Quique Dacosta cooking the memories of Alejandro Sanz.
In 2003, the chef Quique Dacosta was able to materialize a dish that he calls The animated forest. A name that is understood as soon as that forest is seen and appears on the table, of incredible virtuosity and beauty, but that for the natural chef from Jarandilla de la Vera and adopted in Dénia was the triumph of something he had been trying to achieve for years : Dacosta caught on that plate “a memory, a moment, an experience, a landscape, a tactile sensation”, everything that took him to his birthplace and eating it not only moved him, it moved other people. "That's when I realized that emotions were a tool in the kitchen," he explains he.
For Dacosta, who in 2019 has achieved **his fifth Michelin Star** (three at Quique Dacosta Restaurante, two at El Poblet), cooking is ingredients and feelings. Since that 2003 he has pursued the idea of transforming emotions into flavors. And from that personal and gastronomic objective the program One life, one dinner (premiere on Amazon Prime Video on December 17, co-production of The Mediapro Studio) in which The Star Chef cooks for six stars from different fields, transforming four vital moments from each into unique dishes.
Najwa Nimri, Dacosta's first guest.
But “this is not a cooking show”, he warns by phone from his new restaurant in London, Arros QD. "If someone approaches him looking to learn how to cook, he has a bad time, right?" She laughs. “It is true that the reason is to sit at a table and chat and, obviously, there is a creative process that is to be inspired by the most important moments in the lives of these people; and it is true that everything is narrated from the perspective of the kitchen…”. But he doesn't go to the kitchen.
"It's not a talk show either. She – she adds –, because I am not interviewing the guest at any time, in many cases they are friends and I would not feel comfortable, I do not consider myself a journalist, much less, and I respect that profession a lot to assume that role ”.
Andrés Velencoso stars in another episode.
So what is One Life, One Dinner? “I would tell you that It is the naturalness of the processes that arise in our restaurant: look for inspiration, look for products that are like his colors for a painter, cook them with them and communicate with my client, who in this case the client is the guest. That is my natural language, that of the kitchen”. And the program, in fact, except in the case of the episode of Alejandro Sanz, It always happens in his Quique Dacosta Restaurant.
A GASTRONOMIC BIOGRAPH
The program or series is divided into six episodes, each episode a guest, starting with Najwa Nimri and ending with Alejandro Sanz . In the middle, the bullfighter José María Manzanares, the tennis player Garbiñe Muguruza, the model Andrés Velencoso and the actress Inma Cuesta. He chooses some of them because they are friends (“Like José Mari and Alejandro”, he says), he knows Najwa, Inma and Garbiñe for their art, they intrigue him, they inspire him and they had been waiting to meet Andrés for a long time, he says. "The six of them are successful people, they have it, they have had it, they work for it," says Dacosta. But each one has experienced it in different ways. And this is how it looks in the dishes he has created.
Dacosta, master of stoves and memories.
Dacosta repeats the word a lot “nuances”, those in which the secret is, the difference. For example, both Najwa and Alejandro cook two dishes inspired by their success and, however, the result is nothing alike. Najwa's is a “bacchanal”, a seafood platter to savor with your hands; Alejandro's is a wood-baked cornbread, with butter and caviar, as a representation of the “luxury of his fans”.
“Each person is a different world and there is a job to know what has happened to him”, he explains. Dacosta chatted with them, “over wine, coffee, on the phone”, and chose the four moments that he would cook for each one. “Trying to make gustatory psychoanalyst, to know what the moments they are telling me taste like And now, from there, with those flavors, those aromas, those nuances, I have arguments and material to go to the market to buy products, and I try to move myself with the weapons that a chef like me has treasured throughout his professional career” .
The tennis player Garbiñe Mugurza with the chef.
The idea of the program is from this self-taught cook. “It was born from a season at Quique Dacosta Restaurant in Denia where I cooked my moods, what had happened to me in my life or in recent months”, he develops. “All those tools that I had managed to recount my own moments, my own emotions, are the ones that I somehow use as automatisms, in quotes, to cook theirs. What does it mean? That when, for example, I come close to remembering Alejandro's mother, I ask him about her and he tells me how he cooked, his traditional stews, that when he was a child he used chard and they were like a caress, he says it in a way natural, he doesn't realize it, but chard and caresses are staying with me”. And she ends up cooking him a dish that she calls Caress of chard. "And when I put that plate in his hand, when Alejandro picks it up, he gets goosebumps."
"It's a bit of magic what you do", Najwa Nimri tells her, which she disarms at the table, getting her to open up about success and failure. "It's like a photo album with more magic" , says his friend Alejandro Sanz. Dacosta becomes a "gastronomic biographer" of these stars who, in the face of respect and pleasure for good cuisine, for good food, are honest as never before. And, incidentally, the cook also opens up to the viewer.
Inma Cuesta opening up in front of Dacosta's kitchen.
“Every episode is me: we started the other way around, in the first one, with Najwa, with a dish of mine that reflects the current Quique Dacosta and we ended, in the last one –with his grandmother, his 'mama Mari'–, with the memory of a fish soup that I I hated and that my grandmother cooked on the most festive days,” she says. “I am the common thread of the series, It didn't make sense for me to be just a mere painter of guest moments."
DISHES WITH STAR
As a memory of the experience, Dacosta will add some of his dishes to his menu. It is confirmed that the Chard Caress that he prepared for Alejandro Sanz will be in the next season of Quique Dacosta Restaurante. Each guest chose the one they wanted to stay. "It's normal, in the end, It is a tribute to them and they want the dish to last, which is how difficult mine is because it is very ephemeral, but they want the moment to last and belong to everyone”.
Jose Maria Manzanares and Dacosta.