Recipes with Roots to Cook the Future of Gastronomika

Viviana Varese opened the menu with an 18th-century jelly, Eneko Atxa prepared fried hake, Nacho Manzano served beans with wild boar, and the Disfrutar team made custard. Yes, San Sebastián Gastronomika Euskadi Basque Country remains a congress of avant-garde haute cuisine, but for some time now, chefs seem to have decided to look to the future through the rearview mirror. This does not mean, by any means, giving up creativity to merely reproduce ancestral recipes. The contemporary chef no longer seeks so much a twist of flavors and textures as to put their craft at the service of their environment. The twenty-seventh edition of the oldest culinary congress provided examples of how gastronomy can be both a tribute to the past and "a weapon loaded with the future," as its director, Benjamín Lana, likes to say.

A Donostia exultant in beauty, with the Cantabrian Sea raging and the sun bathing La Concha Bay, welcomed nearly 15,000 accredited attendees, more than 1,300 congress participants, and 300 specialized journalists attracted each year by the first major international event of the season. On this occasion, the theme evoked the tension between tradition and regeneration, inviting chefs to delve into their roots to let something new emerge. Nacho Manzano, a great renovator of Asturian cuisine, did just that, showcasing a cuisine that smells of river, forest, and corn. Inspired by the aroma of the fisherman who would drop by the family tavern or the wild boars that roamed the cornfields, he presented recipes of sophistication and technical virtuosity that can only be described as haute cuisine, but with a sensitivity and a view of the landscape that are born from memory.

This rootedness demonstrated by the Manzano family is what has allowed that tavern founded by his father, Marcial, who passed away a few months ago, to become one of the great tables in the country. The house is already experiencing a generational shift that Nacho wanted to stage yesterday in the Gastronomika auditorium, giving prominence to his nephew Jesús, son of his sister Esther and head chef in Arriondas. "It means a lot to return to this congress that has inspired us so much in this very special year," said an emotional Nacho, with the three stars finally embroidered on his jacket and occupying an indisputable place among the greats.

This connection with nature, with producers, and with the identity of his land is what drives Eneko Atxa's cuisine, celebrating two decades of Azurmendi. "If anything hasn't changed in these twenty years, it's the inspiration from our tradition and Basque cuisine; our DNA doesn't have to be better than our neighbor's, but it's what makes us different." He indulged in cooking purrusalda, squid, fried hake, and sheep's curd. In his style, of course, silencing those who consider that reinterpreting the inherited legacy is old-fashioned. Maca de Castro, on the other hand, strives to illuminate new recipes that shine a light on that unknown Mallorca, which is the best backdrop for her cuisine: "It's a pure, fragile, luminous, and resilient island; our responsibility as chefs is to adapt to its rhythms and not the other way around."

Inspiration can come from the landscape, from family memories... or from history books. Viviana Varese has drawn inspiration from 18th-century Italy to design the gastronomic proposal for the Passalacqua hotel, on the shores of Lake Como. In the same house where Bellini wrote his operas, she cooks timbales filled with pasta or rice, vegetable jellies, puff pastry meats, or sabayons. Dishes that are lavishly decorated, evoking opulence and extravagance, but which she adapts to contemporary times with freshness and delicacy. The display of silverware, sauceboats, and porcelain reminds us that the table is also a space of representation. The place where, in one way or another, we celebrate who we are.