2014 International Chef Of The Year: Andoni Luis Aduriz

Andoni Luiz Aduriz: And not only in Spain, and not only in the 20th and 21st centuries. If we work intelligently, the Basque Country will remain a [gastronomic] reference in the future. In my opinion, the keys are the scale of the country, which is small, full of diversity, and open to the world; the character of its people and their ways, who are reserved but friendly and sincere; and the philosophy of life: We are a small population who respect the differences among ourselves, but also entrepreneurial, creative, and hard-working. If to all this you add a passion for cuisine unique in the world, a reflection of which are the gastronomical societies [clubs of dedicated amateur cooks who meet to cook and share meals], it makes the Basque Country an irresistible destination for food lovers.

 

A corkscrew can serve to open one of the best wines in the world, but also to kill your neighbor... with tasting menus, the same thing can happen. Some people use them to display a selection of the best dishes to their restaurant's customers, and some people use them as a way to clean out the larder. From the perspective of diner, I prefer that the chef at the restaurant where I am dining chooses what I should eat, because he or she is the one who knows his or her products and which techniques he or she has mastered. In 10 percent of the cases, I'm wrong, but in 90 percent I eat better than I would have if I had chosen from a sea of abstract listings.

 

With the culinary avant-garde, the issue is not economics so much as mental attitude. I know rich people who have no interest at all in restaurants serving creative cuisine, and I know people of very modest means who save all year for an experience like the one offered at Mugaritz. This is not something that happens only in the field of gastronomy, but also in culture. In our societies, art, architecture, poetry, classical music, are not for mass consumption, but there would be no way to explain what we are as a species if we didn't have these disciplines. Avant-garde haute cuisine, if it's real, authentic, and of good quality, will be more and more exclusive; that will be the result of us doing things well. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't make an effort to explain what is being done.

 

The neuroscientists with whom we work constantly remind us that we are memory. I am a sequence of patterns and ways of thinking, intertwined, starting with my family, continuing with the training I had in cooking school and what I learned from my teachers in the restaurants where I spent time, among whom was Ferran Adrià. Beyond the recipes, techniques, and values that he gave me, he pushed me to have freedom of thought, creativity, and critical awareness. People think Ferran is a visionary who is looking at the moon waiting for inspiration, but the truth is he is one of the most industrious and self-critical people I've met in my life. He has always spurred me to seek new paths. He is a genius because, beyond his own interests, he is always thinking in terms of collective evolution.

 

Michel Bras, Thomas Keller, Pierre Gagnaire, and so many others, like my colleagues of my generation who are at the forefront: Massimo Bottura, Grant Achatz, Daniel Humm, Pascal Barbot, Alex Atala, Gastón Acurio — to name a few. Of course, it's also exciting to see how young people are pushing hard, like Rodolfo Guzmán in Chile, Rafael Costa in Brazil, Paco Morales in Spain, Matthew Lightner in the United States, Jose Luis Gonzalez in the Philippines... who, together with the guys at Mugaritz, inspire me and oblige me to keep concentrating. Fortunately, there are better people, brighter and more dedicated, all the time, and this is very good for gastronomy.

 

 

When I started as an apprentice cook, almost 30 years ago, I had to travel to see the world. Thirty years later, if you stop and observe what is going on around you, you will see that the world is passing in front of you without your having to go get it. Without completely being up to date (and I seriously doubt that anyone is), the most exciting thing I am seeing is the change in the business model. One no longer needs to make a choice: eclectic cuisine is as inspiring as thoughtful innovation. The review is over; now we need journalists to help us build the contexts and the whys of things. The world we inhabit is pluralistic, fast, and exciting if we give it values, even if we don't understand them at first.

 

Your restaurant, Mugaritz, is consistently ranked as one of the top restaurants in the world. Meanwhile, you are involved in other restaurant projects (Abadía Retuerta in Ribera del Duero, for instance), you are a prolific author of books on food, you have food products (like New Food Spray) and collaborate with AZTI-Tecnalia on new projects, etc., etc. Is it no longer enough for a chef to have a restaurant? Must chefs diversify, both for financial and creative reasons?

Many years ago, a friend of mine told me "Concentrate on doing things right, and everything else will come later." When you don't have much time, all you can do is to make sure it's quality time. That's what I try to do with my family, friends, or colleagues: give them 100 percent of my attention when we spend time together, without being distracted by anything. But from a professional standpoint, I try not to waste any time. If I had to develop a casual dining project today, no matter how much talent and experience I had, if I had to start from scratch, it would take months to develop. A trick I use is to store concepts or ideas related to projects that aren't even in future planning yet on my cellphone. They could be ideas for dishes, notes for an article about sustainability, or ideas to develop a beer. If I had to start these projects from scratch, it would take months or even years to submit something worthwhile, but when real life is giving the orders, in a month you can synthesize years of work related to the project.

 

Mugaritz has been around for 17 years, and there hasn't been a year when we didn't get an offer to open a restaurant somewhere in the world, from Japan to Russia through the most unexpected places on the planet. In 2015, if all goes well, we will open in the United Arab Emirates. We are also considering an offer in Holland and things are buzzing with the Abadía Retuerta LeDomaine, which has just been granted its first Michelin star, and with Healthouse, a wonderful high-level project on haute cuisine and health that we have in Estepona, in southern Spain. America is not in our immediate plans, but I wouldn't rule out landing there. We have many friends who encourage us, like José Andrés, Enrique Olvera, and Wylie Dufresne.

 

An answer to a question very similar to this, published in a well-known U.S. media outlet, provoked a storm of bad reactions and a host of immense critiques, so I will try to be concise and clear. I think it's a privilege to possess both visibility and voice, along with resources, talents, and abilities. What I should do with all these attributes is to try to improve the world. But we must not forget that this is a free choice, more a matter of conscience than of necessity, and can also be addressed on a small scale, at home and at the individual level, anonymously. For example, whenever we buy a product, we decide on one means of production over another. There's no use complaining about the bad things others do if you don't act responsibly yourself. The world transforms itself through millions of small decisions, rather than the actions of a few.

 

Let me dream... I would love that the legacy of Mugaritz, which goes far beyond Andoni Luis Aduriz, would be an ode to effort, respect, loyalty, solidarity, prudence, and, especially, seeking and creativity. Maybe not today, but I am convinced that the collective work we do, despite the mistakes we make, will be tremendously inspiring to others in the future.

Please answer the following Pivot Questionnaire-style questions in as few words as possible. Have fun with it... or be absolutely serious. Completely up to you:

 

Diversity. What my brain desires and enjoys depends on the moment and the context. I am so abnormal.

 

I remember doing homework in the kitchen of my parents' house while my mother prepared food. There are many, many aromas and flavors stored in my brain, and, according to my neuroscientist friends, these are distorted and well-conditioned by affection.

 

I find it hard to eat insects. I respect them as the cultural heritage of many peoples and in my travels I've eaten them, but it's not something I like.

 

When my mother was eight years old, the Spanish Civil War began, and she was displaced, a refugee, and often hungry, which left a large mark on her soul. When she saw that her little son was neither a good student nor had any vocation, she thought "This guy is a disaster," and then, "but he will never go hungry." So she decided to enroll me at the Cooking School of San Sebastián, because if I were in a kitchen, I would always have something to eat — so I'm a cook.

 

Who told you that it's a knife? My favorite tool, like yours, is memory. If necessary, you can cut food with the lid of a can.

 

Passion, critical awareness, capacity for suffering, and an irrepressible desire for happiness.

 

Many, many, many, many. From hake fillet with peppers, to confit chicken wings and fresh garlic toast, to a good burger or milk-fed veal.

 

Ask the question in reverse: What alcoholic beverage don't you like? Wherever I go, I eat and drink the local culture. I try to understand it and enjoy it.

 

¿Cuanta verdad necesita el hombre? by Rüdiger Safranski [a translation of the German philosopher's book Wieviel Wahrheit braucht der Mensch?, or How Much Truth Does Man Need?)

 

I don't believe in good and evil, but in situations that make people develop their best or worst selves. Basically, we are all heroes and villains. We take advantage of the benefits of the social, political, and technological developments that our species is capable of achieving, even as we suffer common delusions or tragedies. Human beings create heroes and villains. Be careful who you sit next to!