The steamroller of the stoves
The road has not been easy. Not easy. “I am Dani García, cook” , thus begins the documentary _ Deconstructing Dani García _ that portrays the particular Born Again (his fall and resurrection of him) of this chef born on the edge of the espetos in Marbella. We review his particular via crucis: after the closure of Manzanilla in New York and the complicated departure from Calima, Dani returns to kilometer 0 , to the ordeal of the cook without a restaurant, and now what?
His house
ONCE UPON A TIME IN MARBELLA
His house is called Dani García Restaurant and it is Puente Romano Beach Resort & Spa (its whitewashed walls and its garden with hundreds of tropical flowers) who bet on the enthusiasm and ticking of this crazy hat in the kitchen. His home is DG Restaurante and that is where this story should begin, precisely in the square (the nerve center of the hotel) that houses the thousand-year-old (S.I AD) Roman Bridge that gives its name to his house, shelter from him.
Puente Romano Beach Resort & Spa
Last visit, that weekend in March (A four hands) but let's go to the important thing: its menu Habia una vez start with a golden key and a locked box. Beyond the packaging (an aesthetic and a storytelling that drinks from the sources of Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland ) twenty dishes are presented on the table, twenty short stories in search of a happy ending.
The journey in DG is long and each station is a fable. Its iconic Nitro Tomato ("When nitro tomato met oyster ceviche") and the succession of dishes (accompanied by cards from a deck, let the storyteller not stop) where I perceive a Dani freer than ever: recreation of Andalusian cuisine from the perspective of a “creator”, Dani remains faithful to his obsession with the product and maybe (maybe) a little less focused on the technological pirouette (I'm glad) . Crab chateaubriand, gazpachuelo from Malaga, whiting from Marbella, fried sea bass with black pepper... and that Up that is impossible not to fall in love with:
BiBo BRASSERIE
The truth ahead: I'm happier in BiBo —the brasserie that completes the gastronomic offer of Dani García in Puente Romano. His "little brother" (although the expression is insufficient) it is a more casual, thug and relaxed space where Dani places no limits (neither geographical nor conceptual) on his tapas. International and radically free cuisine, where there is a cheek curry, oyster with white garlic, a sea bass tiradito or a fantastic shrimp omelette. Better, if possible, at the bar.
The most thug space of García
I know that both spaces are not comparable (room, product, concept, service...) but reflection is inevitable: a gastronomic restaurant (two or three Michelin stars) must offer us an absolutely radical experience (I am thinking of Diverxo, Mugaritz or Nerua ) so that the trip makes sense, because otherwise… why not always BiBo, StreetXo or Canalla? why pay three times more if the experience is not memorable?
I almost cried with her Brioche , so I beg Dani (I demand!) the recipe : “A good crumbled and sautéed chorizo with sweet onion and our Chipotle sauce, in a very special brioche that we make in the restaurant and topped with a fried quail egg”.
Brioche
AND THE MCDONALD'S
I ask Dani about his dream restaurants: “Alinea, Mugaritz and El Celler de Can Roca” and also, of course, about his notorious collaboration with McDonald's (before which so many gastronomes shouted heaven): the version of his hamburger "Grand McExtrem Bibo by Dani García" which (don't doubt it) is the first of many collaborations that we will see between multinational restaurants and flashy chefs. It is what it is. Dani is sincere: “I am super satisfied, selling between 50,000 and 60,000 BiBo hamburgers a day in Spain is to be more than satisfied, I would do it again”.
More than 7 million hamburgers.
The unavoidable question: does this serve to democratize haute cuisine or to betray (a little) the values of that gastronomy that we love so much?
Yourselves.
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The teacher, creating