Text & Photographs by Gerry Dawes ©2008

In 2003, The Sunday New York Times Magazine cover asked, “Is Spain the New France?” and carried Arthur Lubow’s “A Laboratory of Taste” article about elBulli’s Ferran Adrià, Spain’s ultra-modern cocina de vanguardia maestro. Adrià’s espuma de zanahorias (the Times cover shot of, a glowing red-orange carrot foam served in a crystal vessel); mango raviolis made to look like egg yolks: melon, pear and peach “caviars,” spherified “olives”; and nitrogen-frozen cocktails suddenly grabbed culinary headlines around the globe. Adrià and Spanish modern cuisine were propelled in the gastronomic stratosphere.

Accompanying Adrià’s rocket ride into another culinary dimension were plenty of skeptics and detractors who did not understand what was going on in Spain, claiming that the Spaniards were selling “flavored air” and that Adrià himself was destroying Spain’s “national cuisine.” But, since Spain’s culinary ascendancy, because of the fame of Ferran Adrià and a sizeable clan of like-minded fellow Spanish chefs, a whole new genre of modern food emerged–including modernized traditional cuisine – attracting a steady stream of international chefs, food writers and food aficionados to Spain, and in its wake an awareness that Spanish traditional cuisine was some of the best food on the planet.

Since few gastronomic travelers coming to find out what all the fuss was about could actually get into elBulli–which has 2,000,000 annual requests for 8,000 potential reservations–the rest fanned out around the country, experiencing modern Spanish cuisine at Arzak, Akelarre and Martín Berasategui in the Basque Country, at Sergi Arola’s La Broche in Madrid, at Joan Roca’s Can Roca in Girona and at Carme Ruscalleda’s San Pau north of Barcelona. Many ventured on to experience what Raul Aleixandre at Ca Sento (Valencia), Quique Dacosta at El Poblet (Denia, Alicante) and María José San Roman at Monastrell (Alicante) were doing. Professionals also came to conferences such as Madrid Fusión (maybe the world’s top annual culinary summit), the chef-driven Lo Mejor de la Gastrónomía in San Sebastián and Roser Torras’s superb bi-annual BCN Vanguardia in Barcelona. And many young chefs began to choose Spain over France as their first choice to do their stages. In their travels these culinary pilgrims also began eating in Spanish traditional cuisine restaurants. They soon discovered that, while Spanish modern cuisine can be creative beyond belief and is often delicious as well as innovative, it is often the great traditional eating experiences that leave the most indelible imprint in the minds of most travelers.

"Traditional cuisine that does not evolve will disappear. Traditional Spanish cooking is in constant evolution and it is in its best moment. Without traditional cuisine, we would not have the distinctive modern cuisine that we see in Spain today."

— José Andrés

Ferran Adrià and his fellow modern cuisine chefs caused a tide to swell that lifted all boats, including and especially the traditional cuisines of this multi-faceted, very diverse country. A whole generation (and members of the previous ones) of Spanish traditional cooks, inspired by the success, techniques and focus on top-quality ingredients of the vanguardistas, began to expand their culinary horizons. New ingredients, techniques, philosophies, ideas, focus and professionalism, along with a generous sharing of knowledge and skills fostered by the modern cuisine chefs, began to take hold in traditional cooking.

The result over the past decade has been an evolution that really amounts to a revolution in Spanish traditional cuisine, whose preparation, presentation, taste and creativity have been changed for the better forever. To a great degree, this has been accomplished without losing that unique regional character and definition that cause Spaniards and dedicated foodies to drive scores of kilometers out of their way just to experience such dishes as lechazo asado (roast suckling lamb) in the Ribera del Duero, wood-fire grilled rodaballo (turbot) in Getaria (near San Sebastián), langostinos de Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz, Andalucía), salmorejo (a thick gazpacho-like sauce) in Córdoba, arros con conejo y caracoles (paella with wild rabbit and mountain snails) near Pinoso (Alicante) and calçots amb romesco (fire-grilled, young ramp-like onions with romesco sauce) around Valls in Tarragona province (link: see article on iconic dining experiences in Spain).

In the process of all those culinary professionals and aficionados descending upon Spain a la Indian Jones in search of the Holy Gastronomic Grail, they also discovered traditional Spanish cuisine and products in local restaurants and tapas bars; visited such markets such as Barcelona’s stupendous La Boquería, the exceptional Mercat Central of Valencia and San Sebastián’s La Bretxa and San Martín; and experienced even more food adventures in the shops and market bars in and around these great temples of good eating. In the process, these traveling gastronomers–among some 1,000,000 Americans and 60,000,000 tourists who visit Spain annually–developed enough appreciation for Spanish food products and wines that several Spanish specialist food importers such as tienda.com (www.tienda.com), Despana Brands (www.despanabrandfoods.com), The Spanish Table (www.spanishtable.com; now with stores in Seattle, Berkeley, Santa Fe and Mill Valley) and importers of Spanish wines have proliferated and flourished.

All this is having its impact in the United States, where many chefs such as David Bouley, Terrance Brennan,Wylie Dufresne, Dan Barber, Alex Ureña and Ken Oringer have been inspired by Spanish cooking. Brennan, who says María José San Román’s La Taberna del Gourmet in Alicante is “the best tapas bar in Spain,” was inspired to begin serving tapas amd small portion plates such as his paella spring roll at the bar of Picholine, his three-star restaurant in Manhattan.

Antoinette Bruno, founder and director of Starchefs.com, says “The whole concept of small plates is really a Spanish tradition and not just one of the hyper-modern chefs.” Many people, including a lot of American chefs, were attracted to Spain by Ferran and the vanguardia chefs, but the attention on these chefs attracted people to Spain. Because of that you then had this entire revolution in dining in the United States in restaurant after restaurant in serving tapas and small plates.”

Tapas bars, perhaps the hottest new food movement in the United States right now–especially well priced in this down economic climate–are springing up all over the country (there are more than 50 in Manhattan alone). Reports about the“tapas phenomenon” reports have come in a steady stream over the past five years around the U.S., as tapas bars have sprung up like mushrooms in a wet autumn. In fact, setas a la plancha (grilled mushrooms), gambas al ajillo, pinchos morunos, jamón Ibérico, croquetas, patatas bravas, pimientos de piquillo peppers and hundreds of other small portion Spanish--and often not so Spanish--dishes have become ubiquitous and the word tapas–seldom confused with “topless,” as it was even a few years ago--has become so common it has taken the place of hors d’oeuvres in press usage–maybe because tapas is easier to spell!).

Some have Spanish modern cuisine touches and there are plenty of American influences, but most are at least based on modernized traditional versions of dishes being served in the tapas bars of Spain. Chef-partner Seamus Mullen of the red-hot, always packed, Boquería, whose stylized, tradition-inspired tapas have been such a hit in Manhattan, underscores the oblique Spanish modern cuisine influence on tapas and small plates degustación menus. “There is no doubt that the current interest in the U.S. in Spanish food is largely because of the attention to Ferran Adrià and the other Spanish cocina de vanguardia chefs. However, though we aren’t seeing restaurants emulating that style in New York, the tapas experience here has gained traction on the heels of the Spanish avant garde.”

Ironically, the new-wave tapas phenomenon is not just confined to the United States, it has even overtaken Barcelona, a city that twenty years ago was not known for its great tapas bars. When I went to Barcelona prior to the Olympics in early 1992 with Bryan Miller (then The New York Times restaurant critic), Chicago Tribune Food Editor Bill Rice and Chicago Chef Gabino Sotelino of Café Ba-Ba-Ree-Ba fame, we had to scour the city to come up with a respectable list of tapas bars and many of the ones we found were colmados or gourmet specialty shops--akin to Zabar’s and Despana (in New York) or Zingermanns in Ann Arbor, Michigan–which had tables at which you could sample the food items that had just been purchased, weighed and rung up. At that time, Barcelona tapas offerings were paltry compared to Madrid, Sevilla and San Sebastián, whose old quarter has the Europe’s largest concentration of bars–almost all of them offering pintxos (what the Basques call tapas).

Over the past decade, a slew of tapas bars, hot wine bars with tapas and even vanguardia tapas specialists have opened all over Barcelona, sometimes several on the same block. And, ironically, in Barcelona and around Spain, a number of the vanguardia chefs have opened traditional food tapas bars, among them Ferran Adrià’s brother, Albert’s red-hot Inopia and Tapas 24, run by Comerç 24's Carles Abellan, in Barcelona; María José San Román’s La Taberna del Gourmet (next door to her one-star Monastrell) in Alicante; and Madrid’s Sula, a partnership between ultra-vanguardia star Quique Dacosta of El Poblet in Denia, Alicante and Joselito jamón king José Gómez, whose ham plant is in the Guijuelo (Salamanca) Ibérico ham region (a running joke has it that Quique slices hams and José cooks!)

Owner Yann de Rochefort and Chef-partner Seamus Mullen of New York’s Boquería caught the tapas bug in Barcelona. Mullens says, “We were inspired by Quím de la Boquería and Bar Pinotxo (two famous market bars in La Boquería), which are among our favorite spots in Barcelona. We wanted to be able to translate that energy and immediacy of cooking and what Yann calls ‘the informal dining attitude that people love about Spain’.”

As to those who thought modern Spanish cuisine would destroy tradtional cooking, perhaps they should consider this. When Americans landed on the moon, it was an ultra modern outer space adventure at the time and culmination of years of brilliant forward-vision thinking, experimentation, innovation, evolution of techniques and modern technical skills. That “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" did not mean that we all suddenly began to experience space flight, plan vacation homes on the moon, nor eat a steady diet of Astronaut tube food, though all the innovation associated with space missions did impact our lives. The same goes for the Spanish cocina vangaurdia movement and Ferran Adrià’s rocket ride into culinary space. They may have taken us to a moon-walking style of gastronomy, but they didn’t destroy traditional Spanish cooking, rather Adrià and his fellow gastronauts provided the inspiration that enriched and enabled Spain’s cocina tradicional to evolve to its current stage, which is the best it has ever been in its history. In my forty years of traveling in Spain, I have never tasted better tradition-based food than I am eating in Spain these days.