The Daily Meal's Chefs Of The Year For 2014: Sean Brock And Andoni Luis Aduriz

In choosing our Chefs of the Year, we ask ourselves which two chefs, one in America and one from the international scene, are the game-changers, the pioneers — the culinary standard-bearers? Who most embodies the pursuit — and achievement — of culinary excellence? The Daily Meal's editorial staff posed these questions when we launched our inaugural Chef of the Year awards in 2011, and have continued to ask them every year since. As in years past, we turned to previous honorees to ponder these questions along with us, and the results are pretty exciting.

 

The 2011 award for American Chef of the Year went to Chicago's Grant Achatz for his continually inventive cooking and for his efforts to change how people look at restaurants. In 2012, the award was given to José Andrés for myriad reasons, including his devotion to innovation and experimentation and his charitable works. Last year, Dan Barber received the award for being a passionate and influential advocate of responsible, farm-fresh, ingredient-driven cuisine. These chefs' international counterparts in 2011, 2012, and 2013, René Redzepi, Massimo Bottura, and Albert Adrià, in that order, were honored, respectively, for securing the top spot on the World's Best Restaurant list from elBulli for a second time, for being one of the most innovative chefs in the world, and for striking out to illustrate a legacy of his own after earning his stripes at elBulli.

 

Considering the pace of innovation and how quickly the restaurant scene changes, narrowing down these distinctions to just two chefs is a very difficult task every year. There is never a dearth of possible winners in the culinary landscape. Some cook regularly; some dream, create, manage, and imagine. All contributed to a year of exciting food developments.

 

Towering figures of the contemporary culinary scene — both storied and still relatively new — were considered once again. In America, David Chang was up for the honor because he's David Chang, er, because he continues to significantly advance the culinary landscape through his endeavors. Stephanie Izard is still bad-assing it up in Chicago with Girl & Goat and Little Goat, where she serves delicious food with amazingly names like "kimchee and bacon and eggs and pancakes Asian-style breakfast tasty thing" and "breakfast spaghetti with clams, crab, eggs Parmesan, guanciale, and bok choy" (and that's just breakfast). Another Chicagoan, Paul Kahan, makes some of the best food in one of America's great food cities with his various restaurants while leading an increasingly rare I-don't-do-food-TV life. Christopher Kostow has reinvented his Napa Valley restaurant and serves some of the most underrated fine food in the country. And Michael Symon was considered for animating the restaurant scene in Cleveland (and now Detroit), and for being one of best and most generous of well-known celebrity TV chefs.

 

On the international scene, Alex Atala is raising awareness of Brazilian ingredients (we can look forward to much more attention being focused on this part of the world during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio); Heston Blumenthal is taking The Fat Duck on the road temporarily from the English village of Bray near London to Southbank in Melbourne  (and meanwhile reinventing The Fat Duck back home); and, with three stars from the New York Times' Pete Wells and three thriving restaurants in Mexico (one of which, Pujol, is commonly considered the country's finest), Mexican superstar chef Enrique Olvera was a strong contender. Meanhwile, Anne-Sophie Pic, having regained the third Michelin star of her family's heirloom restaurant Maison Pic, has set her sights on America, and Davide Scabin of Combal.Zero in the Italian town of Rivoli and Mulino a Vino in Manhattan's Meatpacking District deserves an award for his cacio e pepe bombolone alone.[pullquote:right]

 

Ultimately, though, with guidance from our six previous honorees, our choice for American Chef of the Year was Sean Brock. A risk-taker, a proponent of Southern ingredients, and an advocate for modern technique, Sean Brock represents American culinary pioneering in one of its hottest, oldest, and proudest culinary traditions. Our choice for International Chef of the Year was Andoni Luis Aduriz, who receives this award for his innovative thinking and approach to food, his leadership and creativity, and the fascinating food journeys he offers intrepid, open-minded diners.

 

We're thrilled to offer these honors to Brock and Aduriz, both of whom would tell you that they don't do what they're doing for the sake of awards. We reached out to ask where they, and their cuisines, are heading, to discover in where we might expect these standard-bearers to lead their colleagues in 2015. In the following interviews, learn about their takes on tasting menus, whether they think chefs should be socially and politically active, and more, and read their answers to a few quick, Actors Studio-style questions about, among other things, their first food memories, their heroes and villains, their favorite sandwiches, and what qualities they look for when they're hiring a chef.

 

Read on to find out more about The Daily Meal's Chefs of the Year for 2014 and previous honorees.

 

 

Interview with Chef of the Year, America: Sean Brock — In this interview with Sean Brock, the chef explains the magic of Southern cooking, the difference between his two Charleston flagships, and his most important inspirations and mentors as a chef.

 

Interview with Chef of the Year, International: Andoni Luis Aduriz — In this interview with Andoni Luis Aduriz, the chef discusses what makes the Basque Country such a culinary powerhouse, the influence of Ferran Adrià, what he'd like his legacy to be, and philosophizes about tasting menus using a corkscrew metaphor. 

 

Interview with Chef of the Year, America: Dan Barber — In this interview with Dan Barber, the chef discusses whether chefs should be socially and politically active, anticipates some of the issues that may take center stage at the G9 summit in Brazil next year, the different menu approaches he takes at Blue Hill New York and Stone Barns, his upcoming book, and the attempt made by the farmers at Stone Barns to create great foie gras without using the controversial gavage technique. In this interview with

 

Interview with Chef of the Year, International: Albert Adrià — In this interview with Albert Adrià, the chef discusses the changes at his restaurant 41º and whether he considers it to be a continuation of the spirit of elBulli; whether he would ever open a restaurant in America; his plans to open a Mexican restaurant; and what era he'd like to visit for its food if he could time-travel.