Hallucination or star-studded meal: this chef makes bizarre dishes
Is it art? Is it a moldy sandwich? Or is it a Michelin-worthy dish? The plates that top chef Andoni Luis Aduriz serves up will leave you seriously confused. The chef of restaurant Mugaritz is the grand master of trompe l’oeil—food that deceives your eyes.
In the heyday of molecular cuisine, this was one of the standard jokes: a grape sits on your plate, but it’s actually ossobuco, a fried egg, or a little balloon filled with salmon, lemon and something you could no longer quite identify. A bowl of stray stones turned out to be dessert, made entirely of chocolate, including the bowl. The whole meal became a rebus, because what you saw and smelled revealed nothing about what you were going to taste. As the courses (and wine pairing) went by, you even started eyeing your napkin and the floral arrangement on the table suspiciously: could those be edible too?
‘Sometimes a meal’
It’s nice that all that hocus-pocus seems to be mostly behind us. No more whizzes, pops and foams, less magic with molds and homemade forms. Until you see the work of chef Andoni Luis Aduriz. He’s no ordinary chef: his restaurant near San Sebastian has ranked highly on lists of the best restaurants in the world for years, with two Michelin stars on its façade. The chef previously worked at El Bulli, and he is especially passionate about art and theatre. He describes his restaurant as ‘A wonderful place, where we sometimes also serve meals.’
Contrast and tasting experience
He sees the dishes in these photos as works of art, not as a joke. ‘The dishes create a contrast between what your brain perceives and the flavour of the dishes. And that contrast makes the tasting experience much deeper.’
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- Take your salad to a Michelin-star level
Source: Fine Dining Lovers, photos: Jose Luis Lopez De Zubiria
