Madrid Fusión 2015 Day 3: Tom Sellars 'Bread And Drippings,' The Willy Wonka Of Micro-Greens, Daniel Patterson On Local'l, And The World's Best Paella According To Joël Robuchon

"We don't eat many vegetables in Spain," said chef Rodrigo de La Calle from Madrid's Huerta de Carabana, kicking off Day 3 of Madrid Fusión with a kimchi demonstration. Kimchi seemed behind trend for a summit that thus far has featured fish exsanguination, Chinese cleaver cutting, and beef consommé with jellyfish, and that prides itself on being the lead reference point for modern gastronomy. More interesting was La Calle's interest in making his own black garlic, which he has been fermenting with black beer in vacuum-packed bags (at 78 degrees for 30 to 40 days), as well as a presentation by Tom Sellers of his signature dish at Restaurant Story in London, the conference's annual truffle auction, and a conversation with superstar French chef Joël Robuchon.

Sellers, the young Michelin-starred British chef who spent time at Noma and Per Se before opening his own restaurant, Story, singled out "identity" as the most important thing in food — "above technique, ability, and training," and explained that the "narrative side of food" is an integral part of his approach. He demonstrated Story's signature dish, "Bread and dripping," which consists of beef fat candles lit tableside that melt into a well to be sopped up with beef extract and homemade bread. It's a dish chef Sellers called more powerful than caviar and foie gras.

"The two most important things in life are actually the things you can't control: where you were brought up and who brought you up," Sellers explained. "For me this symbolizes that and my relationship with my father, which was on and off, and difficult at times. And it was not in candle form, but this was very much a food served on a Sunday or Monday following a family dinner. We'd save the beef fat and extract because we didn't have money and because that was the way it was."

This year's installment of the annual Madrid Fusión truffle auction presented an amusing moment. The hosts noted that while usually there is a black truffle and a white truffle auctioned off, this year because of the difficulty of procuring a white truffle, there were two black ones. A 400-gram (14-ounce) black truffle from Soria went for 5,000 euros ($5,700) to a Chinese gentleman from Hong Kong who, when prompted to come on stage, said he would like a white truffle too, much to the amusement of the organizers. The second black truffle (560 grams, or almost 20 ounces) went to a chef for 6,200 Euros ($7.080). Suddenly, a white truffle did materialize on stage (120 grams, about four-and-a-quarter ounces), and the Chinese gentleman, who had returned to the crowd, true to his word, won the bidding again.

Post-auction, the afternoon provided a lineup of headliners that included Yoshihiro Narisawa, Dani Garcia, Daniel Patterson, and Joël Robuchon, so it was all I could do to get away in between these heavyweights to get to the product booths that make up a large portion of the public draw of Madrid Fusión. As noted in yesterday's coverage, the upcoming Madrid Fusión Manila in April will be the first in Asia. So it makes sense for there to be a booth at the entrance introducing summit-goers to flavors of the Philippines. Among the tastiest bitese were the lechón (roasted suckling pig) with roasted liver sauce, and chicharróns (fried pork rinds for the uninitiated) that they urge you to dip in spicy vinegar, the latter producing a eureka moment for anyone who has never done it. Two products that many Westerners might struggle with are "gourmet tuyo" and "tabang talangka." Tuyo is a riff on traditional Filipino dried herring that has been packed in oil with garlic and peppers; tabang talangka is a pungent orange crab roe that they call "crab fat." "Filipinos like strong flavors because they eat these things with lots of rice," explained the booth rep.[pullquote:right]

It seems as though there's a jamón ibérico stand every 100 feet or so, but past several crowded bars upstairs and over the bridge there are some 40 or so booths and another demo stage, where it seems as though more commercial talks are being given. There's Alaskan salmon, sobrassada (the spreadable cured pork sausage seasoned with salt and paprika), a booth devoted to Korean flavors, another to selling products created by legendary Spanish chefs Albert and Ferran Adrià (the only appearance at Madrid Fusión 2015 by the famed brothers), as well as commercial booths for companies like Makro, the international chain of warehouse clubs that Americans will know as Pace Warehouse. Few chefs have the kind of branding that Da Dong Zhenxiang does this year, with a large white booth featuring his smiling face. I had a chance to experience the chef's food last night downtown at Zen Market with restaurant critic and editor of the West Australian Good Food Guide Rob Broadfield, and was left a little disappointed not to have experienced the roast duck he is so famous for. I'll tell you this: Dong is one tall man. I hadn't realized that the "Da" that precedes his name is actually a nickname that means "big." I don't need to explain the jokes you could expect to have followed.

Two other worthwhile booths deserved attention. First there's Koppert Cress, the Netherlands-based producer of food-safe micro-vegetables that supplied the legendary elBulli with many of the treats that made dishes there so special. Grazing at Koppert Cress is a truly original experience, each leaf, blossom, and stem providing more wonderful (and wondrous) bursts of flavor than you'd ever expect. A yellow Sichuan button or "peppercorn" completely numbs the palate and creates a sensation of salivation that doesn't actually seem to materialize. Atsina leaves start with an aroma of sage before a wash of sweet anis takes over your tongue. There are citra leaves that have an intense citric sweetness, and FroMage leaves that, no kidding, smell like funky cheese (and taste like it too, not my favorite and I love stinky cheese). A dushi button has the same rush of flavor and intensity as the Sichuan button does, but with an intense sweetness; kikuna leaves give off a carroty-and-celery aroma and flavor. There are salty fingers (salty!), bean blossoms (slightly sweet), floregano (orchid leaves that tastes like, well, oregano). Yka leaves are intensely blueberry-like, and Syrah leaves taste like the dry Basque wine Txakoli and have wonderfully lemony stems, also reminiscent of the skin from green grapes. Koppert Cress is like the Willy Wonka of plants as far as I'm concerned. I'll be surprised if more bartenders don't start using their products and anyone looking for new things to play with will be interested to see what they do with the new sea plants Annette Abstoss, Koppert's American-born Spanish representative, said the company is working on.

Then there was the Josper booth. Jospers are charcoal-powered ovens for indoor barbequing that come with testimonials from all kinds of famous international chefs. The Josper rep was a bit distracted, because chef Robuchon was supposed to be arriving any second, but he explained that the company has been making inroads in the American market over the past five years and have started being used by chef Michael Mina and at New York City's North End Grill.

I raced to the auditorium for a seminar by Yoshihiro Narisawa, whose restaurant Narisawa in Tokyo, Japan is widely regarded as one of the best in Asia (it is ranked 14th on San Pellegrino's 50 World's Best list and last ranked fourth on The Daily Meal's list of 101 Best Restaurants in Asia). He was doing a demonstration with "Chef Oryzae," actually aspergillius oryzae, the microbe you can thank for being the activating ingredient that turns soy beans into soy sauce and rice into sake. At an event with so many nationalities, translation is key, and at times, challenging. Unfortunately, chef Narisawa's demo was the first English translation so haltingly decoded that one translator had to take over for another, and too late in the seminar to help. Not having understood much of what chef Narisawa said, I can say that a meal I had at his restaurant in Tokyo last August was one of my favorite meals of 2014. Notable among many memorable dishes were the charcoal wagyu and a slightly sweet and fruity bread that cooks tableside over a candle.

For English-speakers, the next talk required no translation. Daniel Patterson, whose San Francisco restaurant Coi is 49^th on the San Pellegrino's 50 Best Restaurants in the World (and 48 on The Daily Meal's list of America's Best Restaurants), revealed details of the new fast food chain that he and food truck pioneer Roy Choi are working on together. Its name? "Loco'l, and you all know what that means, because it's crazy to do what we're trying to do," chef Patterson explained. "The point is to go to places where there is no good food and to provide food at a price point they can afford but that nourishes them."

Patterson introduced chef Kim Alter, formerly of Haven and Plum, with whom he is opening a new tasting menu spot in the former Stelline and Las Estrellas spaces on Gough Street in San Francisco. They cooked rice, tofu, and chopped vegetables for the audience, challenging themselves to make a healthy, inexpensive meal using just ingredients that they found 15 minutes before backstage, an approach they plan to experiment with at Loco'l.         

"We want to expand all across California first and then across the country and into the Northeast in four to five different areas," said Patterson. "We'll partner with chefs in those areas. We want to do this all over the country." Asked how he plans to source food for the fast food restaurant, he answered. "As we get bigger maybe we will change how people grow things. We'll start with one restaurant and then we'll open another, and then in four years when hopefully we'll have 20, we can answer that better for you."

Joël Robuchon is one of the biggest names on this year's list of presenters. His is the kind of name that gets food people excited, and you could tell from the windup that the president of Spain's Royal Academy of Gastronomy, Rafael Anson, was excited to be settling into a talk with him. The session went a solid 20 minutes and is too much to recap in its entirety here, but there were some notable things worth excerpting.

On how Robuchon got his start: "I started being a chef out of necessity. I was only 14 or 15. I was in seminary and I couldn't continue and I had to find another job. I was used to waking up early and praying a lot, and in the few moments of relaxation I had, I helped the nuns to cook. So I looked for a job in cooking because I thought it was relaxing, but when I started cooking professionally I soon learned that wasn't the case."

On the Guide Michelin: "We can criticize it, we can disagree about it, but in my opinion, the Guide Michelin is still the best."

On who makes the best paella in the world: "Everybody says that they make the best paella. But they say this particularly in Valencia. And it's true. There is one restaurant that I love that I have even called journalists at The New York Times to tell them to come and check it out: Paco Gandia in Pinoso, Alicante. He makes a fantastic paella. In the beginning, I didn't think it would be so good, I couldn't believe it was going to be so good. But I went and tasted it and it's cooked over the wood from the vines and that gives it a special flavor because the rice should only cook in the one centimeter of liquid with rabbit and snails, and it has a unique flavor that just can't be imitated. So if there is one that needs to be called the best in the world, this is it." (Purists might point out that what Robuchon is describing, while by all reports truly a wonderful dish, isn't paella; in the Alicante region, it is understood that paella is the provence of Valencia, to the north, and such dishes are known here simply as arroces, rices.)

On the San Pellegrino list: "I don't know if I should say this, but I don't think there's any legitimate distinction to the 50 best list. At its beginning, I was part of the jury and I saw what happened. There was a third part of the jury that were journalists, a third chefs, and a third who were people that were passionate about cooking. I looked at the rules, and we were obliged to talk about restaurants that we had visited within the past 18 months. I have to say that many jurors hadn't been to these restaurants but they talked about them because they heard about them or had friends working at them and I think that's cheating. That's not honest."

On his famed potato purée: "I never imagined I'd be famous, but I tried to be passionate. I was lucky to work with competent chefs who transmitted to me their knowledge, but there's also a luck factor. To become famous because of potato purée, not everyone can do that. Remember, there was this period when potatoes were prohibited in gastronomic restaurants. They were only served in hotels. We were told we shouldn't eat potato purée and the only thing we could do with potato was the mousseline potato. I was working on a restaurant that was not very expensive and I thought of side dish that would not be too expensive and it contributed to the fame of my restaurant. And in the American media, the first who talked about it The Herald Tribune — they wrote an article about it and many people came to my restaurant just to have the potato purée! And they'd have another helping for their dessert! Innovation is important, but maybe we should innovate with simple and popular dishes.

A few other Day 3 Madrid Fusión 2015  observations:
• Black garlic isn't the only thing chef Rodrigo de La Calle has been trying to ferment at Huerta de Carabana. He's been playing with fermenting black olives and oranges.
• The presentation by Leonor Espinosa of Leo Cocina y Cava in Bógota was a celebration of the cuisine and culture of her native Colombia. She stressed the variety of ingredients from her country's diverse terrain, showing off some small clams from the mangroves, among other things.
• Timo Siitonen and Kasper Salomaki of Helsinki's A21Dining (A21 is an apartment number, "It's a gateway to flavor journeys and taste sceneries," bartender Timo Siitonen explained) gave a puzzling demonstration, featuring a kind of new math. "Scenery is the combination of food and cocktails. One plus one equals three is very true for us," Siitonen noted, explaining that their menu reflects the four seasons, each inspiring a seven-course menu with paired cocktails that use the same ingredients the chef does.
• Dani Garcia presented on frozen textures, which meant frozen lychee powder, whiskey mousse, foie gras yogurt, and a frozen olive oil mille-feuille layered with white anchovies.

One of the last demonstrations on the final day of Madrid Fusión 2015 involved several preparations of angulas, elver eels traditionally enjoyed by fisherman in the Basque Country, that because of increased demand in Spain and Asia — and overfishing — have become a delicacy with prices, over the past four years, reportedly reaching around $520 a pound. Translation of remarks by chef Marcos Morán, the fifth generation to carry on the angulas tradition at the 1882-vintage Casa Gerardo in Prendes, in Asturias, noted different ways of killing the eels (with tobacco and with lemon juice to remove the slime that results from cooking them) and demonstrated a way of prepping them that he said started as a joke, cooking them with a hot broth and just dealing with the slime.

And with that, another year of Madrid Fusión is coming to a close. The auriculares are being closed up in their suitcases, the booths are shutting down, and someone is going to have to sweep up the impressive scattering of cigarette butts outside the Palacio Municipal de Congresos. As for tonight? A tapas tour. Let's see what kind of trouble we can get ourselves in. Patcharan, anyone?

All Madrid Fusión Coverage on The Daily Meal
Madrid Fusión 2015 Coverage: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3
Madrid Fusión 2014 Coverage: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3
Madrid Fusión 2013 Coverage: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3
Madrid Fusión 2012 Coverage: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3