Quique Dacosta will lead the restaurant team of the future Mandarin Oriental Ritz in Madrid
We need hope like eating, we need to get excited about trips, restaurants and experiences because it is very good to take refuge in Pretend it's a city (don't miss Fran Lebowitz and Martin Scorsese on Netflix) but nothing can replace the total and synesthetic experience that is to be happy around a table.
Because this will happen (because it will happen) and we will continue to want to pack our bags to be happy eating and drinking; and we will do it (this is very clear to me) with an eye on all those timeless sensations that sneaked into the The Immutable debate: beauty, harmony and sensations that make your skin crawl …and I think there is no doubt in the face of the evidence that few places are as given to joy as a restaurant. We are not going to be so naive to see reality: the sector is perhaps facing the worst crisis in its history, but perhaps precisely That is why we have to look ahead and focus on the openings that excite us the most this impossible year.
In Madrid some of the most interesting will be under the shelter of a hotel: perhaps the most dazzling will be the Mandarin Oriental Ritz whose gastronomic direction will be in charge of Quique Dacosta, recently awarded with the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts . Very good news for the Forum and for the passerby of the Art Triangle (the Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Reina Sofía). A classic cuisine restaurant under the Palm Court, afternoon tea (which is what the Ritz is for), a champagne-bar for just twelve diners, its most creative proposal in the gastronomic and the most traveling cuisine in the garden: the Ritz Garden.
The thing is about hotels because another long-awaited opening is Firewood by Dani García at the Hyatt Regency Hesperia Madrid , specifically in the space previously occupied (I have not recovered from this) Santceloni; Leña will be a steakhouse format, a restaurant whose DNA will be the embers and the genre with names and surnames. Curious turn of the Madrid bourgeoisie: back to the grill of all life.
Madrid is the Castellana but also what happens on the other side of the river. It is precisely that— #Across the river — one of the quiet war cries of our greatly admired Narciso Bermejo, creator of Macera and the rebirth of Palentino and now in search of another Madrid away from gentrification and clichés in the Puerta del Ángel neighborhood , there he coordinates the creation of various locals, orchards and neighborhood workshops from his agency Substratum : well understood gastronomic counterculture. Watch out for Narciso's steps because this guy has a foot and a half in the future.
The future Leña restaurant by Dani García at the Hyatt Regency Hesperia Madrid
One of the things that has surprised us the most (because it speaks a lot and well of how the hotelier of race is: resilience, adaptability and talent for survival) throughout this course has been, is being, how large and small gastronomic groups are turning towards take away and delivery ; they are there Dabiz Muñoz's Goxo, Pakasa by Cesar Marti n o Armando Delivery by Nino Redruello (Fismuler) —they have often mounted with The Legend of Armando's Escalope at home (“leave that pan and bring me the paellero, but not just any paellero, but the biggest of all”) and precisely the family behind The Wide he is preparing the opening of the Molino de Pez Restaurant in Barcelona hand in hand with Invisible Architecture, on Diagonal with Paseo de Gracia.
In Valencia, one of the great gastronomic marriages of the city has been dissolved, ten years later: the Honrubia family leaves the management of Komori (the Japanese restaurant of the Kabuki group in the Westin hotel, which remains in the hands of Hiromi Okura as head of the project) and finalizes the launch of Hōchō in a new space at the SH Valencia Palace from the hand of the interior designer Julio Guixeres : a totally open kitchen and the traditional bet of Nacho Honrubia by the fusion between the oriental and the Mediterranean. Hōchō joins the very recent opening of Kaido Sushi Bar by Ulises Menezo with Yoshikazu Yanome (from Tastem) for an exclusive experience for ten people —and together they already add up to four top-level Japanese cuisine restaurants in the city, along with Komori and Nozomi.
In Cadiz the great Luiti (Angel León's right hand in the kitchen) leaves Aponiente to lift the blind Cycle with Rocio Maña, his wife. He will be in the Soprani street in the heart of the Santa María neighborhood and on the table traditional dishes to the rhythm of the season: that's why cycle.
we go until The Gran Canarian palms because a spectacular year for Canarian gastronomy is intuited and it is partly the fault of Iciar Perez , who has been selected as one of the nine best chefs newcomers that will set trends in 2021 by the Bellevue supplement of the Swiss newspaper NZZ Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Icíar comes from the island of El Hierro and is in charge of the kitchen at Poems by Hermanos Padrón in the Santa Catalina Royal Hideaway , and precisely the Padrón Brothers will move with El Rincón de Juan Carlos at Royal Hideaway Corales Suites in Adeje , in what will be one of the most beautiful spaces on the Island (on the rooftop of the hotel).
Impossible not to dream of the trips that will be , with dinners and lunches without a closing time and after-meal conversations beyond what is reasonable. It is the only possible cure against melancholy: imagine a better future, far from here, because what she wrote is true Martha Medeiros: "Those who don't travel or read, who don't dream, who don't trust, who don't try, die slowly".