Ángel León, the chef of the sea
Searching for Sugar Man is a (wonderful) documentary that tells the story of a man no one ever knew. It is also the story of an obsession, of the most basic love of music; of failure and dreams that we do not live. They don't arrive.
angel lion . You know very well the story of this salty man born in the Bay of Cádiz and living in El Puerto de Santa María. She is portrayed in the (essential, if you ask me) beautiful book dedicated to her by the Montagud publishing house: El chef del mar. His journey starts in Seville, sails to Bordeaux and reaches El Faro and La Casa Del Temple in Toledo. Finally, aponiente . His house. His sea, his crew, his Puerto de Santa María.
Then the glory. Lights. Aponiente is chosen by The New York Times in 2011 among The ten restaurants in the world that are worth buying a plane ticket for and The Wall Street Journal places it among the top ten in Europe. Michelin. Repsol. The homage of the flat major; of the gastronomic pens, of the noise of the blue bird and -most importantly- of the client who waits for his table like a child for a gift from Melchor and his colleagues. One expects everything from this restaurant, which is a Nautilus of emotions, plankton, discards and the sea on the table. Eating is also dreaming, of course.
Arcadi Espada says: “I can't write signature cuisine without the words falling apart. But nothing more true and unique. Now in Spain There are only two authors in the kitchen, Ángel León, in Aponiente, and David Muñoz in DiverXo . Everything else is franchises. Exaggerate? Well of course. But you have to understand, damn it; and it is that this Aponiente is a toy that we want to play a thousand times. A million times.
A game that has to be played there, facing the sea. What am I saying, under the sea. For that -and for so many things- I hope you will forgive me for what I am about to (not) do. I can't (I don't want to) name a single dish from the 2013 Grand Menu 'Cravings of a sailor on land'. It would be unfair to the child who reads this and waits for his table in Aponiente. Not a clue, not a dish, not a spoiler to spoil a nuance of this unique bathyscaphe ride to the bowels of his kitchen.
The Crew of Aponiente
I want to talk about Angel. From this madman on a mission: cooking the sea: “make the kitchen that I always dreamed of, a tribute to the sea from the purest marine biological reality at the mercy of everything, to deliver my true self, the one I always fantasized about… A vision of the sea in the 21st century”.
And it is that beyond his history and his future, beyond the gastronomic universe and his salty homeland, one thing fascinates me about this sailor: ** his absolute conviction of an ideal. His madness (his obsession, rather) ** translated into an absolutely radical, hieratic and Thomist coherence. Not one millimeter yields to what is coming at him (covers, interviews and spotlights). Ángel León and his Holy War, his Camelot sunk under the sea. That unshakable faith in something better (more beautiful, truer) is worth more than all the stars in the world.
Aponiente or how to cook the sea