You may know him from the Netflix Original series The Final Table , or from the Michelin Guide. His restaurant, Mugaritz, located outside San Sebastián, Spain, has been on the top 10 of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants for 12 consecutive years. He has retained two Michelin Stars for Mugaritz since 2006, even while keeping the restaurant closed for four months in a year. If there were a culinary icon of current times, it would be Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz.
Andoni’s approach to food signifies the coming together of unusual concepts. His tasting menu at Mugaritz, for example, spreads over 20 courses: the items change every day, and 70-80 new dishes are introduced every season. Served in no set order, the food is created to challenge the diner. What looks like beer could be soup; what looks like crab could be potato; what looks like a grape could be a melon.
On a short visit to Delhi to present his maiden culinary offering in India, the chef presided over a gourmet experience curated for ITC’s Global Tastes initiatives. The 10-course interpretation of his menu at Mugaritz, created in consultation with Masterchefs of ITC Hotels, involved many Indian ingredients — onions, ladies finger, pumpkin, coconut, spices...
Edited excerpts from an interview:
How was it to cook for the Indian palate?
I got only two days (to cook); had I got a third day it would have been better and the fourth day would have been even better. Every time I cook, I like to add something new — some creative touches. On the first night, I used onion for one of the courses, but it turned out to be completely different from what we are used to. So the next evening, I had to change its treatment to suit the palate. You see, we all come from a very individualistic point of view and we see the world from that point of view.
Is there an Indian ingredient you would like to use in your kitchen?
My knowledge of India is less than that of an eight-year-old child. You don’t live in a country, you live in a continent. It is so rich and so varied and has so many ingredients that it will take me two lives to learn about it.
Having said that, at Mugaritz, we go into the theory of a dish and then go on to the practical aspect of it; and I am thinking of something as simple as chickpeas. When I came to India, I saw fresh chickpeas in the market. We had been theorising about fresh chickpeas all this while and here they were. So that is one of the many Indian ingredients that I would like to explore more.
You say that you cook to stimulate; what kind of stimulation are you talking about?
We want to stimulate the overall senses of our diners. We want to connect their emotions to their thoughts and want them to wonder what the food is all about.
Many years ago, there was a group of neuroscientists that had come to Mugaritz, including the famous Antonio Damasio. When he tasted the food, he said, “You have generated a sense of creativity and curiosity in me.” This was not only about the taste; we had stimulated other senses also. That’s what we want to do.
As Mugaritz is all about experimenting, are young chefs allowed to experiment in your kitchen?
We have creative spaces in our kitchens for people to experiment, but it is not done randomly without thinking. There is a process and a theory in place.
While all of us do a lot of creative things during the four months when the restaurant shuts, during the rest of the year also we have a team that works on it. We have recently added two people on the creative team. One of them joined only last year as an intern, but we saw promise in her and thought she could take us to the next level, so she has joined the creative team now.
When you let people work on their own, you do not know what kind of surprises you can get.
What is it about Basque that makes it a hub of fine-dining restaurants — the climate, the air, the water?
I can only speculate. And I will respond to this in parts. A restaurant should be in a place that allows it to be colonised by the environment — colonisation at the cultural level, by the people, and by the surroundings. Mugaritz, for example, is surrounded by woods, and all the elements of the forest impact the way the restaurant is.
Secondly, the summer in Pais Vasco is very long — it lasts for four months. Tourists, however, would come here just for two months. So the businessmen here brought in innovative ways to get the tourists to stay longer: like the film festival and the music festival. The restaurants, I think, also came up for partially that reason.
Also, every problem in our region is solved by sitting around a table. We love to eat and feed, and we resolve all our issues by sitting around a table and eating together. But like I said, I am only speculating.
Movies, Books, Music: You do so many things apart from cooking, how does that feed into your work as a chef, or does it at all?
It does reflect in my work, yes. To make even one dish I give about 80-100 ideas. For ideas, you need to learn new things and meet new people, people who have different thinking and different creative perspectives. When we research, I sit at a table with a journalist, a choreographer, a moviemaker and I place my thoughts on the table and they put theirs and that’s how we come up with new things.
I cannot just keep giving. I also need to learn. And that process can only happen if I interact with people. That is why there is a need for collaboration with people from other fields.
