came out from the kitchen to meet the guests, and he was met with thunderous applause by an audience that totally enjoyed his repertoire of fun and playful dishes that challenged the mind and treated their palate to something beyond the usual.
I felt privileged to be one of the guests.
