BackWhy Spain is on top of the food chain
Catalan chef Guillem Vidal on why restaurants in Spain are hogging all the Michelin stars and the limelight
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Guillem Vidal literally grew up among pots and pans. “When I was very young, my parents managed our pig farm, where we made Ibérico ham, so my grandmother, who was a chef, used to look after me in her restaurant’s kitchen," says Vidal. After basic schooling in his hometown of La Fuliola, in Catalonia, Spain, he completed his degree from Barcelona’s Hofmann Culinary School and went on to work at several Michelin-starred restaurants in Spain, and later in the Maldives and Dubai. For the past year, he has been with the Hilton Beijing Wangfujing, overseeing its award-winning restaurant Flames.
Vidal was recently in India for a Spanish food festival at Mumbai’s Asado. Edited excerpts from an interview:
What is the one thing you learnt from your grandmother that you use in your cooking today?
From my grandmother I learnt the old style of making ragù (a vegetable and/or meat sauce used as a base in many Mediterranean dishes). In the olden days, the grandmas didn’t work and they had a lot of time to slow-cook these ragùs. The secret of making a good ragù is time—you need to cook the vegetables slowly, keep stirring and caramelizing them, then you add the beans or meat and cook very slowly again. You need a lot of patience to bring out all the flavours and make the perfect ragù.
Tell us about some of the popular dishes in Spain.
The most famous thing in Spain is the pork, rather, the Ibérico ham. It’s not a dish, but it can become one—just slice the ham and serve it with some bread and tomato, and you have an amazing start to the meal. Then of course there’s the paella, our seafood rice. The particularity of the paella is that you make the stock and cook the rice in the same pot. Paella originated in Valencia, but it’s now almost considered a national dish in Spain.
On the dessert front, the most popular dish is crema catalana—a custard-like dish of milk cream, eggs, vanilla and citrus aromatics, cooked very slowly.
What are the regional variations in Spanish cuisine?
The south of Spain, specifically Andalusia, is very influenced by the Arabs who came over from Morocco. A lot of their produce got integrated in our cuisine, such as aubergines, honey, even hummus. The Arabic style of crumb-frying is still seen in Andalusian cooking. I come from Catalonia, in the north-east, which is a little different from the rest of Spain (we don’t even want to be a part of Spain!). Catalan cuisine is more Mediterranean, with fresh vegetables and seafood, and pork-based dishes, especially inland.
What are some of the street food specialities in Spain?
Street food in Spain means tapas. Actually it’s not just food, it’s a lifestyle and a form of social entertainment. In summer, all the bars put chairs outside, and for €1 (around ₹ 70) you can get beer and a plate of tapas. Tapas vary across Spain, from Andalusia in the south to Pays Basque in the north-west of the country, where tapas are called pintxo and are normally served on top of bread, just like bruschetta in Italy. Tapa means a lid or a cover on top of a glass, and tapas originated as a piece of bread that we used to cover a glass of wine, to prevent flies from going in. It probably originated 150-200 years ago, when wine evolved from being a rich man’s drink to something that everyone can enjoy, and a tapas culture grew around that.
Spain is the only country that has two restaurants in the top 10 of 2015’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants List. What makes Spanish cuisine so popular?
Yes, El Celler De Can Roca in Girona was recently named the best restaurant in the world, and Mugaritz in San Sebastián was No.6. I believe it’s the quality of our produce that sets Spanish cuisine apart.
Spain is surrounded by three seas: the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Cantabrian (the local name for the Bay of Biscay). So our seafood is of the best quality.
Of course, we also have very good chefs. We have cooking classes in many of our universities, so our young people are now interested in cuisine and they train to become professionals—going to work at Michelin-starred restaurants to gain experience and keep learning and growing over time.
Which region would you say is the gourmet capital of Spain?
Definitely Catalonia. In the 1990s, we had Ferran Adrià of elBulli who revolutionized Spanish cuisine. Now we have the world’s best restaurant in Girona, which is in Catalonia—three Michelin stars for the last six years. San Sebastián was more popular in the 1980s and early 1990s, but today Catalonia is the most happening place in Spain as far as food is concerned.
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