Chefs

In just four days the third season of 'Stranger Things' had already swept Netflix records, showing that its popularity is still in top form. In the style of summer blockbusters, the series gives what it promises by squeezing the nostalgia factor, and that also plays in favor of derived products.

There are few lovers of gastronomy who do not know what ramen is, a soup with noodles of Chinese origin, but developed in Japan, which is already in the half-world menu. But finding a good one on this side of the planet is still difficult. The element that defines the Japanese ramen, and that differentiates it from the original soup that Chinese emigrants brought to the island of the rising sun, is the broth.

The name of Ángel León returns to the news with the recent publication of positions 51 to 120 of the list of 'The World's 50 best Restaurants', in which Aponiente debuts occupying the position 94. In the absence of a week to know the top 50 of the best restaurants in the world, Spain is expected to maintain the same number of tickets as last year, with some movements.

The third edition of 'Gastronomy is feminine' has focused on the role of women in the gastronomic story, understood in its broadest sense. Because gastronomy is part of the Spanish cultural identity and also a basic pillar of its economy, and thousands of women from all fields contribute to it, from chefs and sommeliers to communication, marketing, tourism, agriculture or industry workers.

His name is not well known in Europe, but in the United States it is already a legend. Leah Chase, pioneer African-American chef and civil rights defender, died on June 1 with 96 years of age. Its family restaurant, the Dooky Chase of New Orleans, has been serving the same honest cuisine to all kinds of diners for more than seventy years, now becoming a pilgrimage center and part of the country's social history.

It seems that Netflix is ​​still committed to starving when we connect to its platform offering new gastronomic content. It must be recognized that the culinary programs engage, especially when they transmit that shared passion for good food; 'The Chef Show', which opens on June 7, seems to follow that same line.

In 2014, chefs Daniela Soto-Innes and Enrique Olvera opened the Cosme restaurant in New York, where avant-garde Mexican-inspired dishes are served. Just five years later, the Mexican cook has been named the best female chef in the world by The World's 50 Best Restaurants, the annual list (alternative to the Michelin Guide) prepared by the British publishing group William Reed Business Media and originally appearing in The British magazine Restaurant.

Although the Michelin Guide was born in 1900, it was not until 1920 when it started talking about restaurants, opening the way that has led the tire company to be the largest and most important gastronomic prescriber in the world. Until 1931, the three-star system we know today was not implemented, which became effective in the 1933 edition of the guide, which then only collected French restaurants.

We are in one of those cuquis multipurpose spaces that so much abound lately in Madrid. The intensity of the lights descends and a locution, which imitates the cadence of a mass, recites the following: “Take and eat all of it. Well, this is the hake of the alliance. Hake cooked and frozen, it is true.

Joan Roca is today one of the best chefs in the world, but if something is clear as soon as you know him, he is a humble and hardworking person, who is very clear where he comes from: a food house located in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts from Girona, where piecework was worked to move the family forward.

Mercado Little Spain, the great gastronomic project of José Andrés and the brothers Albert and Ferrán Adrià to bring Spanish food to Manhattan, will open its doors on March 14 at number 10 of Hudson Yards. Direct to the Palate José Andrés' NGO distributes food on the border with Venezuela and asks not to politicize humanitarian aid Inspired by the Spanish markets, the 3200 m2 space will house three large restaurants under one roof: Firewood, which will be the first restaurant in the city where paellas will be cooked in wood fire; Sea, dedicated to fish and seafood; and Spanish Diner, a more informal restaurant where you can try all kinds of Spanish dishes, with the tortilla as the protagonist.

It opened in 2011 in the heart of San Francisco with only eight tables, a somewhat controversial work philosophy and almost immediate success. The first Michelin star for Atelier Crenn would arrive that same year and has just received the third, making its chef and owner, Dominique Crenn, the first woman to achieve such recognition.

It is one of the sacred icons of traditional Spanish cuisine, but the winner of the V International Joselito Championship for the Best Ham Croquette in the World has been Javier Ugido, a Toledo chef of fusion cuisine, who wraps the bechamel in panko. And he is not the only one: six of the seven finalist croquettes of the contest, which has just been held in Madrid Fusión, were battered with this type of Japanese breadcrumbs.

Renew the kitchen without losing the traditional roots: that is the discourse that seems to guide the work of the great names of the current Hungarian cuisine. José Carlos Capel told us that Hungary represents the pantry of old Europe, but the Central European country wants to claim a renewed gastromy that also seeks its place.

One of the most experimental songs of El Niño de Elche sounds at a thunderous volume. It is the soundtrack chosen by Macarena de Castro to present his work in Madrid Fusión, with a video that wants to move us to the environment in which his kitchen is developed: the rugged north of the island of Mallorca.

In 1997, Celler de Can Roca presented its first vacuum cooking dish: a cod packed in oil and cooked at the moment. As Joan Roca has recognized in Madrid Fusion, the pioneer of the technique was Georges Pralus, who wrote a book about it in 1995, but Celler was the first restaurant that managed to apply sous vide to haute cuisine, and became famous for it.

Chef Eneko Atxa, one of the most outstanding current talents of Basque cuisine, met Xabi Uribe-Etxebarría, founder of the artificial intelligence company Sherpa, eating, drinking and, ultimately, staying up. One day Uribe-Extebarría received a call from Atxa, from his Azurmendi restaurant.

With the little brown of taking the stage after Adrià, Ricard Camarena went one more year to the Madrid Fusion meeting to present the work he has had on his team in the last year. And, as usual in the kitchen of the Valencian chef, it is a work defined by the investigation into the roots, the environment and, above all, the product of proximity.

They say that Riccardo Camanini, chef of the Lido 84 restaurant, devours before sleeping the books of Apicio, a Roman gourmet who lived at the same time as Jesus Christ; by Bartolomeo Scappi (1500-1557), considered by many to be the greatest cook of all time, or by Georges Auguste Escoffier, the gentleman who is in the origins of the haute cuisine of the Novecento.

Elena Arzak is, with the permission of Carme Ruscalleda, our most important cook. More than 20 years ago, the one who will always be known as Juan Mari Arzak's daughter began working with her father, leading the haute cuisine restaurant with the greatest experience in the Basque Country. And although Juan Mari's shadow is elongated, we would do badly to belittle the importance of who has been leading de facto fires of the mythical establishment for several decades.