ICC2011: Coverage of Spanish Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz's Mainstage Presentation

150 Minutes to Feel at Spain's Mugaritz

The ultra-creative Andoni Luis Aduriz explains his inspiration

Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz is a seasoned presenter; he travels to four or five congresses a year, so he knows how to put on a good show.  He's also committed to being a role model for young chefs in search of a dream. Chef Luis Aduriz (the first of his two last names is Luis) opened Mugaritz in 1998 near San Sebastián.  The restaurant has since become a laboratory for Experiential Cuisine. At Mugaritz, guests have "150 Minutes to Feel." Choice is taken off the table, as guests are served a 22-course tasting menu, with no à la carte options. And as Chef Luis Aduriz explains, their palates can't choose how they'll perceive taste. But each guest can choose how they will interact with the experience. Says the chef, "At Mugaritz, we want people to feel."

Chef Luis Aduriz demonstrated some of the exciting work that his team has developed at the restaurant, particularly experiments with heat-resistant molds and calcium carbonate. And together with his head of R&D, Javier Vergara, he tossed an example of those experiments, an egg constructed from mannitol sugar out, into the audience. The shells were part of a five-year Mugaritz quest to perfect a "broken egg" dessert, composed of the shell, cured egg yolks, egg yolk ice cream, and a mad scientist's zeal for innovation.

"We don't show this here to say, "look what we´ve done,'" said Luis Aduriz. "We do this so that anybody who wants to can pick up the thread. The possibilities are endless."

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ICC2011: Coverage of Spanish Chef Ángel León of Aponiente

Exploring Sustainability in Spain: From Plankton to Olive Pit Fuel

Chef Ángel León finishes a dish in his interactive workshop

Participants of Spanish Chef Ángel León's workshop on Tuesday got a taste of the sea in its purest form. The sustainability-minded chef passed around a bowl of bright green goo to sample, a paste made from 100 percent plankton. Participants described the flavor of the protein as salty, briny, and fresh. León pointed out that when he sows and harvests the plankton (the smallest contributor to the ocean's food chain) the impact on the ocean food chain is minimal, and he demonstrated how the naturally protein-rich plankton works as a substitute for butter in risotto made with Spanish bomba rice and finished with Sherry vinegar. He then passed around charcuterie he makes using fish, a product he developed in response to children's aversion to fish, Muslim dietary restrictions (from his seaside restaurant, Aponiente, you can see Morocco´s coast), and pescatarians suffering from chorizo envy. León also used a blowtorch to light olive pits (a by-product of olive oil production) on fire to create Smoked Oil, which he drizzled over sardines and crackers and served to the audience.

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ICC2011: Coverage of Adam Tihany and Elizabeth Blau Business Seminar

Holistic Hospitality and Emotions in Hotel Design and Service

Will Blunt discussing the ins and outs of hospitality with Elizabeth Blau and Adam Tihany

Let's face it, nobody goes to fancy restaurants just because they're hungry. A successful fine dining restaurant is equal parts food, service, and design. So began the business seminar on holistic restaurant and hotel design led by Adam Tihany, the Picasso of restaurant interior design, and restaurant developer Elizabeth Blau, whose work over the past two decades has redefined the culinary landscape of Las Vegas. Moderated by StarChefs.com Managing Editor Will Blunt, Tihany and Blau shared their experiences working with chefs, such as Heston Blumenthal and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and detailed the evolution of Las Vegas, which has transformed from a sand to sea gaming mecca and to a family-oriented outre-Disney World to "a truly vibrant American city," according to Tihany. Tihany and Blau opened up the floor to questions from the participants, including a group of design students from Parsons The New School, which generated lively debate on competing aesthetics in restaurant, hotel, and casino design, and the future of casino and hotel design in Asia.

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ICC2011: Coverage of Spanish Chef Ángel León and Chilean Chef Rodolfo Guzman

Chef of the Sea: Cultivating the Ocean's Purest Flavors

Ángel León shares the Ocean's Purest Flavors on the Main Stage

Spanish Chef Ángel León walked onto the Main Stage, greeted the audience with a warm smile fresh from Spain’s southern Atlantic coast, and introduced close to 10 cutting edge techniques and concepts out of his kitchen at Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María outside of Cádiz. He bases his cuisine on the ocean’s food chain, from the smallest sea creature (picture plankton) up.  Squeamish audience members wrinkled their noses at the green plankton paste passed around for them to taste, but on the tongue it was salty, briny, buttery, and delicious. Beyond being the first chef on Earth to sow, harvest, and serve plankton, León seeks out other sustainable means of respecting the sea, like transforming the kind of catch deemed unfit to sell by fishermen into menu items at his restaurant. He also transports harbor-bound, bottom-feeding (and hence, petroleum-filtering) grey mullet to a natural reserve “paradise” fish sanctuary. After a time there, the fish bellies go through total detox. León’s team then harvests their unctuous fatty bellies and produces charcuterie that parallels pork-based boudin blanc or chorizo in texture and whose flavor carries a touch of brine—which made a splash with a crowd full of hungry ICC attendees. To close, we got a deeper glimpse into the heart of Aponiente: “He sido cocinero desde pequeño. Pero fue primero el mar que me llamó.” (I’ve been a cook since I was little. But it was the sea that first called to me.”)

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ICC2011: Coverage of Chilean Chef Rodolfo Guzman of Boragó

Chile's Native Son

Rodolfo Guzmán shares the time and place philosophy of Boragó on the Main Stage

A young Chilean chef took the stage, earnest, focused and transparently passionate. He began by introducing in a few words the work at his restaurant Boragó in Santiago. Culinary foraging trips across the scaly, notched spine of Chile’s 2,650 miles have resulted in the discovery of long-forgotten foodways and 32 different kinds of mushrooms and other ingredients previously unknown outside of indigenous cooking. The Sixth Sense struck the audience with a shiver when Chef Rodolfo Guzmán began to demonstrate his food. A simple preparation of native kra kra fish from Easter Island visually represented time and place, as terroir from sea-to-plate blended with the ancient technique of cooking over volcanic rocks. Rainfall in cold, near-Arctic Patagonia transformed into a bite-sized snack and visible wisp of mentholated air. Guzmán´s final dish started as a story about the discovery of a tree in the middle of nowhere. It’s special to the Mapuche people because its seed pods produce a haunting spirit call in the wind. In the video that followed (painstakingly produced by Guzmán), the chef demonstrated a chocolate “seed pod” with a rattle that echoed through the hearts of all those in attendance, a global community of chefs in love with food and cooking.

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ICC2011: Coverage of Austin Chef Philip Speer of Uchi

Tasting Nostalgia: The Sixth Sense Ingredient

Chef Philip Speer of Uchi, Chef Johnny Iuzzini of BravoTV's Top Chef Just Desserts also featured

When you take one of the most innovative chefs (Philip Speer) out of Texas, whose restaurant,Uchi, plays around with notions of nostalgia—and invite him to contribute his ideas on the Sixth Sense—you get a workshop packed with chefs from around the country, including New York’s own hometown hero Johnny Iuzzini and New York Rising Star Pastry Chef Shawn Gawle ofCorton. Everyone had a bite of the dessert inspired by Chef Speer’s grandpa: Tobacco Cream, Scotch Gel, Maple Budino, Candied Pecans, and Huckleberry Coulis, which provoked ICC 2011 presenter Alex Talbot from Ideas in Food to pipe up with a recipe request. ICC attendee Chef Scott Miller of Max’s Oyster Bar in Hartford, Connecticut called the workshop “phenomenal.” “The techniques were great. You can’t get this close to other chefs by watching TV.”

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ICC2011: Coverage of Spanish Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz

Feast and Feeling at Mugaritz

"Walnut" made with a silicone mold at Andoni Luis Anduriz's Feast and Feeling Interactive Demo

Andoni Luis Aduriz’s workshop was essentially a recreation (or translation) of the context that defines Mugaritz (a highly anticipated stamp on the passport for many a chef traveling to Spain). With only a few products and techniques, Chef Luis Aduriz sought to share a few examples of the innovations coming out of the Mugaritz kitchen in the past year through a demonstration of his experiments with stocks, calcium lime, and wax molds. He showed how Iberian pork stock, when blended with a boiled down kudzu solution (kudzu root, whose transparency when boiled and elasticity when brought to high temperature, impressed Luis Aduriz’s team) and a little sugar, could be dehydrated to form a “crunchy sauce,” which goes from pork-cracklin’ crispy to a nourishing, brothy sip with one bite. Aduriz also discussed a method for making molds with mannitol; the molds—which produce realistic copies of walnuts, eggs and nails—are so strong they can be heated to 140˚C, meaning that food can be cooked inside the sugar shell. Chefs from across the country, including Johnny Iuzzini, Iacopo Falai, and Alex Talbot, and Canada’s Patrice Demers had plenty to take away.

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ICC2011: Coverage of Nordic Cuisine

Nordic Naturalism and The Emotions of Time and Place

Chef Björn Franztén and Daniel Lindeberg speak about the inspiration behind their Nordic cuisine

Slaughtering fish using the Iki Jima method. Snow white Swedish mountain cattle. Tent-dwelling farmers. Langoustines living in the walk-in for nine days, and served raw. Each of these things is a snapshot of one of the 24 seasons of the year at Frantzén/Lindeberg in Stockholm, as seen through the eyes of Chef-partners Björn Frantzén and Daniel Lindeberg. These two young chefs brought their humble message of respect for ingredients and "for the genuine, passionate people behind them" to the Main Stage on day one of ICC2011, and left an audience inspired. Their message, plus their tips on cooking horse meat with a hunk of coal produced from Swedish fir, and also on keeping fresh fish for up to twenty days at a time, makes Sweden seem like an ideal culinary destination for the young and hungry chef. The pair may only serve up to 20 guests nightly (and just Tuesday through Saturday), but as Lindeberg put it, "We are not being millionaires in this business."

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