London, the Spanish Main (Dish)

LONDON/SPAIN It was astonishing to realize that several of the people one knows in Spain, who had until then been thought well-travelled and knowledgeable about food and wine, had never heard of Ferrán Adriá or his restaurant El Bulli (photo), a sort of cathedral for gourmands on the Cost Brava where the waiting list for a table was six months long. Some had vague recollections of having read about him and it, others looked blank. Adriá, of course, is the Spanish chef who, with other innovative colleagues and competitors, created a new cuisine that took the feeding troughs of the rich and famous by storm. Until this year, he had been named the world´s top chef for five years in a row. That's like winning the World Cup five times in succession, or five Wimbledons, or ... you get the picture.>

Ferrán Adriá announced last year that he was closing El Bulli temporarily, to concentrate on further development of his other restaurants and, especially, of his theories.

Over the years El Bulli and the other Adriá properties have taken on a number of under chefs, pastry chefs and related staff, to whom working for the master is akin to learning to sing with the Westminster Boys Choir -  although a few women chefs have also graduated from the El Bulli school, as we shall see.

These 'graduates' will have naturally been employed by the world's top hotels and restaurants. Others will have set up on their own, probably passing through one or more of these establishments beforehand. Many of them landed in London.

"Until about fifteen years ago, you had to fly to Madrid, Barcelona or the Basque Country to eat well. But there's been a revolution. Now all you need is the Tube in London to get to the best in Spanish cooking," says Malcolm Broadbent, a City banker who loves to eat.

Indeed, the revolution began relatively quietly in 1995, when a restaurant called Cambio de Tercio opened in 1995. Until then all there  were a bunch of so-called tapas bars that did little more than remind holidaymakers of their sojourns to the Costas at prices that could too often be ten times that of their beachfront counterparts. That, and a couple of supposedly home-cooking places set up for nostalgic españoles in London. Nowadays, Cambio de Tercio attracts the likes of Rafa Nadal, Fernando Alonso, other world class Spaniards - probably even Miriam González Durántez, i.e. Mrs. Nick Clegg.

Most of these new restaurants, however, have sprouted annexes in the shape of a tapas bar. It will have more to do with marketing than cuisine as most of them charge prices that not at all resemble their more humble cousins in Spain (photo of  Tendido Cero, one of the 'annexes' at Cambio de Tercio).

That multicultural city, host to the cuisine of the entire world, probably holds the largest concentration of the best in Spanish cooking outside Spain. As well as the most promising Spanish chefs in exile.

The door was open thanks to the availability of 'exotic' foods from all parts of the globe, a fact that took the British by their collars and dragged them into trying foods other than what thirty or forty years ago had been considered among the very worst of the gastronomic universe. No more boiled cabbage and tasteless meats, they said at the time. Well, some did.

"The British are not fools, for all that they are so often portrayed as understanding nothing beyond roast beef and fish & chips," says Alberto Criado, head chef at Cambio de Tercio, whose success lies in having given traditional Spanish stews a modern twist, adapting them to fresh ingredients available in London, rather than in Spain. "They know quality and originality and appreciate both. They are also very well mannered; they will rarely complain. If they don’t like it, they will simply not come back," says Criado. "But they just will not try callos (pig’s cheeks), no way ... " he adds with a wicked smile.

Among the offerings at Cambio de Tercio (the name defines the changes between the three parts of a bullfight and is widely used to mean 'a change of pace') are gazpacho with lobster and cherry ice cream, a terrine of caramelized foie with smoked eel, oxtail with red wine and texturised apple, an edible gin and tonic ... "Cooking is art as well as technique, but above all," he says, “it is interpretation, playing with tastes, colours and textures." One can hear Ferrán Adriá in the background.

A shop in Borough Market became the foundation stone for the Brindisa Group, co-founded by José Pizarro, known in London as El Conquistador, and not just for his name. Having conquered London, he would one day like to conquer Spain, he says with a far away look. For the time being, however, Britain is plenty. His group has several establishments throughout the capital and he has published an enormously successful cookery book. Pizarro is also a regular on BBC.

This conqueror arrived in London ten years ago with four hundred euros in his pocket, a sum he now charges just for showing his skills to aficionados of good food. "Spain is culturally fashionable right now," he says, "and food is part of the culture. People want to learn, want to try different things, but always with good quality as its banner. The present and future is an honest kitchen, with products available at the market; to be able to eat out as excellently as at home when cooking to the best possibilities."

El Conquistador is now heading out on his own, separating from the company he helped build from scratch. and in which he will maintain an interest. He plans to open a restaurant and a tapas bar in the shadow of the Tower of London, the latter inspired by the bars that surround the La Boquería market in Barcelona. One will be called José, the other, Pizarro. ¡Claro que sí!

Nieves Barragán spent most of her childhood and adolescence in the family kitchen at Santurce, in the Basque region. She watched her mother make stews for her invalid grandmother, watching and learning. She came to London thirteen years ago to learn English and, as they say, the rest is history...

Today she is one of the city's best known chefs. She runs the kitchens at the Barrafina and Fino restaurants in Soho, which are part of the Murano group, whose head chef is Angela Hartnett. Like Pizarro, with whom she coincided at the now-defunct restaurant  Gaudí, her dictum is also a deep respect for simplicity and good quality ingredients. She chooses her menus daily, depending what is available at the market and its quality. "You can’t fool the British client, they know quality. The restaurant is at its best when you can hear, see and smell the cooking; and the best cook is the one who goes about with a piece of bread in one hand, and a spoon in the other," says Barragán, whose cookery book is published in the Spring.

Santiago Guerrero came to London seven years ago ("It's the longest I've been anywhere") and now heads the kitchens at one of Ibérica’s two restaurants in Marylebone - the other is run by Spaniard Nacho Manzano. Born in the Philippines and brought up in South East Asia, Guerrero is familiar with all those magnificent Oriental spices and is an admirer of that consummate Frenchman Michel Roux. But he is also a figurehead in what has become known as Spanish Fusion, of which Ferrán Adriá is if not the father then at least its figurehead. "The first thing a cook should do," says Guerrero, "is to grab a spoon and try, try, try. After that, it is a matter of finding the balance between the artistic facet, the ego that is implicit in all creative activity, and good business."

To him the most rewarding thing is when everything comes out well, when a complicated idea becomes simple, and when the customer proclaims that he or she has eaten as well as in Spain. "The restaurant business is unique inasmuch as one is only as good as the last plate you cook," he explains. "The smallest detail is as important as the largest. One doesn't get ahead imitating others. It's not enough to make just a croquette, even if that is all it is; a croqueta needs a combination of technique and tradition, just as a stew does, for example."

Guerrero sees the Chef as the leader of a team, to whom each step has been explained and from whom nothing should be hidden. This, he adds, can be done without shouting or ill temper, "because there is lot of pressure in a kitchen. That’s why it is important to work in a good team."

Shades of one of Adriá's principal philosophies.

Alberto Hernández comes from Salamanca but he is a globetrotter. He has worked in the USA with the famous Spanish Chef José Andrés, in Paris with Bocuse and Ducasse, and in Spain with Adriá and Berasategui, another doyen of modern Spanish cuisine.

He arrived in London a couple of years ago to be part of one of the most ambitious culinary projects to date: a luxury Spanish restaurant called Aqua, with seating for four hundred, right on Oxford Circus.

A biologist by trade if not by vocation, he is happiest in the experimental phases of his kitchen, where, he says, he enjoys "organization and calculated pressure, experiments with tastes, and the sensation of inventing, creating what makes people happy." He says that a classic background is fundamental as a support for building dishes on Spanish roots. "You have to know how to buy, as hake from Suances (considered the best in Spain) is not available everywhere," points out Hernández. Cooking should be understood as mathematical: it is simply common sense and what matters is the result, however you get there."

That sounds like something one might have heard at El Bulli, from Ferrán Adriá in person.