Avant-garde redux

There is avant-garde cuisine … and then there is the art of Chef Dani Garcia.

At Madrid Fusion in Spain last January, it was implied that perhaps avante-garde cuisine had reached its peak, with no less than Madrid Fusion founder Jose Carlos Capel asking: What is post-avant-garde cuisine?

Perhaps the question remained unanswered because, as Marbella-based Chef Dani Garcia proved at the Dinner with the Stars of Madrid Fusion Manila hosted by New World Manila Bay last April 4, there is no limit to the creativity that can be achieved in the field of culinary arts.

Dinner is not just dinner but rather a platform to showcase one’s art.

New World Manila Bay transformed its ballroom Monday night into a culinary gallery for Garcia.

After registering, guests were taken to the hotel ballroom foyer with displayed images of the evening’s theme: The Little Prince—yes, the novel by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

After cocktails, guests were ushered into another room they called the “sublimotion room” where a wall-to-wall LED installation transported everyone to the beaches of southern Spain’s Costa del Sol where Garcia’s restaurant is located (Marbella, Spain). This was where guests, at the onset, met the chef.

“I don’t like to speak English because my English is horrible,” the humble chef said, smiling. Then he proceeded in fluent English: “Welcome to the south of Spain, where you can find probably the best tuna in the world … also, in Andalucia, (you can find) the best ham in the world …” And without much ado, mounted LED tabletops were slid over for guests to, right then and there, partake of his display of tuna tartare flavored with drippings of jamon iberico.

Experiential art

In one fell swoop, Garcia demonstrated how technology, literature, and the visual arts now come together with food for the avant-garde dining experience. I am not exaggerating when I say that it was surreal.

Arzak, whose founder Juan Mari Arzak is considered the father of modern gastronomy in Spain, also employs technology in his menu: red mullet is placed atop an iPad-looking tablet that has a video of water so it seems as if you are picking up the mullet from the sea. But Garcia and the New World Manila Bay Hotel took this a notch higher by employing a floor-to-ceiling 180-degree LED experience.

Soon, though, Garcia made clear that his cuisine was beyond gimmickry, ensuring that the guest also savored excellent cooking. What he delivered was a marriage of visual trickery and tasty food, without ever becoming too outlandish nor understated; and always sticking to the theme.

First, an ode to the Little Prince quote: “All humanity could be piled up on a small Pacific islet.”

This was brilliantly expressed through a black carving of Mo’ai, the  monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island centuries ago. Like Mugaritz’ dish of stones, you are made to wonder what it was made of—in fact it was simply potato but made delicious with a pairing of caviar.

Another curious dish was entitled “Sharpening the pencil.” True food art, Garcia made the dish look like the wood shavings of a Mongol No. 2 (well, ok, much bigger). So you wonder what it was and will get the surprise of your life to find out that it was eel.

“It tastes like liver,” Pepper Teehankee said and the table agreed. In fact, truffle was mixed into the dish. Then CNN’s Paolo del Rosario mused, “Maybe this is referencing the scene where the Little Prince draws an elephant inside a hat. The pencil used to draw and the eel representing the elephant.” Impressive analysis although Garcia himself later said, “You can interpret it any which way you want!”

Modern gastronomy

A disciple of El Bulli’s Ferran Adria, Garcia exhibited flair not only for design but also for molecular gastronomy. Soup was gazpacho with a “nitro tomato,” with metallic jelly making it so shiny and red that it almost looked like Dorothy’s slipper (remember the Wizard of Oz?).

And then dessert included hand-carried lemon candy, too detailed to recreate outside their kitchen, which was used to contain the sorbet for the dish “Our Lemon Froze.”

In spite of all the chemistry going on, it was still easy to fall in love with Garcia’s cooking because he remembered that people, at the end of the day, want to eat.

So the main course of sea bass and oxtail ravioli, both incredibly filling while looking dashing on the plate, hit home. We all left our tables impressed, still musing on the intricacies of the various dishes.

Most of all, we were inspired by the heart of it all. While Garcia proved to be a master of plating and experiential art, he hit us with what was, in the words of the Little Prince, invisible to the eye.

The Dani Garcia experience was nothing short of phenomenal.