into the contemporary gastronomy movement - … · pedro perles production assistant jimena...

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into the contemporary gastronomy movement

Curated by Sasha Correa and Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz

Editorial ProductionSasha Correa, Iñaki Martinez de Albeniz and Raúl Nagore

Art Direction Santos Bregaña

IllustrationsPedro Perles

Production AssistantJimena González FernándezVictor Unzu

AudiovisualBernat Alberdi

CollaboratorsJavier Muro, Harkaitz Cano, Itsaso Gabellanes, José Luis López de Zubiria, Corné Nuham, Azti-Tecnalia, Nanogune, IMAGO.

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Introduction. Joxe Mari Aizega

50 Glimpses. Sasha Correa and Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz

Boom! Gastronomy is everywhere

A FULL MOUTH: GASTRONOMY AND COMMUNICATION

Shared secrets

From the recipe to the YouTube tutorial

Neocritics

Are you on the list?

Foodie time

A cooking show

Celebrities or brands?

The pollinating force of stagiers

A country brand

Shared talk

PARTICLES IN MOTION: GASTRONOMIC ACTIVISM

A social movement

Uncovered truths

About heroes and villains

Waste

Chefs today

Women too

Junk food?

Reconnecting with nature

The consequences of eating

Back to cooking

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THE GASTRONOMIC EXPERIENCE

Food

An infinite plate

Interconnected senses

Naked table

The dining room

Stories à la carte

Eating socially

Edible landscapes

Luxury: between the old and the new

Where does the experience end?

Spyglass: tasting the future

TO KNOW OR NOT TO KNOW: SCIENCE AND GASTRONOMY

The answers behind the kitchen

Technology in time

Science at home

Sensory approaches

Techno-emotions

Open-door cuisine

Summa Cum Laude gastronomy

Edible algorithms

Creative triangle

Believe it or not

VALUE SUPPLIED IN CHAIN: ENTREPRENEURSHIP, CREATIVITY

AND INNOVATION

Action!

Balance (Ecosystems)

Management of contradictions (Food Production)

Transparency (Food industry)

Short distance (Marketing and Distribution)

Diversifying models (The Restaurant Business)

Profitable authenticity (Tourism)

Research and development (Knowledge)

Prosuming (Consumption)

Conscious frameworks (Regulations)

Forever New Basque Cuisine

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INTRODUCTION

Gastronomy today is a multidimensional phenomenon. There is no aspect of reality

-economic, social, cultural, or even political- that does not crosses the spectrum of

what we eat. It is at this intersection that the Basque Culinary Center (BCC) comes

into play, as it uniquely embodies the scope, complexity and wealth of a word full of

significance as gastronomy.

It is vital for us to fully assimilate what happens in our sector, not only to absorb and

take part in our surrounding environment, but also to propose innovative initiatives

aligned with present-day demands and the challenges and opportunities ahead.

We are determined to connect with developments in every arena. We understand

that it is our duty to accompany gastronomy’s unfolding path, promote it from an

interdisciplinary perspective, and delve deeper.

Nine years ago, a group of Basque chefs and Mondragón University created the

Basque Culinary Center Foundation with support from public institutions and the goal

of establishing a pioneering center for higher education to offer the kind of professional

training the gastronomy sector demanded and deserved. With the objective of

consolidating an increasingly skilled, responsible and dedicated guild, the Faculty of

Gastronomic Sciences and the Research and Innovation Center were founded.

Since our founding, our driving motivation has been to train versatile professionals

capable of immersing themselves in the movement of gastronomy and succeeding in

any culinary field. At present, our Faculty of Gastronomic Sciences welcomes students

from 32 countries. Every year, a total of about 600 students enroll in our Degree

in Gastronomy and Culinary Arts or one of our eight Master’s degree programs. In

addition, another 2,000 students complete short-term courses that we continuously

design for both professionals and enthusiasts.

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Our Technology Center, on the other hand, focuses on research and innovation for

product and service design in collaboration with a diverse range of companies. We

organize and host around 100 events every year at our facilities. Our initiative “Culinary

Action!” encourages and supports entrepreneurship and new businesses. Furthermore,

we also promote, in conjunction with the Basque regional government, initiatives such

as the Basque Culinary World Prize.

Four years ago, after intense internal reflection based on our past experiences,

we realized that our mission should focus on developing the economic and social

potential of gastronomy, which involves taking on the challenge of endowing this word

-gastronomy- with meaning that, while reflecting the current reality, does not refer

exclusively to cuisine. Until not long ago, when the topic of gastronomy came up, it

was primarily associated with fine dining. This association, however, has changed.

The concept of gastronomy has expanded by leaps and bounds and has also been

democratized.

The BCC was fortunate to foresee the exponential potential of gastronomy in a rapidly

evolving landscape. Furthermore and most importantly, the BCC has taken this vision

to heart in its activities and become an active agent for and promoter of this new way

of understanding and living gastronomy.

A truly tangible example of this is the Basque Culinary World Prize, which was created

in conjunction with the Basque regional government. This award is bestowed upon

chefs with transformative initiatives to celebrate how chefs from around the world

use their unique knowledge, leadership, entrepreneurial skills and creativity to effect

change in areas such as health, education, the environment, economic development,

innovation, industry or even humanitarian action and public policy.

Since the launch of this award in 2016, it has been inspiring to discover hundreds

of hard-working entrepreneur-chefs focused on excellence. These are innovative and

creative people who go against the grain. They are tenacious or even reckless but,

above all, they are committed to effecting positive change in their environment.

In addition, another key factor for the BCC has been viewing gastronomy as a strategic

sector. Gastronomy contributes economically and socially to an entire value chain, and

can serve as a springboard for the promotion of cultures and, therefore, of countries

as well.

In this sense, gastronomy is a country-brand. It adds value to products from a certain

place and to the products’ transformation as well. It encompasses all actors from the

hotel and restaurant industry and activates tourism. All this explains why more and

more countries are conscientiously investing in gastronomy: they understand the

power of gastronomy to attract visitors interested in experiences that only gastronomy

can offer in such special ways.

Gastronomy is also part of cultural and creative industries. In the gastronomy sector,

innovative chefs and entrepreneurs spark trends and change what we eat and how we

eat it. A sector of such dimensions and vitality needs entities dedicated to research,

training, dissemination and innovation. In other economic and professional sectors,

such institutions already exist. In gastronomy, however, they are few and far between.

The BCC is able to tackle this challenge thanks to the key contributions of many people,

including the members of our Board of Trustees, which consists of public institutions,

private businesses, universities, technological centers, and a group of inspired Basque

chefs. These chefs are leaders in their profession who have demonstrated what it

means to innovate a country’s culinary tradition through cooperative work. Likewise,

the chefs who comprise our International Council have also managed to transform the

cultures, images and gastronomic landscapes of their countries and regions. The work

of the Basque Culinary Center is made possible by an entire community of passionate

and dedicated people who demonstrate everyday what excellence and authenticity

can offer.

Thanks to the dedication of all these collaborators, the Basque Culinary Center takes on

its mission with a strong sense of responsibility, realizing that it is our duty to educate

future generations according to our vision and the values inherent to it.

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Thus, we embark on a project titled “50 glimpses” that aspires to use original content to

connect the multidimensional worlds within gastronomy, and empower them and instill

them with movement – even more movement.

Working with the talented people at the Basque Culinary Center has been extremely

stimulating for this story. BCC students, professors and close collaborators accompanied

the curators of this project in a creative and interdisciplinary initiative. It is our hope

that whoever reads this text or visits the exhibition finds the experience as fascinating

as it has been for us.

50 glimpses also aims to experiment with language and with how to make gastronomy

more accessible to audiences who are inexperienced in this field. Such an audience

boasts a wealth of curiosity, love, and love for gastronomy. That is why we are committed

to making 50 glimpses an extremely diverse exhibition in terms of format. It does not

avoid controversy, as our intention is to inspire our audiences to ask questions, rather

than provide polished unambiguous answers.

In the process of creating 50 glimpses, our first task was to closely examine gastronomy.

We asked ourselves: When is our starting point? What should our perspective be?

We believed it was necessary to analyze these questions based on a holistic and

comprehensive approach. However, it also seemed natural to begin with our roots.

Basque cuisine is one of the most renowned culinary traditions in the world. Its fame

extends beyond the professional gastronomy sector to include social arenas and also

crosses other borders. Many people are surprised by the fact that a region with a

population of just two million has achieved such significant international culinary

recognition. Anyone who visits the Basque Country will discover a people who

experience cooking and food with great intensity; a land where Michelin-starred

restaurants exemplify innovation and excellence, and the most traditional or classic

restaurants stand out for their top-quality products; gastronomic societies use cooking

to revere raw materials and gather around the table for the ultimate communal

experience; pintxos bars offer exciting miniature cuisine in a relaxed fun atmosphere;

and family cooks shine in their home kitchens as they combine flavors with skill and

ease, guided by seasoned heritage.

The New Basque Cuisine reinvigorates the ongoing development of traditional and

modern Basque cuisine. An outstanding and like-minded group of chefs, led by

Juan Mari Arzak and Pedro Subijana, were joined by countless others and made the

emergence of a new generation of chefs possible: Hilario Arbelaitz, Martín Berasategui,

Andoni Luis Aduriz, Eneko Atxa, Elena Arzak, and more. Together, these chefs formed

a collective movement and transformed Basque cuisine into a point of reference for

modern gastronomy and creative regions as well.

Therefore, we consider the New Basque Cuisine to be a milestone, and a starting point

for research and reflection. Let us not forget the values that have characterized the

emergence and evolution of Basque cuisine: identity, a sense of belonging, personality,

character, courage, creativity, cooperation, sensitivity, innovation, dedication, an

interdisciplinary nature, and so on.

50 Glances weaves together contributions made by chefs from our Board of Trustees

and International Council. We would like to convey our gratitude for the inspiration and

dedication they have so generously shared with us.

Dinner is served and gastronomy is everywhere.

Joxe Mari Aizega

Director of Basque Culinary Center

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50 GLIMPSES

Gastronomy is everywhere. Not just in the mouths of those eating, but also of those

who seat around a table to create the imaginary in which food becomes a bridge to

infinite realities.

There is a lot more than nutrients in what we eat: there is economics, politics,

communication, science, training, technology, and the environment. There is society,

and therefore culture. In this sense, gastronomy isn’t just about fine dining, nor

cooking, it’s a collection of relationships in which very different agents intervene in

an ecosystem whose common denominator is food, and whose meaning reaffirms, as

French philosopher Gaston Bachelard would say, that “man is a creation of desire, not

a creation of need”.

So, in addition to purely the culinary, gastronomy is about good practices, natural

environments, technologies, forms of production, distribution, marketing and

consumption, and also the dialogue between knowledge, identity, proximity,

sustainability, biodiversity, health, food safety, and traceability. Perhaps most notably,

it has to do with managing the contradictions that emanate from the ensemble formed

by farmers, fishermen, and ranchers, distributors, scientists, institutions, research and

development centres, industries, chefs, restaurants, and a long etcetera that are, in

turn, inseparable from the role played by those who eat with their bodies and minds.

Giving a face to this crowded panorama, we see chefs above all, despite this trade

having made those wearing an apron or those dreaming of donning a chef’s jacket

blush until just a few decades ago. Not only is demand for professional training on the

rise among students, these days you can’t swing a cat without hitting a chef. They’re

everywhere: supporting different causes, making headlines, hosting radio programmes,

appearing in documentaries, and an endless array of TV content (even being part

of a select group of celebrities that TV stations select to present their New Year’s

countdowns shows).

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Nevertheless, far from being a mere trend or media blitz, there is a sense that we are

facing a pulsing movement involving those who understand that gastronomy is more

than the sum of its parts, and that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Yet being “everywhere” has a trade-off: when you put to much food in your mouth, you

end up so full that no one understands a word you’re saying. This is the challenge that

we face in 50 glimpses: How do we make ourselves understood while expressing what

is happening in the culinary world, addressing this phenomenon’s growing complexity

and its almost ubiquitous social presence, without making the audience’s head spin?

Physics uses the concept of entropy to refer to the disorder caused when infinitesimal

new inputs burst into a system. Systems evolve if they are open to outside influences,

are capable of processing noise from their surroundings, and converting it into

information for their own use. Even in its darkest moments, gastronomy has never

been a closed system, but if it were, it would have died of starvation, as paradoxical as

it may seem, in a sort of an eternal repetition of the same. Now, opening up too much

to external stimuli, as seems to be the case currently, can do away with its specificity

and result in it being absorbed by surrounding influences.

Like Ithaca-bound Odysseus, who was forced to navigate between Escila and Charybdis,

contemporary gastronomy finds itself straddling a divide. On one shore, are those

that proclaim that living in entropy’s “anything goes” atmosphere is comfy and cosy.

For their part, those on the other shore maintain the opposite, that “nothing goes”,

and that any change or opening up is nonsensical. It is the ancient battle between

the apocalyptic and integrated, which Umberto Eco speaks of when discussing pop

culture’s emergence sweeping away the pillars of western society in the second half of

the 20th century.

With the goal of avoiding these two extremes, the Basque Culinary Center (BCC) has

created 50 glimpses as a project that attempts to create a useful and at the same

time prudent story builded from interdisciplinary research about the change that

gastronomy is experiencing at a moment when an unprecedented level of visibility has

been reached. We are seeking to construct a narrative that aspires to put events in

order and share a unique, distinct perspective on the culinary movement: a movement

that transfers its energy like Newton’s pendulum, projected into a future that reflects

BCC’s present aspirations.

Going beyond futile controversies, transforming gastronomy into an interesting debate

worthy of reflection and discussion means letting the sirens’ song fall on deaf ears,

simultaneously avoiding easy criticism, and fleeing from lazy or self-satisfying opinions,

whatever they may be. In a word, offering more purposeful accounts that understand

how to confront complexity in the only way that it can be faced, by generating more

complexity. However, this complexity must be attainable.

Certainly, the social presence and media visibility that gastronomy has achieved

deserves calm, critical reflection regarding the phenomenon’s evolution and scope. Its

difficulty increases exponentially when the information surrounding the phenomenon

attempts to reach general audiences that don’t necessarily have first-hand experience

with the culinary world, an audience that is simply interested and curious, as if that

weren’t enough.

In general, although we know that the balance sheets look promising without going any

further than gastronomy’s growing importance in terms of GDP, the same does hold

true with the narratives that can help us flesh out the change and take sides. In this

sphere of narratives, where a project like 50 glimpses hopes to make a place for itself,

an attempt is made to respond to a dual objective:

- Understanding (ourselves) internally: critically analysing the process of transformation

gastronomy has undergone over the course of the last forty years, coinciding with the

rise of New Basque Cuisine.

- Making (ourselves) known externally: showing public opinion the types of implications

(social, ethical, economic, political, aesthetic, etc.) that mark this transformation.

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Particles and waves

Gastronomy finally broke its the glass ceiling to be influenced from different areas of

expertise, knowledge and experience. This led to a interesting change of polarity. At

first, chefs approached other disciplines (scientific, social, humanistic) with curiosity

and respect, and sometimes an unconcealed reverence. Today, experts of all kinds

take interest in gastronomy, probably because they are becoming aware that the

three main dimensions of reality, the material, the technical, and the anthropological,

emulsify better under its influence than in their own areas of activity. Because of this

dual opening, first of doors to the outside, towards unknown lands, and later doors to

the inside, opening wide the kitchen doors, gastronomy acquires the shape of a new

republic, so to speak.

But how can this story be told? That depends on whether we look at the particle or

the wave. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is the basis of a law of modern physics

that tells us that knowing a particle’s position and its movement at the same time is

impossible. Contemporary gastronomy is strongly subjected to this principle: either you

can observe the position of a particle, of some renowned chefs as the change’s sole

protagonists, or you can focus on the wave, the extraordinary process of change that

gastronomy has undergone in its gradual shaping as a social movement.

It is bizarre to say the least, and at the same time symptomatic of the times we live in,

that a process of collective and multi-dimensional change goes hand in hand with the

growing visibility and notoriety of a very select few of its protagonists. It is as if only a

few stars shine in the sky, while the constellations remain unseen.

What probably happens is that our ancestral anthropological condition of listening and

telling tales only makes these stories possible on the condition that they have a flesh

and bone protagonist, with whom we can identify, that makes things happen, or to

whom things happen. It is as if complex stories needed the helping hand of a face,

a hero, an ally or a loser in order to be understood. But things are not so simple.

Gastronomy is a dish prepared by many hands. Falling in love with the hero limits, and

even prevents observation, in all its rich nuances, of the movement; that is, the process

underlying the hero’s ups and downs. In a word, it keeps us from understanding the

story’s plot.

Considering gastronomy a movement means becoming aware that change happens

above all at the level of social perceptions and cultural norms that articulate everyday

life. We have moved from an exclusive gastronomy of chefs, critics and gourmets, to

an open-source gastronomy that takes on the shape of a social or citizen movement.

The difficulty of this new position, of being ‘everywhere’, stems from the fact that other

ways of communicating are needed.

So, we find gastronomy everywhere, not because its media presence has become

unbearable, but because it is resonating and pouring all over the place. Because it is

many other things: gastronomy is conversation; gastronomy is movement; gastronomy is

science; gastronomy is the real value of the food supply chain; and gastronomy is, above

all, a living and unique experience.

Constellations

It was Walter Benjamin, one of the 20th century’s greatest philosophers, who said

that the constellations are new ways of seeing things, new enlightenments, built on an

unprecedented combination of objects, words, images, points of view, etc.

Following this idea, we have chosen five constellations to dive into the contemporary

profile of gastronomy, as part of the culmination of months of research work that was

nourished by creativity sessions and workshops held with students -such as those

from the 2018 Gastronomic Sciences Master’s Programme- and Professors, as well as

internal and external collaborators. Support from members of the BCC’s International

Council and Trust helped equally to sharpen the focus.

Far from aiming for thoroughness, the conglomerates are more inspired by the logic

of a cubist painting and their presentation of multiple perspectives than by those of a

realist painting, with its aspirations of reflecting a supposed objective truth. They are

different stories because they are different ways of expressing the same thing about

a phenomenon that has become multifaceted since it has been opened up to the

world. Each side of the polyhedron is a door to access the plot. The stories will cross

each other along the way. Sometimes, they will enter into contradiction and generate

controversy. Other times, they will push in the same direction.

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In any case, talking about constellations is still a pretext for escaping from unidirectional

and heroic narratives in which certain iconic characters hoard the spotlight. It would

be too easy. The constellations that we put on display in this text are five different

ensembles. They are also five perspectives. Perspectives that are made of characters,

devices, concepts, materials, places, processes, moments, ideas...

Gastronomy is a conversation

What isn’t communicated doesn’t exist. Gastronomy will be a conversation, or it won’t

be. An ever-more complex and open conversation that has definitively broken the limits

of table talk.

The world has been transformed into a great conversation about the things we eat,

a polyphonic conversation that produces as many calming harmonies as defiant

dissonances. Interlocutors are no longer those traditionally called to the table of

gastronomy, those critics and gourmets that speak from a position of authority in front

of the chef’s timid presence, who has nothing to say about the soup he himself has

prepared.

Today, authority is distributed, passing the torch to bloggers, the chroniclers of

experiences, and foodies who have made food the new focus of their lives through

self-awareness. And to chefs, who have also started to be heard, and not just in terms

of culinary topics; to activists, documentary filmmakers and researchers, or even to

active diners on platforms like TripAdvisor and to the space opened up by hashtags.

These new culinary audiences are as diverse as the devices they use to communicate.

Culinary knowledge is no longer transferred sotto voce in the kitchen’s back room. It

now constitutes a transmedia phenomenon: it is in books, on television programmes

with huge audiences, on social media, and even in the internet of things, that new

dimension in which the information we produce and the algorithms that govern us

today, result in a data soup that speaks about us, about what we consume (through

payment, clicks, or ‘likes’), what we eat, what we like and finally about who we are.

Gastronomy is a movement

As a result of the growing media recognition they are acquiring, 21st century chefs have

moved on to being considered as social influencers by public opinion. Responsibility,

social commitment and activism are facets that culinary professionals have been

forced to incorporate into their daily routines. This fact, however, cannot bypass the

perverse consequences that can come with a poor use of the visibility or social prestige

that chefs have obtained, which can drag their profession towards trivialisation or

conventionalisation.

However, gastronomy’s visibility is also a good backdrop for echoing worthy initiatives

with which so many individuals aspire to face the paradoxes that our present eating

habits pose, making gastronomy a force for transforming realities. With this being the

case, we could conclude that gastronomy’s ubiquity has been one of the factors that has

most contributed to the emergence of intense social mobilisation around food, which

should not be confused with charity or humanitarian action. The social movement of

gastronomy is more about pushing our society farther trough social innovation and

economic development than only feeding the poor.

Do we really know what we eat? Is it too late for us to return to cooking as a daily

practice? Can we influence the policies that govern the way our food is produced? Are

we capable of sustainable consumption that does not drown the planet in garbage?

Can we ensure “good, healthy, and fair” foods are accessible to a growing population?

Can we preserve the world’s biological, social, and cultural diversity? Will we avoid

exploitation in the ways we work?

These are some of the challenges to face in the medium term. Nevertheless, despite

ever-growing social and political awareness, gastronomy must urgently face certain

historical injustices that are already embarrassing like gender inequalities, which we

should dare to correct once and for all.

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Gastronomy is a science

Gastronomy has experienced an internal transformation since collaborations began

with scientists, experts, and professionals from different fields of knowledge (physicists,

chemists, nutritionists, food technologists, anthropologists, philosophers, sociologists,

economists, publicists, communications professionals, social media experts, artists,

etc.). At this point, it is not unreasonable to affirm something that scandalised some and

frightened most not so long ago: gastronomy already is a science. The Basque Culinary

Center is nothing more than a sort of a 3D validation of this paradigm shift.

The main difference is that what was previously done intuitively through an empiricism

of trial and error, the fuzzy logic of “let’s see what happens”, is now done methodically

or systematically. In a word, scientifically. We are living through a revolution both in

terms of the basic science applied to gastronomy, and in the field of the techno-science,

with prominence of the techno-emotional aspects that gastronomy has known how to

introduce much better than any other discipline. As a result of all this, gastronomy also

sets an example to follow for scientific practices, because it has understood how to cross

the boundaries of what C. P. Snow called the two cultures; the culture of science and the

culture of humanities, that traditionally turned their backs on each other.

Gastronomy is value

Gastronomy’s value has always hung from the food chain. Sometimes, this chain

has choked out its possibilities. For example, the idea that value is only measured

in economic terms, and that only things that can be monetised are valuable. What

could gastronomy provide in terms of value? It is time for a paradigm shift so that

we can move away from the value chain towards the values themselves, most of

them intangible, that gastronomy has known how to string together with the different

links of its practice, from the production of raw materials to consumption, including

environmental conservation, applying regulations, the industrial sector, the distribution-

marketing-tourism triangle, and R+D.

We no longer talk about activism or jumping into action, but instead about a new culinary

engineering in the literal sense of the term: the use of ingenuity to optimise business

models, improve work methods, and make them more sustainable, while at the same

time providing widespread access to the culinary world. Innovation, entrepreneurship,

and creativity are the triple helix that can accelerate this process. Why not start with

understanding them as values? They surely facilitate the task. Between 2013 and

2018, the number of active investors in the agri-food and gastronomy sectors has

tripled internationally. Those who decide to commit money, knowledge, leadership,

their personal life and reputation in order to contribute to the world of gastronomy will

find the table set for them.

Gastronomy is experience

Chefs often struggle in vain when expressing an idea that resists common sense due

to its counter-intuitiveness: gastronomy is “more than eating”. Gastronomic experience

is a concept that is already part of the new culinary alphabet soup. Through it, aspects

or dimensions of gastronomy that go further than the functional dimension of eating

are addressed. Understanding how experience relates to gastronomy is a dimension

that we cannot forget if we don’t want to make the topic too serious or flat, or a mere

problem of subsistence. We refer to hedonism, cooking as sublimation through the

senses. The gastronomic experience mobilises a series of resources to obtain great

pleasure, not just sensory pleasure, but intellectual and existential pleasure as well.

The paradox of the situation is that, as the writer Martín Caparrós says, food has

become “a consumable object that does not need to be eaten to be consumed”. The act

of observing a photo posted to Instagram by someone eating at a fabulous restaurant

is itself a gastronomic experience. The challenge lies in improving these experiences,

making them accessible, and transforming them into a luxury that is within everyone’s

reach. This is arduous work, because chefs are facing an empowered public that is

difficult to please due to the fortunate fact that their knowledge expands.

GASTRONOMY IS EVERYWHERE

BOOM!

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A FULL MOUTH

Gastronomy and communication

On August 30th, 1946, chef James Beard presented the television program I Love to Eat to American viewers for the first time. It lasted fifteen minutes and in it Beard prepared some of his favorite recipes live. It has been considered the first independent television program ever devoted exclusively to cooking and it is conceivable that it did not have a massive audience. In 2018, just 70 years later, there are around 22 million channels somehow related to the culinary practice on YouTube.

Today, gastronomy is pouring everywhere and chefs have become celebrities. After years of anonymity, hidden behind the walls that separated their nameless kitchens from the rest of the world, practicing a hard, dirty and, at the beginning, unattractive profession, they left their dens and started to progressively show their faces. Beard was followed by other pioneers, such as: Raymond Oliver, in France, with his Art et magie de la cuisine (1954), Julia Child, also in the United States, with The French Chef (1963), or Maruja Callaved in Spain with Vamos a la mesa (1967). But, starting the 90’s, with professionals of a great personal magnetism and extraordinary communication skills (from Karlos Arguiñano to Anthony Bourdain, Nigella Lawson or Jamie Oliver, among many) cooking starts to gain ground and conquer millions of audiences on television. Although these television chefs continue teaching their audiences how to cook step by step, some also take advantage of their shows to go deeper into how and what people can buy in the market; they offer nutritional advice, expose bad practices in food industry or talk about territory. Some of them present their producers to us and their way of working; some talk about the different culinary cultures of the world, taking us to get to know them by embarking on special travel programs with a rock & roller spirit, or just let us enter the privacy of their personal lives.

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In 1993, the culinary programs increasing popularity led to the birth of Food Network, the first television channel devoted exclusively to cooking. Twenty-four uninterrupted hours of gastronomic contents demanded the creation of new formats. Television detects the dramatic possibilities of the culinary process and the information begins to combine with entertainment. Thereby, culinary contests and reality shows begin to be broadcast at prime time hours, as well as travel programs focused on food and documentaries that uncover hidden secrets around what we eat. Little by little, chefs assimilate the show business codes and their images change accordingly. It is no longer necessary to wear cook jackets and chef hats: tattoos, beards, earrings and muscles worked in the gym are some of the elements that make up the new model of the cathodic male cook (like that, male, since women are scarce in this type of programs).The coverage by the media spreads through printed and digital media (any means of communication that is known today talks about cooking) and the publication of books grows exponentially, covering all kinds of topics, from recipe books to nutrition advice and essays about products, going through the luxurious editions the most important chefs of the international scene publish to promote their philosophy and findings, or simply to position their image. The cookbooks leave the “home and garden” section they often occupied in bookstores to take over shelves and finally conquer their own space. In order to gauge the magnitude of the phenomenon suffice it to say that amazon.com “cookbooks, food and wine” section currently shows more than 200,000 results.

Press turns chefs into characters of the entertainment world, but also into references within the gastronomy world, in its broadest sense. In addition to consolidating their media presence, cooks have made use of this new visibility, of the awareness about that their voices are heard, to bring out issues of a deeper nature and promote debates on topics related to food, thus contributing for the public conversations about gastronomy, cuisine and food, in which we all, to a greater or lesser extent, are taking part today. Because those issues related to the act of eating have ceased to be exclusive for of a small club of gourmets and bon vivants to become a communicative phenomenon at a global scale where the topic is approached towards its growing complexity and which has been amplified by the irruption of Internet and social media.

We still continue talking about recipes, about how to purchase and how to cook what we buy, but we also talk about how to produce less waste, about the practices we support depending the choices we make at the supermarket, about how the excess of sugar affects our health, about pesticides and genetically modified organisms, what the purpose of carbohydrates are, the working conditions of tomato collectors in Florida, or about restaurant stagiers, organic eggs and caged hens, about techniques for cooking at low temperatures, about the last MasterChef’s winner, about our recent expedition to a Thai restaurant, a new App to make cooking an easier task ... All of this is part of that multi-voiced conversation where, thanks to multiplying communicational technologies, practically everyone has a word today.

#Television #CookingShow #Tutorial #YouTube #Instagram #Twitter #Tasty #TripAdvisor

#TheWorlds50Best #MasterChef #FoodPorn #Foodie #Arguiñano #JamesBeard #AnthonyBourdain

#GordonRamsay #ChefsTable #MarcoPierreWhite #PaulBocuse #MarcaPais #PeruMuchoGusto

#GastonAcurio #CulinaryNation #Stagiers #Congresses #MadridFusion #Eater #FoodCritic

#AntonEgo #DialogosDeCocina #Mad #Gastronomika #GastroComunication #InFoodWeTrust

#LoveFood #HateFood

50 glimpses Gastronomy and communication

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SHARED SECRETS

Chefs have ceased to be those cautious guys who used to take their secrets to their graves and who would keep their tricks locked. Being aware about the fact that, as the expert in digital communication Genís Roca states, “nowadays, information is power only if it is shared”, chefs have “opened up the code” of their preparations, their methods and their findings to share knowledge with their colleagues. In that context (and from the 90s) the cooking congresses appeared, where chefs dared to get on the stage of audiences from all over the world to show live, before the watchful eye of their competitors, the results of their research, new techniques and dishes created in their own establishments.

Kitchens where the center of the stages where chefs shared their creations through live cooking. In time, nevertheless, congresses have been evolving towards interdisciplinary meetings open to dialogues and towards a learning process where the microphone has been shared and where, sometimes, the only things cooked are ideas, concepts, and ultimately, words. Although strictly culinary formats are maintained, the new formats reflect the complexity gastronomy acquires when it is assumed as an interconnected phenomenon with other fields of knowledge and with today’s social, economic, environmental or political realities.

“Not so long ago, it was even embarrassing to say you were a cook. Not only it was something badly considered, it was unthinkable. Now we say this with pride: I am a chef.” Pedro Subijana, Akelarre Restaurant.

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FROM THE RECIPE TO THE YOUTUBE TUTORIAL

In the beginning there was the recipe, transmitted from generation to generation to comfort stomachs and palates and to building the family emotional memory. But those same grandmothers and mothers who, by the fire, described their specialties to their children and grandchildren, fixing their recipes with pencils in rubber cover notebooks, are today filming themselves with their stews in Full HD, and posting, like any millennial, videos on YouTube to pass their culinary knowledge among the 22 million channels that today are dedicated to cooking in YouTube, where there is room for everything there: from master classes by renowned chefs, shot and edited by professionals, to videos recorded with mobile phones and featured by amateurs who receive thousands of visits from users that share their doubts and clumsiness.

Tasty, for example, the snack-sized videos and recipes initiative (full of material extraordinarily refined and adjusted more to the digital platform’s nature than to real cooking), shows how to make dishes step by step in just one minute, overprinting instructions and fast images that show us just what we need to know to work with some confidence, cushioning culinary fears ... except, perhaps, the risk of splashing some oil on our tablet.

“What is the most important social network in the world? It’s not Facebook or Instagram. It’s the food.” Alex Atala, D.O.M. Restaurant.

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NEOCRITICS

“The kokotxas are tasty, the rabbit stew is right in its four textures, but the bland desserts cart is disappointing.” Little by little, this kind of restaurant reviews, which for a long time were the norm for culinary chronicles or food critics, change. The terrible professional critic who, armed to the teeth with adjectives, went across the gastronomic map eating to help us distinguish the sublime from the disgraceful, now sees how his privileged stand is filled with “undocumented critics”. After all, we all have a mouth connected to a brain where opinions about what we put into our palates are made up. The difference is that, today, we all carry a means of communication in our pockets.

The new “civilian” critics, who through web pages, blogs or YouTube channels have managed to attract the attention of the public with their opinions, approach gastronomy from multiple points of view and ways of telling stories. Their focus is not exclusively set on the food quality or restaurant settings, which they consider to be just a part of the “experience” of eating in a restaurant. That is why their stories resemble more the chronicle of an expedition, or of a trip (Ferran Adrià himself insists on reminding us that today food is barely the fourth reason why diners go to a restaurant).

“There are some new critics that come from spontaneous generation and they believe to be in their right to take part of the conversation... We must respect this, but it is necessary to have a training”. José Carlos Capel, El País.

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ARE YOU ON THE LIST?

To win one, two or three Michelin stars …, or to be voted as part of lists such as The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, certain merits or qualities are required in the eyes of experts, who decided who would receive the honors. Although this kind of reference maintain their prominence, the “totems” of the gastronomic classification are no longer alone.

Not only rankings and lists are spreading everywhere, but the appearance of platforms such as Tripadvisor, that makes recommendations based on votes cast by non-professional users, has changed the game: the gates of glory have also opened for humbler establishments, far away from those that make up the fine dining circuit, and which, a couple of decades ago, could hardly dream to have the international visibility they enjoy today and, much less, to overcome the kings of the international gastronomy in the classification.

For example, the restaurant Eleven Madison Park, with three Michelin stars and considered as the best restaurant in the world, according to The 2017 World’s 50 Best Restaurants, is ranked 98 in Tripadvisor’s list of the best establishments in New York, while the fifth position is for Faicco’s Pork Store, a simple and centennial butcher’s shop from the Village that, in addition to selling cold meats, offers sausages, pastrami sandwiches and fried rice balls, in exchange for a handful of coins …

“The personality of the chefs must always prevail over the dictates of trends or gastronomic guides.” Hilario Arbelaitz, Zuberoa Restaurant.

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FOODIE TIME

The gastronomic ecosystem has recently experienced the appearance of a new species: the foodie, who is an evolved and highly aesthetic version of the gourmet, that should not be confused with that one, who stands by his all-terrain condition. A foodie can be seen both in fine dining restaurants (if his wallet allows it), and in hot dog stands, praising a lobster, or writing odes to a falafel, as long as it shows something different, special, that can shake its refined sensitivity. Much better yet, if the bite has an instagramable look.

The hyper-connectivity in real time era has eased the arrival of the foodie, who is someone proud of its appetite, always with a smartphone at hand, ready to show his condition and share with other foodies his findings, through the hundred of pictures he insists on taking of everything he eats, while detailing his last expedition to a restaurant. Science and nutrition, technology and dish design, raw materials and new cooking techniques... nothing of the gastronomic field is unknown to the foodie, a voracious consumer of culinary information and food porn addict, capable of not greeting those who consume bread made without mother dough, or who do not know what the Maillard reaction is about, do not have the Modernist Cuisine six volumes on their shelves, or who consider that, after all, maybe food is not so important.

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A COOKING SHOW

Cooking is also something that is done in front of millions of viewers, during prime time hours. Who would have thought so? Today entire countries miss hours of sleep to witness how a court of prestigious chefs scolds a shivering housewife for having overcooked her chop, or for her lack of taste when it comes to serving an avocado salad. Or to know if their favorite child chef, the little boy with the glasses, has survived the last expulsion of MasterChef Junior, something that will not be known until after midnight, after crossing several jungles of commercial breaks. Or to see how a chef cries out his indignation at the face of the owner of a neighborhood restaurant, whose stoves are covered by layers of grease dating back to 1971, or who is hiding the corpse of a rat behind the refrigerator.

The television channels have discovered the possibilities of cooking as a good content for shows. In fact is rare to find a channel that doesn’t devote a segment to food or to cooking. We are use now to find chefs revealing conjuring cooking tricks but also to see cooks taking part of competitions or reality shows, appealing to all kinds of narrative stratagems in order to keep the viewer stuck to the screen. The culture, the knowledge, the technique, the good manners in the kitchen, now turned into entertainment, acquire an appeal they did not have before, in the eyes of people who never had much interest in this world and who perhaps now have begun to pull that glowing cathodic thread to entangle into the gigantic, complex ball hiding beneath the surface.

“You could probably get through life without knowing how to roast a chicken, but the question is, would you want to?.” Nigella Lawson.

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CELEBRITIES OR BRANDS?

When cooks like Paul Bocuse dared to break into the room of their restaurants to greet the guests, they put a face to the authorship. And behind the face, progressively came the brand. The chef brand. Today chefs appear daily on the press, radio and television. They give autographs and are required by their legions of fans for countless selfies. Some are even being asked to run for president of their countries. They reached unthinkable levels of fame since just a few decades ago, when that of the cook was a profession with no social prestige and no child ever dreamed of becoming a chef. They now generate contents that attract the masses attention and are opinion makers in the field of food, but also others that have little to do with the culinary one. As a result of the visibility and position acquired, as well as growing merits, some attributes and an authority beyond their natural territory have been attributed to them.

Brands have not overlooked their ability to influence others, so now they reach out to chefs to advertise all kind of things: from kitchen batteries, beers, pasta, olive oil, glasses, watches, mattresses, banks, to cars and dental clinics. Renowned Catalan publicist Toni Segarra has pointed out the risk that trivializing these levels of fame can represent to the chef’s own “brand”, a brand that is primarily built on his work in the restaurant, his knowledge, creativity and commitment, and on a cohesion and coherence in his way of approaching his profession and everything that surrounds it, always pointing in the same direction. In the midst of the boom, Segarra warns: if the fame and its demands divert the chef from his original path, contradicting him, his brand’s credibility may be at risk of being undermined.

“To me, there are two types of celebrity: there’s good celebrity -people that are attracted to the food and working and trying to create something great. And then there’s bad celebrity -those who are working on being a celebrity.” David Chang, Momofuku.

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THE POLLINATING FORCE OF STAGIERS

Beyond magazine covers and congresses, books and television programs, radio spots and articles in newspapers, beyond all the informative effort that emerges from cooking in front of the public, there is a circuit of communicating vessels working indoors the world of gastronomy, through which a constant information and knowledge flow also takes place. Among the different invisible forces working on the hidden side of the restaurants, there is a group of young individuals whose curiosity, hunger for learning and hope make them keep in constant movement: the stagiers.

They come from Peru, Japan, from Nigeria, Australia and Germany, they come from all over the world and they chop, cut, cook, sauté, clarify, serve, stay one or two seasons and then go away again, flying in circles, stopping at restaurants in Italy and France, Spain and the United States, Brazil and Denmark, trying to acquire the enough knowledge and experience to, in the future, perhaps, open their own businesses. And, every time they leave a restaurant, each time they pack their things again and set course to the next kitchen, attached to their aprons they take bits of that knowledge acquired, small particles where a way of doing and understanding the profession is concentrated, which they spread wherever they stop, transformed into information transmitting agents among teams, countries and cultures.

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A COUNTRY BRAND

Some people begin to water at their mouths just by hearing the words Italy, Mexico or Japan. In a time when cities more and more resemble each other, when we put soba noodles, some chapulines, or a baccalà alla vicentina in our mouths, we more intensely can feel like we are traveling, that we are really immersing ourselves in other cultures and other ways of seeing the world. More than visiting museums or taking pictures of ourselves in front of monuments, now when we travel, we look for experiences that really make us feel that we are not at home, something that food can contribute to a great extent. Countries with solid and flavorful culinary traditions have always made gastronomy one of their battle flags, one of their most important cultural and economic assets, they have been able to export their restaurants and have transformed their cooking into one of their main tourist lures.

In recent decades, a country like Peru has worked to increase the weight of its food with touristic campaigns and slogans, to reinforce its presence on the gastronomic map, where today cevichería places are bursting, and less people are surprised to know what an anticucho is. The case of Denmark is equally striking (in 2005, the “manifesto for a new Nordic cuisine” established the foundations of a new gastronomic identity, which ended up on being translated into something bigger). In this way, a country that in culinary matters as used to be associated with butter cookies at the most, or to the painful asceticism by the guests at Babette’s feast, has made foodies from all over the world turn their astonished gaze towards Jutland and its surroundings. Even though success stories like these would not have been possible without the state support, the leadership, vision and commitment of the gastronomy sector professionals have been decisive for joining efforts to put them in motion.

“A lot has been said about the culinary movement that changed the international landscape of fine dining: this movement is none other than the one that started in Spain, the biggest transformation of gastronomy in decades. As a result of the germ originated in elBulli in 1994, and in other restaurants and its positive and radical evolution, Spain became a world reference.” Ferran Adrià. elBullifoundation (Reinventores).

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SHARED TALK

If gastronomy is not what it used to be, neither is the gastronomic information. The battlefield has widened to include issues that not only have to do with restaurants and stars, to talk about what is hidden under the cooking epidermis, to help others know better the logics knitted around our feeding, to establish connections with the fields of politics, economics, science, the environment. Also to unveil the inedible side of those issues that pass through our mouths, or to spread contents necessary and useful for hundreds of people in the world who strive to eat better. All this -and more- is a part of the challenges that are posed to gastronomic communication nowadays and that, in keeping with the times we now live, faces dilemmas associated to the emergence of new technologies, of new ways of understanding what a fact is, and what is not, as well as to the consumption patterns of those who perhaps prefer to know who won the most recent edition of MasterChef Junior, or what the 10 essential ingredients are to lose 10 kilos in 10 days, than to read an article about the relationships between food and global warming.

In a changing and stimulating context, different players take the stand. Chefs, for example, have seen themselves, almost by accident, telling stories through which they not only reveal their work with a greater depth, but also take advantage of the public notoriety they have reached in order to show the extent the gastronomic one is a world where everything is connected, and likewise to talk about culture, traditions, health, science, harvesting, social inequalities, food industry, producers, sustainability... In summary, they communicate and attract attention not only about their achievements, but about those problems and challenges gastronomy and food fields are facing today. To all this, we can add the contributions journalists, researchers, writers, bloggers, critics, activists and institutions of various kinds and even foodies and “pro-sumers” (as Carlo Petrini would say) have made, facing challenges, such as that of creating a multi-voiced conversation, where the knowledge about what we eat finds a way into an evolving scenario, full of interferences and interests in between each day is more difficult to distinguish what is true from what is fake.

“In this post truth age, we need to go beyond what we have always considered normal. If we want to change our food system for the better, stories are the way to do it.” Ruth Reichl.

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PARTICLES IN MOTION

Gastronomic activism

The step prior to action is awareness. And the step before awareness involves being

conscious of what is happening around us. In this sense, when we are capable of

assimilating what is actually brewing within the world of gastronomy, when we recognise

the reality that surrounds us and we relate to it in a thoughtful and responsible way,

gastronomy becomes a stage for activism.

For a long time we believed that eating was an innocent act. Vital, without doubt,

and pleasant at times, but ultimately innocent. We nonchalantly made our choices,

perhaps we cooked, and then we tasted, chewed, swallowed and digested without

thinking too much, without considering the consequences that the most basic of

acts could have, beyond, perhaps, its effects on our own health. We lived in the

paradise of food diversity, a garden of abundant and cheap food in which practically all

flavours, all aromas and textures, all types of food were possible. And it was not even

necessary to cook them yourself if you did not have the necessary knowledge or time,

something that was becoming more and more common. The industry had succeeded

in greatly expanding the spectrum of food products at our disposal, had developed the

technology to facilitate previously unimaginable ways of processing ingredients and

had devised systems, products and machines to make it faster and cheaper to consume

them, to reduce costs in all stages of the journey of food from nature to our dining

table. Dazzled by the luxuriant landscape of colourful packaging at the supermarket,

we allowed ourselves to be carried along by the trend. Until we opened our eyes and

stopped – or at least stopped doing it so automatically – thanks to the warnings that

slowly but steadily began to make themselves heard.

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Dissenting voices helped us to become aware of issues that were not obvious at first

sight: the loss of traditions and biodiversity; local ingredients at risk of disappearance;

animals treated like machines to produce food; increasing rates of obesity; ultra-

processed products that claimed to be rich in this or that vitamin but at the same

time hid exorbitant amounts of sugar in their compositions; coercion of farmers to

change seeds from their own harvest for laboratory seeds created under the patent of

some multinational; the enormous use of herbicides and pesticides in ever-expanding

monocultures; as well as the real – and until then hidden – costs of that supposedly

cheap food. A voice began to be heard in the western world, attentive to what was

hidden in the shadows of that Eden of abundance and accessibility in which we ate

happily and without emptying our pockets.

The hasty, compulsive and thoughtless consumption of fast food paved the way for

initiatives such as Slow Food, which from 1989 onwards has sought to oppose this

concept by focusing on the pleasure of slowness at the table, and also on slowing down

our way of life in order to provide us with time to reflect on what we eat, how we eat

it and why we eat it, to make us see that before “cheap and fast” we should demand

“good, clean and fair”.

Also, the secrecy and opacity of some of the food industry and some of the agricultural

and livestock processes that support it and the indecipherable nature of some of

its products has only succeeded in arousing the desire of researchers, academics,

journalists and professionals from different disciplines to unveil the obscure depths of

a system as complex as it is perfectible.

The interaction with all this information leads not only to thinking about what we eat,

but to becoming aware and to understanding the repercussions that this might have

and to acting accordingly, taking advantage of the knowledge, talent and creativity

that exists in the gastronomic sector, which invites the consumer to recognize that, far

from being a passive subject, he or she is a political agent. Thus, every time we choose

a product in the supermarket, every time we choose to go to one restaurant instead

of another, and whenever we choose to call a delivery service instead of leaving the

house, we are voting in favor or against a type of food system, a type of agriculture, a

type of working conditions, a vision of gender or cultural diversity, a specific treatment

of animals, a flavour, a tradition and a landscape. Because to a large extent that vote

results in some practices prevailing over others, in entire economies either foundering or

prospering, in inequalities being sustained or fairer ways of thinking about gastronomy

and being part of it.

Each time we decide as a consumer, we also choose which world we want to live

in. And buying and eating consistently leads to a multiplier phenomenon which, far

from being just a trend, constitutes a movement. This is the so-called social movement

of gastronomy, which involves all those who act with an understanding of the ability

of gastronomy to transform a society, adding to initiatives that generate a positive

impact in areas as diverse as science, health, technology, education, public policies, the

environment, social or economic development or even humanitarian action. Because

few aspects of our society are as cross-cutting as the daily bread.

#Activism #UncoveredTruths #FoodIndustry #Activism #FoodInc #FedUp #Cooperation #Society #SocialGastronomy #BasqueCulinaryWorldPrize #Diversity #GenderEquality #Feminism #SlowFood #FastFood #FoodForSoul #EdibleSchoolyards #IntelligenzaNutrizionale #FundacioAlicia #Environment #Research #FoodInc #MichaelPollan #SlowFood #FoodForSoul #DanBarber #BeeWilson #MichelBras #GastonAcurio #EnekoAtxa #Cooking #LiveToCook #CookToLive #ZeroFoodprint #Gastromotiva #TransformingSociety #FoodRevolution #BadEating #Orthorexia #Omega3 #Cooking

50 glimpses Gastronomic activism

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A SOCIAL MOVEMENT

... Alice Waters promoting the agricultural education of children and young people in vegetable gardens installed on the roofs of the Edible Schoolyards. Jamie Oliver exposing McDonald recipes and having them change their hamburgers after dissecting them in front of the cameras. Ruth Reichl affirming that it was food that elected Donald Trump. La Vía Campesina farmers bringing together farm workers from around the world to address the issue of the defense of food sovereignty. José Andrés feeding thousands of victims after the ravages of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, through World Central Kitchen. Vandana Shiva denouncing Monsanto’s patented seeds policy. Eneko Atxa preparing menus for the Galdakao-Usansolo Hospital or Niko Romito designing a methodology together with the Sapienza University of Rome so that hospital food does not look like it always has. Michael Pollan clearing up food dilemmas in articles and books to discover the best way to eat in order to ensure our good health and that of the planet. José Manuel López Nicolás untangling the lies hidden in the labels of supermarket products. Ron Finley fighting to transform the food wastelands of Los Angeles into kitchen gardens to produce food. Ebru Baybara collaborating with UNHCR on the border of Turkey and Syria to integrate the refugees through cooking. Massimo Bottura opening social “and cultural” dining rooms to draw attention to food waste. Gastromotiva offering professional culinary training to Latin American youths in vulnerable situations. Parabere Forum reflecting on the role of women in the international culinary arena. Dan Barber proposing to cook recipes “from scratch”, ensuring the use of seeds that are good for the soil. The volunteers of Floresta de Bolso occupying lots and abandoned urban spaces to replace them with green areas and vegetable gardens in Brazil. Venezuelan María Fernanda Di Giacobbe encouraging hundreds of women to become cocoa entrepreneurs. Legislators in France prohibiting the use of plastic cups and cutlery. Leonor Espinosa working with Afro-Colombian communities so that their products find markets in the big city. Fundacio Alicia applying research and innovation to the design of food solutions such as those required by cancer patients. René Redzepi launching applications such as Vild Mad to enable us to become trackers capable of identifying edible wild foods in our local landscapes. Anthony Myint proposing to reduce the carbon footprint generated by restaurants to zero through ZeroFoodprint. You buying seasonal ingredients. Me cooking…

“Eating is not a private act, nor an ethically and politically irrelevant act, but a daily practice on which the fate of our world depends. We either configure it or destroy it.” Andoni Luis Aduriz and Daniel Innerarity; Cocinar, comer, convivir.

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UNCOVERED TRUTHS

If we really believe in the maxim that states “we are what we eat”, it makes sense that in recent decades we have got to be more concerned about exactly what we put in our mouths, where and under what conditions it was produced and what ingredients it contains. The opacity of a certain food industry that camouflages certain practices and produces highly processed foods in ways that are difficult to unravel makes it clear how difficult it us for us to answer these questions ourselves. That is why writers, researchers, journalists, film-makers and activists, turned into true detectives, started to undertake the task on our behalf.

The authors of books such as Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser, 2001), The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Michael Pollan, 2006), Malcomidos (“How the Argentine food industry is killing us” of Soledad Barruti, 2013) or Vamos a comprar mentiras (“Let’s buy lies” of José Manuel López Nicolás, 2016), documentaries such as Food, Inc. (Robert Kenner, 2008) or Fed Up (Stephanie Soechtig, 2014), as well as television series such as Rotten (Netflix, 2018), to mention just a few, have focused on investigating companies, laboratories, farms and restaurant chains to draw attention to issues such as the living conditions of farmers and animals, the use of pesticides and genetically engineered organisms, the impact of food production on the environment, the less healthy ingredients that come hidden in our food and the lies and half-truths in the labelling of products. The concern for what we eat spreads by word of mouth, which increases the pressure on legislators and causes the food industry to consider changing and controlling some of its practices, as it becomes aware that someone is watching, that there are those who would rather know than not know.

“Good food should be a right and not a privilege.” Alice Waters, Chez Panisse Restaurant.

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ABOUT HEROES AND VILLAINS

Food, as a source of both health and disease, can contribute to making life more bearable or turning it into a hell. It therefore seems reasonable that we live in a certain state of alert with regard to what we put in our mouths and look for reliable information about it, especially when there are so many interests behind the messages flying around regarding the goodness or badness of certain foods and ingredients. In some cases, however, this logical interest has turned into an obsession with “health food” and “ingredient-medicine”, fuelled by the capacity we have today to look under the surface of food and break it down into the nutrients of which it is composed, which has led to the appearance of phenomena such as “nutritionism” or “orthorexia”.

In the world of food there is a constant struggle between good and evil. Superheroes such as the Omega 3 Fatty Acids or Fibre battle on the rooftops against supervillains such as Trans Fats or Sugar. Sometimes it is not clear who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. In the past, animal fats and carbohydrates were suspected and there are now those who distrust gluten. Today more than ever reliable sources are needed to identify the true evildoers and gather irrefutable evidence so that the evil Ronald McDonald, the treacherous Smacks frog and the machiavellian Frosties tiger end their days in solitary confinement inside a high security prison, separated forever from their little friends, children all over the world, by allegedly being part of a conspiracy to make them fat.

“The lack of a steadying culture of food leaves us especially vulnerable to the blandishment of the food scientist and the marketer, for whom the omnivore’s dilemma is not so much a dilemma as an opportunity.” Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

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WASTE

For too long we have been taking advantage of the well of our planet’s resources as if it had no bottom, giving back tons of waste in return. The throw-away culture generates a huge amount of waste which is very expensive to deal with, both in economic terms and in terms of the impact on the environment. Slowly but steadily, in all areas of production, initiatives are arising aimed at developing a circular economy in which the products are designed in such a way that after their use they can be reincorporated, either partly or fully, in the cycle of consumption.

In the field of food, we know that one third of the food produced around the world for human consumption is lost or wasted, which amounts to about 1,300 million tonnes of food a year. Faced with such statistics, different groups are making their contributions, from lawmakers in France approving a law to prohibit supermarkets from wasting food to computer scientists designing applications to manage waste at home. More and more chefs are drawing attention to this problem using their creativity and their craft to take advantage of the ingredients from “nose to tail” and to prepare dishes and menus from foods that usually end up in the rubbish: meat and vegetable trimmings, products that have passed their “best before” (but not their “expiry”) dates. Campaigns against “discards” are under way on fishing boats that throw overboard tonnes of fish that have no commercial value and in favor of “ugly” or “deformed” products: vegetables that rot in the fields for not complying with our demanding rules of aesthetic perfection, but which are perfectly edible. In any case – and despite the voices that warn that there will be a point when there is not enough food for a constantly growing population – today more food is produced than is consumed. The challenge of adjusting these variables is ongoing and awaits changes that must necessarily come from the field of policy and legislation.

“Our responsibility as chefs is to make good use of every part of ingredient and turn it into something delicious. Minimizing leftovers is a matter of culinary creativity.” Dan Barber, Blue Hill Restaurant.

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CHEFS TODAY

Does it make sense for chefs to become involved in issues that transcend the culinary world? Should they warn about the risks faced by the planet’s biodiversity or take on challenges involving problems such as early childhood education or mass catering in hospitals? The boom experienced by gastronomy in recent years has put chefs in the spotlight. Rather than being a mere media phenomenon they have gained credibility and established platforms by the way in which they apply themselves to a trade that is not only concerned with the most efficient way to cut an onion or with the secrets of thickening a sauce. Aware of this situation, cooking professionals are serious about the role they can play in areas that were traditionally analysed from other perspectives, and participate in these changes. Initiatives such as the Basque Culinary World Prize demonstrate the way in which chefs from all corners of the world bring a different and creative vision when confronting conventional ways of doing things or addressing problems that concern everyone.

The chef’s battlefield has expanded beyond the limits of his or her kitchen and each individual decides how to react: whether to simply cook (nothing more and nothing less than cooking, witch demands a lot of responsibility) or to take advantage of the visibility chefs have, their creativity and talent to also attract public attention to important issues, to take action, to participate in projects and join causes that generate positive impacts in areas such as the defense of ecosystems, protection of products and culinary traditions, proper treatment of animals, improving the living conditions of producers, social integration projects, the fight against waste, the promotion of healthy diets. It is often said that with great power comes great responsibility. Few jobs carry as much responsibility as feeding others. And based on the power they have acquired, chefs accept their responsibility to contribute to the transformation of society, starting with the current situation within their trade, where it is necessary to deepen into issues such as working conditions in the gastronomic sector, gender equality, equal opportunities and cultural diversity.

“Cooking is not an end by itself, but a mean to more important things. When assumed as such, cooking proves to be a significant tool for change.” Gastón Acurio, Astrid & Gaston Restaurant.

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WOMEN TOO

The number of women running kitchens, taking on their management, designing menus, researching and developing new recipes, adapting the old ones and taking all the creative, technical and economic decisions related to the culinary art continues to grow.

In the domestic context, of course.

The world of fine dining does not escape from one the most relevant paradoxes of our time: women continue to be employed on a massive scale in all areas of the professional world, but with a token presence in management positions, holding the reins of power and wielding influence.

“Women are good cooks, but they are not good chefs. Women who systematically want to do what men do just end by losing their femininity, and what I adore most of all is a feminine woman” told the giant french chef Paul Bocuse to People magazine in 1976, to then add, in 1993: “Women cook like us in our beginnings. They make the kind of food that mothers transmit to their children and grandchildren. “

More than twenty years later, in Spain, only 9 percent of the restaurants with Michelin stars are run by a woman. More than twenty years later, in Spain, only 9 percent of the restaurants with Michelin stars are run by a woman. And on The World’s 50 Best Restaurant list there are fewer women than fingers in a hand. In the photos with which they promote, on their website, each of the 50 restaurants chosen as the best in the world in 2017, the females exhibited were precisely… “one chef and a half”. Fine dining has so far failed to solve the “mystery” of the absence of women on the path that leads from their own kitchens to those of the great restaurants,from the private to the public sphere. The old maxim that “women cook for love and men cook for glory” is very outdated in 21st century society and is not enough to explain why it continues to be so difficult to find restaurants carrying women’s names around the world.

“93% of domestic kitchens are in the hands of women and yet, only 18% of the chefs in professional kitchens are women (earning around 28% less than their male colleagues) .Gender imbalance is less accepted each day by society and yet in gastronomy this problems persists. Despite the fact that when women are not considered equally, half of the talent is lost.” María Canabal. Parabere Forum.

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JUNK FOOD?

In a spectacular case of collective hypnosis, we were ensnared by its colours, by the food packed in cardboard boxes, by the plastic cups with their lids and straws, by that sweet taste that was not like anything we had experienced before and that encouraged us to not stop eating. The food was served in two minutes and consumed in ten (which suited our increasingly busy lives), was gentle to the palate, great in savors, easy to eat and enjoy. It offered a shot of calories in an ultra-compact format and at a ridiculously low price and, as if that were not enough, afterwards you were presented with a crown or a toy as a prize.

For some time there was nothing more cool or more affordable than eating this way. But eventually we realized that it is neither so cool nor so cheap. The cash that we do not leave on the counter is being spent on combating obesity, diabetes, coronary problems and the impact on the environment derived from its constant consumption.

Gastronomy has begun to provide alternatives, using the creativity and knowledge of chefs to camouflage quality food using the same hypnotic format and at a reduced price; food produced from healthy ingredients, in a sustainable manner, cooked and not ultra-processed. The challenge is clear: to get to a point on witch eating cheap does not mean eating junk.

“I don’t want fake good food.” Gabrielle Hamilton, Prune Restaurant.

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RECONNECTING WITH NATURE

According to UN data, at this point in the 21st century more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, and it is expected that by the year 2050 the figure will reach 66 %. The fields that supply our pantries have disappeared from our daily landscape and in many cases they are thousands of kilometres away. The progressive distancing of nature, the original sources of food, and the huge number of intermediaries with which we have filled this gap have made it difficult for new generations to trace the connection between a chicken nugget and a chicken, between a fish finger and a fish, or to know for sure if a cucumber hangs from a tree or from a bush or if it grows underground.

As a reaction to this situation, initiatives have begun to emerge that try to reconnect us with the earth, to restore the knowledge and skills that we once benefited from in order to feed ourselves. The introduction of agriculture workshops in primary education or projects such as the Edible School Gardens teach children how to grow their own food, and in towns and cities it is becoming more common to see urban vegetable gardens established in back gardens and public parks or on rooftops, through initiatives led by private groups or by the town and city councils themselves. Through these educational gardens, the 21st century city dweller is able to recover those ancestral skills and at the same time value the knowledge and effort required to properly cultivate food in equilibrium with the environment.

“I like to think of food as something that is alive, that maintains a close relationship with the living beings and a respectful dialogue with nature.” Michel Bras, Bras Restaurant.

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THE CONSEQUENCES OF EATING

Global food production takes up 25% of the habitable area of the planet. It is responsible

for 70% of the total water consumption, for 80% of the deforestation,and for 30% of the

greenhouse gas emissions*.

In recent decades, we seem to have treated nature sometimes with the same carelessness with which we might use a vending machine. The increasing efficiency of industrial agriculture has led to a reduction in the prices of products, which, among other things, has converted a food such as meat, which used to be consumed only occasionally, into something that many people eat several times each day. This, together with the growth of the world population, has led to a total production of meat that has risen from 70 million tonnes in 1961 to ... 304 million tonnes in 2012. Today it is estimated that livestock is responsible for between 10% and 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions (depending on whether or not the effects of deforestation and other changes produced by land use are taken into account). This search for efficiency has often been accompanied by the extension of the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers and the creation (and patenting) of transgenic crops that can resist them, which translates into environmental problems that the UN describes as “catastrophic” and links with around 200,000 deaths per year from acute poisoning.

Eating is far from being an inoffensive act. The way we do it not only affects our own health but also that of the planet, which we continue to put under great pressure. But it seems that we are finally becoming aware that our decisions regarding food leave a mark on the environment, and that to a large extent they determine the model of agriculture that sustains us. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Perhaps these three recommendations that Michael Pollan offers in his book Food Rules represent the first step towards changing that model and improving our health and that of our natural source of food in the process.

“Cooking is a great ritual to connect with others and it is also a language. In today’s world we need that connection and I think people want it, regardless of the many responsibilities that come with cooking.” Dominique Crenn, Atelier Crenn Restaurant.

*The information in this text comes from the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme).

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BACK TO COOKING

Neither the introduction of sustainable practices in the fields and seas. Nor the defence of cultures and culinary traditions. Nor campaigning for the use of local products. Nor the protection of raw materials in danger of extinction. Nor the publicizing of reliable nutritional recommendations. Nor the control of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Nor warnings about the increase in the rates of obesity and diabetes. Nor the availability in the market of the freshest and tastiest vegetables, meats and fish. None of this will make much sense if there is an empty kitchen at the end of the process.

“Go back to cooking” is the call for a world that has increasingly left this task to much in the hands of others, while part of the food industry turns kitchens into places where cans are constantly being opened and prefabricated meals just need to be heated up. Cooking involves touching raw food, getting your hands dirty, being aware of the knowledge, time and effort required to prepare a good dish. It involves asking why this egg yolk is so consistent and substantial and why this other is not; why this fillet gives off so much water when it is fried and this other does not; why this tomato is tasteless and this other brings the summer sun into our mouth; where it comes from, who produced it, how it was done. It means identifying the quality product first hand, demanding that it continues to exist and is accessible so that it can be offered to more people. Cooking means making purchasing decisions and being aware that each of those decisions have repercussions through the entire chain that connects nature with our dining table.

But ensuring biodiversity or accessibility to the best products will not help if we do not know what to do with them, if we allow that ancestral knowledge that is part of our heritage, our identity and our culture –that knowledge that allows us to feed ourselves– to disappear. The progressive introduction of gastronomic education in schools may prevent future pots, pans and ovens from being displayed in museums next to the telegraph, the daguerreotype or the bidet.

“I have shown that you can eat well and cheap, something that is only possible if you cook!” Karlos Arguiñano, Karlos Arguiñano Restaurant.

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TO KNOW OR NOT KNOW

Science and gastronomy

Just as Walt Whitman, just as the totality of beings and living things, food is also large, it also contain mulltitudes but these remain hidden, covered by an opaque casing. Under its surface, millions of particles in permanent conflict interact, contradict themselves, fight battles, react to external inputs, and every addition, every rejection, every victory and every defeat have a special effect on the surface, the only thing our senses can perceive. For centuries, neither chefs nor cooks had access to that inner world. They were satisfied, in most cases, with knowing the superficial result of those battles. They put lamb legs on the fire, introduced masses of bread in the oven, dipped vegetables in boiling water and eggs in oil and then entrusted themselves to a prayer. In any case, and with uneven results, the meat was roasted, the bread came out of the oven, spongy and crispy, the vegetables became tender to the touch and the eggs well cooked. Through chance, intuition, trial and error, they combined ingredients, adjusted times and temperatures, tuned textures and presentations, until they progressively fixed the preparations, sophisticating procedures and nourishing cookbooks.

Although the approach was progressive, it is mainly from the 90s when cooking and science began to meet: in 1992, the an international conference, called “Physical and Molecular Gastronomy.” took place in Sicily. Little by little, the physicist Peter Barham helped Heston Blumenthal, the chemist Hervé This teamed up with Pierre Gagnaire, within a concatenation of events among which the publication On Food and Cooking (2004) stood out: With this book Harold McGee helped - and still is helping- cooks that were full of questions. More recently, Modernist Cuisine (2011), the “bible” written by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, has become an essential reference for those who intend to wear the cook jacket, while Ferran Adrià keeps building his awaited Bullipedia.

Culinary practice transformed with the introduction of scientific knowledge. On one hand, cooks were able to look at what was under the opaque casing and, with the help of experts, deepening into the understanding of its logics, and advancing in the understanding of the physical-chemical properties of food as well as the behavior of ingredients.

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On the other hand, a more “objective”, precise and extensive methodology was acquired (for those who were interested in perfecting processes), also allowing the reproduction of culinary elaborations, so that the professionals of the stove no longer had to rely solely on their crafting skills, but on the certainties of the exact.

A space was opened for chefs to encourage themselves to investigate and make their own contributions, for example, through the publication of papers in scientific journals or R & D projects. Also, a context was gained where interdisciplinary areas could be dealt with, such as the one where Dan Barber entered, in New York, when he dealt with plant breeding, as a method to promote reengineering of fields that could ensure organic, nutritious crops with great culinary potential. Or where the Basque chef Andoni Luis Aduriz entered together with the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, by pointing to the neuronal bases of creativity.

The approach to botany gives rise to a journey of which we have lost sight today, after professionals from all over the world closely peered at their territories, studied and labeled the hundreds of herbs and wild species that for years waited to wake up the curiosity of all those chefs who today show up, transformed into foragers.

The neuroscience field, meanwhile, leads to another world of possibilities, providing notions that broaden the sensory experiences of both, diners accustomed to fine dining - who are surprised with almost “pyrotechnic” approaches, between textures - and unaware diners who today benefit, almost effortless, from the perfect texture of a humble french friend.

In the opposite direction, cooking offers science an alternative approach to aspects linked to food, introducing sensory, emotional, creative and even aesthetic variables. But above all, it offers a test bed to different fields of study, which are gradually approaching. Food industry, anyway, takes the change: studies, trials and tests solutions to then massively place the resulting products in supermarkets and, consequently, in homes.

In the movement fostered from the encounter with science on, home cooking is equally affected when, for example, rough estimates are replaced by precise measurements with which even the most inexperienced cook, helped by the Thermomix, ends up looking like a big one. Or when an ergonomic and even attractive device replaces long hours of kneading, or when laboratory formulas are packed and kept ready in pantries to solve a lunch or a dinner, in a matter of minutes.

Computer science, robotics and the whole set of digital applications accelerate changes that we have just begun to see, between cybernetic assistants, platforms offering wonderful combinations of ingredients and bottomless cookbooks, with preparations guided step by step and systems based on algorithms that submit to the wishes and tastes of the user; or assistance services, such as Alexa (Amazon) -to just name a few.

In the midst of such complexity, gastronomy acquires a level of requirement and specialization important enough for the aspiring chef to need a type of higher education that integrates knowledge from very diverse areas, such as physics, chemistry, nutrition, technology of food, anthropology, sociology, philosophy or communication. The university finally opened the doors to cooking and a good example of this is the Basque Culinary Center.

An apple does not fall from the tree in the same way since Newton explained to us that it is the force of gravity that attracts it to the earth. In the same way, a steak is not roasted in the same way, since the moment we knew that during its roasting, a chemical process known as the Maillard reaction takes place on its inside, on a molecular scale. The consequences, the visible effects at a surface level (an apple on the ground, a roasted chop) remain the same. But today we know why.

#Science #FoodTech #Why #How #WhatFor #HaroldMcGee #ModernistCuisine #FerranAdria

#HestonBlumenthal #JoanRoca #AndoniLuisAduriz #DanBarber #HerveThis #VilMad #Clorofilia

#Conectaz #NeuroGastronomy #Roner #Thermomix #TechCooking #UltraViolet #Alinea

#Bras #VildMad #Conectaz #Bculinary #BculinaryLab #BculinaryLab #AztiTecnalia #ChefStep

#FoodPairing #Amazon #BrainyTongue #NoteByNoteCooking #CreativeThinking #Future

50 glimpses Science and gastronomy

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THE ANSWERS BEHIND THE KITCHEN

When chefs asked themselves “why”, cooking stopped being an act of faith to become an act of science.

To answer that question, it was necessary to knock on the door of biologists, physicists, chemists and botanists. Scientists opened to cooks a window into the inner world of food, which until then they had not known, unveiled for them the invisible forces that moved the physical-chemical processes hidden behind the roast of a chop, the curd of an omelette, the binding of a sauce. In this way, the cooks learned that, without knowing it, they had been devoting themselves to breaking molecules, inactivating enzymes, denaturing proteins, or linking sugars with amino acids. This knowledge gave them a new power: the capacity to control those processes in a systematic way and, thus, to willingly repeat a precise texture, an exact cooking, or a certain reaction. It spread a network under what until then, had been intuition, occurrence, experimentation in the void.

From the dialogue that science and cooking establish a new common language begun to be built, from which not only gastronomy benefits. If cooking manages to understand and explain itself finally better while gaining method, control and precision from science, scientists find in cooking a new laboratory, a new test bed for research that sometimes exceeds the limits of the gastronomic sphere to enter those of medicine, anatomy, nutrition, biology... Those of science and gastronomy are journeys shared with multiple destinations and unsuspected findings along the way.

“Understanding what food is and how it works does not violate the art of cooking, nor does it destroy its enchanting mystery. On the contrary, the mystery expands.” Harold McGee.

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TECHNOLOGY IN TIME

Is a Roner more “technological” than a wooden spoon?

Since the invention of fire, there is technology behind everything we cook. The utensils and materials that today we associate with craftsmanship were at the time innovations that responded to a need, and whose introduction in the rituals of food was not always easy, as evidenced by the history of the fork, an element considered absurd in its beginnings and causing more than one scandal. If today we find it difficult to see technology in a wooden spoon, a copper casserole, a stainless steel knife or a gas stove, it is only because its use over time, and the easiness with which they have been inserted into the culinary practice, have led us to assume them as ordinary elements.

Each era has its own problems and values and develops the necessary tools to respond to them. Thus, since science broke into the gastronomic territory, kitchens changed, they got sophisticated, they started reformulating their spaces to accommodate a range of artifacts in an almost arms race, in an accumulation of machines that accelerate or facilitate processes, that complement and even take the place of the cook’s expert hand. Who knows? Perhaps in the XXIII century, when we are no longer able to measure the temperature of a broth with our fingertips, the Roner will be considered an artisan tool, and touch a technology in disuse.

“Kitchen knives have always been one step behind weapons.” Bee Wilson, The importance of the Fork.

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SCIENCE AT HOME

Domestic cooking has traditionally been dominated by instinct. And there were those who had it and there were those who did not. Who had it, cooked. Who did not have it, tried to sit at the table of whoever had it, usually a mother, a grandmother or a friend with “natural talent”. Generation after generation, instinct cooks have been able to prepare sublime dishes, handling the metaphysics of “a pinch” of this, “a trickle” of that, “a bunch” of this or “half” of that, while trusting their hunch for textures, proportions, temperatures ...The inability to know exactly what was hidden behind these peculiar references could easily fill the inexperienced ones with disenchantment and frustration.

But homes, following the trail of professional kitchens, also deepen into control and precision. The techniques developed by fine dining, supported by domestic versions of some of the devices that make them possible, serve to introduce the scientific method to everyday kitchens. In this way, “a pinch” becomes “1.5 grams”, “a while”, “5 minutes and thirty seconds”, “a trickle”, “1 dl”. Talking about something “rare” can mean vacuum “packaged” and immersed in water for 60 minutes at a constant temperature of 54 degrees”. This not only gives back hope to individuals devoid of culinary instinct, but also contributes to bringing domestic cooking to levels of perfection unthinkable until recently.

“A recipe has no soul, you as the cook must bring soul to the recipe.” Thomas Keller. Per Ser Restaurant.

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SENSORY APPROACHES

We got to know that the white color is salty, that red stimulates the appetite and gray diminishes it, that the rounded shapes are sweet and the angular ones are rather salty or bitter. We know that a dish called “vegetable stew” is not going to be perceived as one that is called “The best of the Navarrese orchard”, even if they have exactly the same ingredients, and if they are cooked in the same way. We also know that reproducing the sound of the sea through headphones while tasting an oyster, or the perfect crunch of a fried potato while chewing a stale “chip”, can improve our perception of their flavor.

The knowledge of how our brain works serves fine dining to intensify or expand the gastronomic experience through different games with our senses. Thanks to neuroscience, we have been able to verify to what extent eating is a multisensory activity and how to manipulate our senses through the color of the silverware, the weight of the cutlery, the lighting or the sounds we are listening to at the moment of eating, can modify in a surprising way the perception and evaluation of what we are eating.

The results of research by chefs and neuroscientists in this field also have practical applications outside of great restaurants. In the field of health, among other things, an improvement has been achieved on how food is perceived by older people who have lost sensitivity in taste and smell, or trying to make those who suffer from obesity problems feel satisfied with less food. This is cooking seen as a test bed of science to improve people’s quality of life.

“No diet considers the role played by happiness, satisfaction or awareness of people. Diets are usually reduced to fats, proteins and carbohydrates, for years we thought that fat was bad, now sugar is evil. Food, in any case, is more than its chemical components.” Heston Blumenthal, The Fat Duck Restaurant.

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TECHNO-EMOTIONS

Science and technology’s world is a cold one where control and precision prevail, and it is inhabited by individuals dressed in white coats, masks and disposable gloves that work in aseptic rooms where there is no room for dust , bacteria... nor emotions. The literary and cinematographic dystopias of the twentieth century took this perception to an extreme, to pose a hyper technological and dehumanized future, in which even food (pills, unshaped porridge) was designed to enter our body and feed it without producing too many sensations in its way through.

Now that we are coming to that future that books and movies told us about, we find ourselves with a paradox that science fiction could not foresaw: the 21st century cooking has used science and technology precisely to generate emotions in the diner. The so-called “techno-emotional” cooking uses the technique to move us in many different ways. Sometimes, it tries to cause surprise, bewilderment or surprise, deceiving the eye or the palate through shocking creations, proposals never seen until then in which the technique becomes very evident. In others cases, on the contrary, it hides under the surface of apparently simple preparations that respond to our ideals of authenticity and purity. In these cases, the emotion is caused by an impeccable cut, a cooking adjusted to unsuspected limits. Emotions, all of them, that are only possible thanks to the level of control and precision that the culinary technique has reached.

“Who are techno-emotional? Those who believe that feelings are the most important thing, those who don´t discard any technique or technology when trying to provoke emotion; young and old people, renovators and disciples, discoverers and beneficiaries of the discovery.” Pau Arenós, La cocina de los valientes.

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OPEN-DOOR CUISINE

Chefs stopped being suspicious guys who took their secrets to their grave. Little by little, they got to “open up the code” of their preparations. They started editing their own books, detailing recipes and labeling procedures. They met at congresses, took the stand to show the results of their research, to share with their colleagues their latest dishes, techniques and gadgets. They also contacted the scientific field, which led to the creation of Research and Development (R+D) departments that work as authentic centers of knowledge. This exchange favored the identification of research spaces in which both professionals with cooking jackets and white coats face shared mysteries.

In this context, for example, projects have arisen, such as the International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, published by Elsevier, the first scientific publication combining gastronomy and science, born in 2012 and led by Mugaritz, the technological center specialized in food research AZTI Tecnalia and the Basque Culinary Center, with the intention of facilitating interdisciplinary communication and stimulating the application of the scientific method by chefs, who are invited to handle criteria, such as objectivity, universality, verifiability...

The publication of findings in journals of this type contributes to the diffusion of information validated by international experts, with which better understand physical-chemical aspects related to our diet, issues related to the functioning of our sensorial ability, with the behavior of diverse materials, or of biological processes so in vogue (and so lifelong) as fermentation, the inadvertent properties of hundreds of wild herbs, or the logics of a kombucha.

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SUMMA CUM LAUDE GASTRONOMY

There was a time when, to become a chef, it was enough to go into a restaurant kitchen and look closely at a cook, who would show to the apprentice his way of doing things, while letting him or her mess, stain, rehearse, make mistakes and learn by doing. In time, cooking reached the category of “professional studies”. Until finally the cooking academies and catering schools appeared, from which some of our today’s great chefs come from.

In the last forty years cooking has been crossed with other scientific disciplines and has reached such complexity that it has been necessary to design a new university degree in order to provide students with the necessary knowledge to meet the new demands of a market where a cook today is not only the one who cooks. The Basque Culinary Center, with its 4 years of training and various postgraduate programs, has set precedents since, in 2011, it opened its doors in San Sebastian as a Faculty of Gastronomic Sciences aimed at consolidating a pioneering vision of gastronomy, addressed from an interdisciplinary approach and an expanded battlefield, in which subjects such as Physics and Food Chemistry, Psychology, Sensoriality, Biology, Business, Sociology, Labor, Food and Environmental Legislation, Marketing, Design and Product Development are taught...

The great masters are still there, waiting for their new apprentices. Only those apprentices are now -and will be- very different.

“Seeing what cooking started to become its gained position in society, we needed a space like the Basque Culinary Center so that future generations would be better educated than us.” Eneko Atxa, Azurmendi Restaurant.

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EDIBLE ALGORITHMS

In the Big Data era, technology insists on knowing more about us than our own mothers. Our fingerprint -all that data that we consume and generate- would be enough to know what we prefer to eat normally, what we would like to dinner tonight, what recipe to prepare from the ingredients we have in the pantry or how to cook it. We can use applications like Foodpairing to type, for example, the word “prawns” and discover in a second that we could combine them with ingredients as unexpected as hibiscus tea or cocoa, thanks to the aromatic molecules they have in common. And also receive an unprecedented recipe created by a machine.

Domestic cyber-stunners like Joule (the vacuum cooking machine of ChefsStep) agrees with Amazon’s Alexa on how to prepare a perfect steak, adjusting the point of the meat to our taste, with absolute precision, without us having to worry about timings or temperatures. The creators of this type of invention calmly assure that “sometimes, a chef’s best tool is his voice”, not his skills in front of a cutting board or his abilities to season, but the voice with which we now ask favors to Siri, our new intelligent personal assistant, and which we will use more and more in the future to activate and deactivate functions in houses endowed with “secondary brains” and auxiliary robotic hands.

Solutions are already being developed to tailor meals according to the nutritional profiles or people’s DNA, as well as responses designed to satisfy, in the future, a diner’s mood or social needs.

The internet of things has only begun.

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CREATIVE TRIANGLE

We tend to think that creativity in gastronomy is born from the inspiration and genius of the cooking masters who, locked up in their laboratories in order to reflect, just as Montaigne in his tower, apart from the masses, are devoted to devising preparations, techniques and revolutionary devices that will change the way of dealing with culinary issues. However, reality is more complex and interesting.

Sometimes, creativity comes from the appropriation, adaptation or even perversion by the chefs, of usual processes in the food industry, for creative purposes. In other times, the tour could end there, in professional kitchens, but today we see how ingredients and techniques that were born in the industrial field and then successfully were tested in fine dining restaurants return to the industry and then be forwarded to the addresses in the form of “kits”. The spherification technique, for example, was devised in 1946, half a century before “elBulli” came to use it for other purposes, by a technician from Unilever (in the very heart of the food industry), in order to encapsulate drops liquid of fruit juice. Today, any cooking amateur can buy a kit in the market adapted to the domestic use and become, also, a creator of new proposals susceptible to be reinserted in that circuit of innovation.

In another axis of interaction, cases like the siphon stand out: although the device appeared originally in the pastry field, its history was rewritten by Ferran Adrià, who turned it into an impressible instrument, almost as ubiquitous in the kitchens of the world as a blender. From the 90s, it started to be used together with an injection of Nitrous oxide, to give foam texture to endless substances (espuma). With this Bullinian development, cooking overcame the classic French school mousses and gained a new versatile, colorful and light culinary expression that, thanks to agreements made with companies like ICC, has generated millions of dollars of revenue and has put siphons everywhere. PacoJet, Roner, Gastrovac, Clarimax, Rotaval, among many other developments, give an account of an exchange in which many more than simple inventions are inserted continuously.

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BELIEVE IT OR NOT

Do we know exactly what we eat?

Science and technology enable new creatures designed in laboratories to arrive on the scene in order to adapt to our needs and demands and to improve, imitate or even take the place of the models on which they are based: envelope soups “like granny’s”, strawberry candies made with anything but real strawberry, “vegan burgers” produced with more than twenty ingredients including synthetic meat developed from culturing bovine stem cells or genetically modified organisms... a whole army of impostors. Without know it, we are putting lies in our mouths, recreations made from ingredients that we cannot identify, but, when used together following designed scientific formulas, they manage to represent the image of something that is familiar to us.

Creative cuisine has also used technology, techniques and ingredients to play with our expectations and confuse our senses. Shining “tangerines” that actually hide chicken liver, potatoes that come to the table looking as river stones, false olives that explode in the mouth, tomatoes of a supernatural perfection, or squids that disguise themselves as “carrots”... Chefs have exploited the more ludic aspect of a matter usually controversial, through creations that artificially incarnate what we assume as natural, reminding us that nothing is what it seems.

“Although we have been taught so, food is neither good nor bad. The organ on which taste depends is not our tongue, but our brain, a cultural (and therefore historical) organ from which the evaluation criteria are transmitted and learned.” Massimo Montanari.

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VALUE SUPPLIED IN CHAIN

Entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation

The term “supply chain” usually refers to the theoretical model used to analyse the performance of an entity (a company or even an entire economic sector) with the aim of generating profitability and usefulness equally. In the case of gastronomy, however, what variables can we use to measure the weight and length of its chain? Where does the particular sequence that links together all the aspects related to food and culture begin and where does it end?

Something so complex cannot easily be translated into a dissectable schema, into a simple coordinate axis or an easy to solve equation. Two and two does not always equal four. If we understand that gastronomy is not only about fine dining, neither just food or cooking, we realise that we are dealing with a set of relationships involving very diverse agents, with food simply being what they have in common. Its form is therefore more that of an ecosystem of interconnected variables in which the actions that are generated in one context directly affect the rest. In addition to purely culinary issues, gastronomy has to do with natural environments, technologies, forms of production, distribution, marketing and consumption, and also with the dialogue between knowledge, identity, proximity, sustainability, biodiversity, balance, health, food safety and traceability, among others. To this matrix we must also add companies, farmers, fishermen and livestock owners, designations of origin, distributors, scientists, institutions, research centres, women chefs, male chefs, restaurants and many more, not forgetting the consumers, who give meaning and force to this entire chain.

Although these notions are often intermingled, everything begins when someone is capable of looking with different eyes at things that seem to have always been there: things that we have been doing for centuries in one particular way and never in any other way. Creativity therefore means realising things that have gone unnoticed and proposing solutions, transcending the conventional to confront the unknown and venturing into unexplored territories. It is not synonymous with either brilliant ideas or talent. However, it does require some spontaneity and it definitely requires knowledge.

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Creativity is a necessary condition, but it is not enough. In order for it to bear fruit, things that have not happened before must start to occur, and this process must be directed efficiently and effectively. This means, as Ferran Adrià would say, combining creation with good management and taking all the necessary steps so that what has just been born in someone’s mind leaves the world of ideas and enters the world of things. That is the moment for innovation, which far from being a pretentious idea or strictly linked to technology, can sometimes mean something as simple as “sorting things out for ourselves” when we want to improve the daily processes that structure our lives.

As some experts use to say, “you can have a great idea, but if you can’t sell it, it’s not innovation”, when referring to this long, complex process plagued with difficulties through which, with a great deal of ingenuity, sweat, strength of will and some luck, an idea will stop being something abstract and will become a product or a service, something different and useful in exchange for which the public will be willing to pay.

Viewed from below, the height of the mountain that must be climbed to make this all happen can lead to discouragement and surrender even before starting the climb towards the top. Entrepreneurship, that word normally associated with the starting up of businesses or the launching of disruptive technologies or solutions, is first and foremost an attitude. To be an entrepreneur is to find the courage and the tools to mark out new paths and to attempt to achieve something, even at the risk of failing in the endeavor. In the field of gastronomy, this endeavor is not limited to the generation of wealth in a purely economic way. There is also a different kind of wealth, which is generated from the interaction between the tangible and intangible values that make up the ecosystem.

Gastronomy is perhaps expected to satisfy hunger –and give pleasure– since it is usually associated with the strictly culinary practice, or with something that occurs within the confines of a table. However, in a complex society like ours its borders have expanded, especially when it is driven by creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship acting together. The movement that brings this virtuous triangle to the ecosystem obliges us to manage both ingenious solutions and contradictions in light of the social implications that any idea could have, however brilliant it may be.

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#traceability #BigData #technology #FoodTech #StartUps #TodaysFuture #Distribution

#GastronomicTourism #3Dprinting #FoodComputers #SintropicAgriculture #Transgenics

#DarkKitchens #Restaurant4.0 #InternetOfThings #Amazon #WholeFoods #Deliveroo

#VirtualReality #Eatsa #Vitamojo#CulinaryNation #NoWaste #Prosumers s

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ACTION!

To paraphrase Dirty Harry, we could say that ideas are like asses: everyone has one. But not everyone is able to cross the Rubicon and is willing to take risks, get involved in paperwork, seek advice, investigate, knock on doors, have sleepless nights, walk up and down corridors, visit offices, find financing, get into debt, feel that there is no safety net below them, assemble teams, coordinate tradespeople, and put one small brick on top of another in order to make an intuition become reality. The road can be long and stormy, the jungle is full of dangers and, however sharp the machete, the result is uncertain. To jump or not to jump: that is the dilemma.

To be an entrepreneur, in that sense, is to move from passion to action. And becoming an entrepreneur (since no one is born being one) means learning and mastering technical tasks as well as analysis, innovation, planning and management skills. ElBulli, the Thermomix, food delivery, Food Network, seed monitoring, the tasting menu, the Basque Culinary Center and even the serrated knife were at some point ideas that could have ended life right where they were born, in the “twisted” mind of those who dreamed them up, if it had not been because someone dared and acted: like the entrepreneur who left everything to start an organic garden on the outskirts of New York; the one who transformed his garage to produce a thousand liters of craft beer a year; the one who raised hundreds of thousands of euros to develop the software with which a restaurant could operate in an entirely automated way, with the help of robots.

Between 2013 and 2018, the number of active investors in the food and agriculture and gastronomy sectors has tripled internationally. The table is set for those who decide to commit money, knowledge, leadership, their personal life and reputation in order to contribute to the world of gastronomy.

“Do not spare an ounce of effort. Be happy building a real, authentic project that leaves you going to bed exhausted, but with a smile. And, above all, do not be afraid. After all, this is the most beautiful job in the world”. Martín Berasategui, Lasarte Restaurant.

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BALANCE

Ecosystems

The Earth’s profound environmental changes used to occur very slowly, as a result of events such as the impact of a meteorite or comet, orbital disturbances, volcanic eruptions or tectonic movements. Some scientists argue, however, that we have left the Holocene period, in which we had been living for 12,000 years, to enter the Anthropocene: the time in which the human being has become the main agent of climate change and the disappearance of species.

If we see biodiversity as the infinite sum of units of life or, as Alexander von Humboldt said, as “an interconnected whole”, “living totality” or “perpetual interrelation”, it would not make sense to think of our environment as something distant and alien, and that it is therefore appropriate to exploit, squeeze and exhaust resources in any way we choose provided that the extraction, transformation, distribution and consumption processes are as cheap and profitable as possible. We are nature: we inhabit the same ecosystem as a tomato, a salmon or a cow. Gastronomy has much to consider in this regard, in its attempt to avoid being regarded simply as the table which is the destination of the food we take out of that apparently limitless pantry made up of the fields and seas, and in terms of the need to consider, in its profit and loss accounts, the environmental costs that make possible this multiplication of the economic benefit.

To creatively address the sources of the essential ingredients in our kitchens from an innovative and entrepreneurial perspective is to propose, develop and implement approaches, debates, technologies, actions and legal frameworks that contribute to the survival of species, including ours, and the feeding of the future.

“The best entrepreneurs are not those who earn a lot of money and retire young; they are those who continue to advance, always looking for new possibilities and, to quote Winston Churchill, going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” José Andrés, ThinkFoodGroup.

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MANAGEMENT OF CONTRADICTIONS

Food Production

What is the best way to feed a population that is constantly growing and living longer? How can we guarantee the food supply of the humans of the future?

Faced with these questions some insist that by 2050 there will not be enough food to support a population that by then will have reached 9 billion, while others say that we are already producing much more food than we actually consume and that we should just concentrate on not wasting it. In any case, innovation in this field proposes alternatives to the aggressiveness of the intensive industrial agriculture model. Syntropic agriculture? Open agriculture? “Digital agriculture” and hydroponic crops in which the roots of plants are exposed to a mineral solution and need neither earth nor daylight? Underwater greenhouses so that developing countries with arid soils can grow their own vegetables? Meat “constructed” in laboratories from cow stem cells to reduce land dedicated to livestock and the emission of greenhouse gases? Turbo photosynthesis to enhance production processes? Varieties sown with nitrogen implanted in the roots to ensure the regeneration of the soil? Open source “climate recipes” so that people from Bogotá to Donosti can enter data in a Food Computer that, in the future, handles the task of providing nutritious and tasty basil, grown in enclosed spaces and digitally monitored? Reproduction of tissues at the nano level, capable of infallibly simulating the texture of a meat, using only chickpea proteins?

There is nothing, perhaps, as complex as the management of contradictions. Therefore, it is essential for gastronomy to have reliable information and contribute to the dialogue on issues that generate polarized or strongly ideologically-charged opinions (such as GMOs, for example), responding a call to guide innovation, to increase productivity and profitability, while at the same time continuing to guarantee biodiversity, environmental sustainability, taste and authenticity, the good living conditions of farmers and the health and access of the world’s consumers; and to prevent only a handful of corporations enriching themselves through the operations involved and the monopolization of resources. As simple as that?

“To me it’s obvious. We need to merge sustainability and gastronomy.” Christian Puglisi. Relae Restaurant.

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TRANSPARENCY

Food Industry

Depending on how you look at it, everything is food industry. From the sweets and pastries made by the Clarisse sisters in the silence of their convents to the decaffeinated Nespresso coffee capsule. From the organic wine produced by a small Galician winery to a can of Red Bull. From the best loaf of bread in the town’s bakery to a bag of Haribo Jelly Beans. From the acorn-fed cured ham of the oak forests of Extremadura to Findus chicken nuggets. In all these cases, the raw materials undergo transformation processes that turn them into something else, with a view to their commercialization.

Sometimes, however, the “food industry” is associated with something dark and impenetrable. But it does not have to be like that. Adjusting to the new demands means changing paradigms: if the millennials, Generation X and the baby boomers seem to agree about one thing it is in the preference for “fresh, healthy and natural” foods: studies indicate that, during 2016, the food industry of the United States United reformulated around 180 thousand items to address this trend (doubling the reformulation of the previous year). On the other hand, there is an increasing use of data reading and monitoring systems to track the journey of food in its production and distribution chains in great detail and then generate shareable and accessible information.

Developments such as Tellspec make us wonder if, sooner rather than later, people will be using spectrometers on a daily basis to identify the chemical and/or nutritional components of what they buy in the supermarkets. In times of fake news, the truth about what we eat (including what some call the Food Id) seems to be a rising demand: to the same extent that technology is able to mask our food, it is, fortunately, also able to reveal its true nature.

“Work hard, have new ideas, push forward.” Anne-Sophie Pic, Maison Pic Restaurant.

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SHORT DISTANCE

Marketing and Distribution

The food of the 21st century is nourished by contradictory desires. We want to “eat local”, we look for fresh food options as close to our home as possible. We want to shorten distances and clear the path of interme-diaries, but without giving up products from other continents. We preach about the direct relationship with the producers but then we quickly make excuses about not having time to actually go to the plot of the gardener who sells tomatoes in situ; or for sometimes not having the energy to go to the supermarket (preferring to dine at home without lifting a finger, apart from opening the door to the delivery boy or girl).

With this in mind, there has been an acceleration of the distribution sec-tion of the of the food chain. In addition to books, electronic devices, clothes and toys, we can buy fresh food through the Internet and receive it in a matter of minutes (already a quarter of the North American popu-lation appears to be buying vegetables online. According the Food and Beverage Monitor 2017, 76% of companies have already implemented or plan to implement e-commerce technologies).

Small local farmers, meanwhile, innovate when they organise themselves to obtain permits and premises to set up farmers’ markets in large towns and cities or to deliver baskets of fresh ingredients through the so-called CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) to urban consumers, who in ex-change for the payment of a quota receive their share of the production. Platforms like Hermeneus allow you to buy products online directly from the farmer, without intermediaries. And stop counting.

Creativity is finding your way out. And cooking? In the end, cooking is a decision.” Ferran Adrià, elbullifundation.

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DIVERSIFYING MODELS

The Restaurant Business

A dream of opening a restaurant no longer has to strictly entail finding good premises, building a kitchen and dining room, designing a menu and attending well to visitors. The traditional role of a restaurant business is diversifying as paradigms are shifting. This means that not only do we have establishments that house different services under one roof (such as restaurants which also serve as spaces for theatre, bookshops or even hair salons), but rather a new wave of spaces geared towards different business models. Leading examples include Eatsa, a casual restaurant chain which demonstrates how food can be provided via a computerised self-service model (the waiting staff are notably absent and they work almost like ATMs) while also developing, selling and implementing system software for the ‘new generation of restaurants’.

The industry is experimenting with ‘zero waste’ management approaches, with hipster—but no less innovative—formulas for building a business based on sourdough, craft beers or bean to bar chocolate, and with interactive dynamics which lure diners out of their homes on the promise of making them take part in educational or entertaining activities. There are various levels of ultra-personalised actions offering 3D printing through to dishes adapted to the nutritional requirements of the customer, including the application of algorithms to their genetic profile (e.g. Vitamojo) or data records to then make recommendations according to each person’s preferences.

There is an increasing number of ‘moveable’ restaurants. Then there are those whose brand only exists online (‘dark kitchens’) and which are geared towards home delivery (it doesn’t matter where the kitchen is or who works in it). Above all, the concept of ‘Restaurant 4.0’ is becoming established, and in this model businesses turn to technological solutions to broaden the user experience, both in the back-office and in the front-office. By users, we mean the people who visit an establishment to eat or drink as well as the people who work there, all of whom benefit from Big Data solutions, integrated information systems, virtual and augmented reality models, the Internet of Things, 3D printing, and countless other tools of the future.

“If you don’t like pitches, you shouldn’t be in baseball. If you don’t like waves, you shouldn’t be a surfer. If you don’t like problems, you shouldn’t be in business.” Danny Meyer. Union Square Hospitality Group.

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PROFITABLE AUTHENTICITY

Tourism

The modern tourist seeks experiences. Far from being content with visiting monuments, they want to experience something special. Wherever they go, they arrive with suitcases packed full of curiosity and longing and, above all, with an appetite. It therefore comes as no surprise that the most recent report from the World Tourism Organization (WTO) points to gastronomy as being the third reason why visitors choose to visit a particular country, after considering the culture and the natural attractions of possible destinations.

Some 15% of the 75 million tourists who come to Spain each year do so as much for the country’s food as for its tangible and intangible heritage. In the Basque Country (where tourism represents 5.9% of GDP), this means getting one’s head around a trip which starts with a wine tour in Rioja Alavesa and ends with the txuleta festival in Tolosa, stopping en route for a pintxo tour in the Old Town of San Sebastián, a cooking class in the Basque Culinary Center, discovering the merits of the Cantabrian anchovy and the seductive personality of txakolí, or sampling the culinary offering in Bilbao which coincides with the recent Esther Ferrer show in the Guggenheim. Then there are the rituals involved in grilling a turbot in Getaria, or the matter of how to experience the cider season in a village like Astigarraga, without forgetting of course the excitement generated by restaurants which are prized across the world and visited by loyal diners who made their reservations months in advance. Such establishments have brought this corner of the world—this culinary nation—the most Michelin stars per square meter.

The efforts of the gastronomy sector to align appeal and quality standards within a broad culinary offering which can attract, satisfy and build loyalty among tourists from all parts of the world is increasingly consistent with the need for leadership, creativity, team work, a long-term vision, audacity and the foresight to fulfill their ambition. More and more investment is being channelled into marketing campaigns, networking, training, research, enterprise and even “gastrodiplomacy”, given the importance of revitalizing nations from a table which knows no borders.

“The only way to win client fidelity is to create an experience and try to make people feel like they belong.” Diego Guerrero. Dstage Restaurant.

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RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Knowledge

Gastronomy has always been a source of pleasure. Today, it is also a focus for knowledge, research, development and innovation. It is the source of initiatives, products and solutions that bring value to society, beyond creating dishes which satisfy our palate. Nordic Food Lab in Denmark, Azti-Tecnalia and BCC Innovation in the Basque Country and the Mas-sachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA are examples of how the interaction between science and cooking—via the creation of depart-ments and laboratories specific to the culinary sector—has generated knowledge which is now applied both in kitchens and in the food in-dustry. This knowledge continues to open doors that nobody could have anticipated just a few years ago.

The world of domestic cooking technology has also experienced a real revolution with the development of new household devices (Thermomix, smart fridges, slow cookers, 3D printers and others), the rise of countless startups which use mobile technology to facilitate shopping without leav-ing the comfort of one’s home (tudespensa.com, soysuper.com, Comprea, etc.) or algorithm-based applications which provide the domestic cook with a wealth of culinary knowledge. In short, research has enabled the gastronomy sector to generate new opportunities for entrepreneurs and to design unprecedented solutions for consumers.

“What innovation would I like to see? I’d love to see invented a pill for eliminating prejudices. It would be amazing to go back to being naive.” Dani Lasa. Mugaritz Restaurant.

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PROSUMING

Consumption

It is generally assumed that the consumer is the last part of the value chain, as though their role were little more than filling the refrigerator, consuming and throwing away. The consumer within the world of gastronomy, however, is no mere receiver of goods manufactured in sectors far removed from them using processes over which they have no influence. In the late 1970s the North Amer-ican writer Alvin Toffler coined the phrase ‘prosumer’ to define the considerably more active role which, according to his predictions, the consumer would take on in the economy of the future. Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, has used this term when referring to the consequences of our food choices and how, rather than limiting ourselves to eating passively and ‘unconsciously’, we can directly contribute to generating value in the food sector.

Hence, not only are today’s ‘prosumers’ conscious of the importance of their choices, they also have a creative and innovative relationship with food. They come up with new ways of using the same old produce and explore the possibili-ties of seasonal ingredients or misunderstood varieties which have undreamt of culinary value. They bring in different ways of shopping, cooking, eating, recy-cling and preserving their foods to make the most of them, generate less waste, be more efficient and save time and money. They promote profitable changes in consumption habits, they learn how to use products in accordance with the nutritional needs and practices of our time, and they exploit digital channels to research and share information. They make proper use of cooking technologies and apps or even leave behind a digital footprint which interacts with those of other people to promote a better relationship with food.

Considered in this way, the consumer also adds value to a food chain in which they are the last link, and the one which gives it meaning.

“We need to think of ourselves as prosumers, as people who decide what and how we want to consume, and how to produce. The call is to be informed citizens seeking awareness and knowledge, united for change.” Carlo Petrini. Slow Food.

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CONSCIOUS FRAMEWORKS

All entrepreneurs hope that their project will be a hit with consumers, that their idea, app, device, technique and companies will be received with open arms, that they will carve new paths, that they will provide currently undreamt of solutions, that they will facilitate the processes in the sector which they are bursting into, that their products will be used and enjoyed by more and more people and that the advantages of what they are selling will mark a before and after. However, innovation is often way ahead of reality, and the shock wave that something new can cause in a market or legal framework which isn’t yet ready for it can generate undesired collateral effects, such as those recently attributed to Airbnb, Deliveroo or Uber.

Innovation in the gastronomy scene needs to get ahead of itself by setting a series of parameters which prevent or minimize damage to the ecosys-tem, where the latter in this context isn’t just the natural environment but also the social and cultural one. As noble as creativity, innovation and enterprise are, and however beneficial a new product or service may be to the consumer, their potential benefits are cancelled out when they impact negatively on the jobs, culture or identity of the place where they are implemented. Fortunately, meeting these challenges requires those at the held to manage, oversee, turn a profit and lead on an equal footing with being creative.

“What we need is a good ethos that does not prejudge, but decides case by case when natural is preferable to processed, fresh to preserved, old to new, slow to fast, artisanal to industrial.” Rachel Laudan, Eating Words.

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FOREVER NEW BASQUE CUISINE

Inherited Values

Some 40 years ago, the first pioneering gastronomy is Spain was cooked up in the Basque Country, after chefs such as Juan Mari Arzak and Pedro Subijana—inspired by the emergence of the Nouvelle Cuisine in France—combined cooking and culture in a recipe that would eventually turn into a movement. Their historic 1976 visit to Paul Bocuse in Lyon triggered a shock wave which later mobilised others to join their ranks: Karlos Arguiñano, José Juan Castillo, Tatus Fombellida, Ramón Roteta, Patxi Kintana, Luis Irizar, Ricardo Idiakez, Xabier Zapirain, Pedro Gómez, Manolo Iza, Jesús Mangas and Ramón Zugasti. Together they reconfigured how they would approach products, recipe books and ways of understanding gastronomy from a modern perspective. The revolution they started can still be felt today and its effects still ripple through time. The values passed down as a result are more relevant than ever and continue to affect new generations.

...vision, identity, a sense of belonging and place, research, personality, boldness, character, curiosity, creativity, innovation, awareness, commitment, interdisciplinary working…

“I remember the certainty, strength and energy with which they worked on their projects. I was used to see them continually coming and going at home. My friends, who didn’t understand anything, would say to me: “Your dad and his friends are crazy!” When shared this comments with my dad, he would tell me they were for real and their day would come.” Elena Arzak, Arzak Restaurant.

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THE GASTRONOMIC EXPERIENCE

What are we looking for when we go to a restaurant? Are we looking for broths that help us reconstitute our distended stomachs, and food that help us recover the energy lost during the day? No doubt about it. Perhaps first class products cooked with delicacy in which we can recognize genuine flavors and that fulfill of our palate’s expectations? Certainly. Or mealtime conversations where wine makes our talking flow and fuels the friendship fire with our table mates? Definitely. Restaurants continue to be those places where all this is possible, but nowadays we are also looking for something different. Beyond satisfying our appetite, stimulating our taste buds and strengthening social bonds, today we aim at living something memorable, at enjoying exceptional and new experiences, worthy of being told... and even documented, posted.

Throughout the 90s, the word “experience” began to be known within the fine dining semantic field (and later in the other levels of the gastronomic scale). Some restaurants started to add new kinds of meanings to the act of eating, transcending their physiological, hedonistic and social dimensions, but also making use of them to stimulate other areas of the diner’s brain, now considered as the new playground, as the place where that “experience” would really take place. The joint efforts of chefs and scientists began to yield results in the form of new techniques and the development of technologies, of new tools that could be used to create textures or effects never seen up to then. Traditionally gastronomic adjectives, such as “sweet”, “salty”, “tender”, “bland”, “tasty”, “good” or “bad”, opened a space between their ranks to welcome others as: “surprising”, “moving”, “exciting”, “poetic”, “fun”, “unexpected” or “disturbing”. Chefs then began to use resources more characteristic of other creative disciplines to influence the diner’s perception, utilizing them beyond the boundaries of the plate and the table, and working at the same time on the environment where that experience takes place, thus transforming it into an integral part of it. They modify the structures of their menus and “cartes”, so that the new preparations find in them a better location and can clear out obstacles and restrictions from the field of their creative freedom. They redesign the instruments available for the client, so that they can adjust to the

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requirements of each proposal. Beyond specialties and preferential products, each establishment starts to stand out from the rest for the “design” of these experiences, for the “theme” around which everything spins, for the sensations it wants to excite, or the reflections it causes, for the research work that is done so that, whatever happens inside its walls, is different, special and unforgettable. In some cases, the complexity of these creations can overwhelm the client. In others, though, the quality of the experience increases exponentially.

Likewise, diners also acquire new roles in the gastronomic experience. While their right to decide what they are going to eat sometimes diminishes before the chef’s will, their attitude is not passive, but active, since such experience will basically take place in their minds (where it starts to get shape before entering the restaurant and can “stay alive” even after leaving the place). Diners complete the incentives proposed to them by the kitchen, in such a way that they become interpreters of the storytelling, of the play that is being represented in front of them.

Food puts people together in such a way, they don’t only enjoy it by eating. With the help of smartphones (charged and placed to the left of the fork, or perhaps to the right of the spoon), table’s boundaries broaden to accommodate a potentially endless number of participants.

Food is still the catalyst factor that turns on the whole experience, but the concept of what food is, has also changed. Somehow, food has been losing mass, tangibility, in order to go on dematerializing gradually, up to the point that sometimes just one representation is enough, a virtual image telling about “how we eat”, or what we would like to eat and, therefore, who we are, what our aesthetic preferences and ethical connections are. Nowadays, eating is also watching food. Eating is to anticipate, to show and to judge what has been eaten. We continue going to restaurants to eat, to enjoy and share, but also to get moved, to surprise ourselves, to discover the unknown, to have fun, to let ourselves go to unexplored territories, within a context marked by the increase and invigoration of formats. Among fast food and gourmet food, multiple nuances appear, multiple ways of conceiving luxury and even of enjoying creative cooking on tables without tablecloths or ties, where a “relaxed meal” does not mean less demanding. It could be just the opposite.

#Food #Experience #TastingManu #ElBulli #FineDining #CellerDeCanRoca #Noma #Etxebarri

#DOM #Bras #Mirazur #Enigma #SensoryExperience #ElevenMadisonPark #Mugaritz

#ElSextoSabor #Azurmendi #Arzak #Akelarre #TheKitchenTheory #TheCloveClub #EatingLaVida

#EgoTrip #EdibleMemories #Idiologia #Religion #Entertainment #Pleasure #Eaters #FoodPorn

#SmartPhoneAdiction #Septime #EatingToLive #Momofuku #UglyDelicious #Mocoto

#HijaDeSanchez #CasaDoPorco #ShakeShake #BarraVieja #LaSalita #Cosme #BubbleDogs

#Chateaubriand #Septime #Postrivoro #NIñoViejo #ToEatOrNotToEat

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FOOD

The Royal Spanish Academy defines “food” as anything that “is eaten and drunk for nourishment”. It is clearly hard to object to this definition. But, equally, there is no doubt that today food is more than that. The Argentinian writer Martín Caparrós argued that food has transformed into “an object of consumption that does not need to be eaten to be consumed”. In fact, we probably spend more time looking at food, imagining it, talking about it than we do actually putting it into our mouths. Actually, as of today, there are more than 260 million images on Instagram under the “food” hashtag.

Food keeps us alive and gives us pleasure. It fills our stomachs and stimulates our palates. But it also talks about us, about the traditions and the contexts that define us, as well as about our lifestyle. Food shapes our identity. What we eat, or don’t eat, tells other people who we are and what we think. Organic or not organic, vegan or omnivorous, genetically modified or conventional; food is ideology, a world view and, sometimes, even religion, with its sins and commands – you don’t eat meat, you buy local products, you sanctify pigs, you love extra virgin olive oil, above all fats.... It brings back memories, and acts as a catalyst for experiences, a vehicle of affection, an excuse to meet up, another hobby in the leisure industry, a source of health and illness, a status symbol, a model for high resolution photographs.... Food is certainly what we eat to nourish the body but also to nourish our egos, our ideas, our exhibitionist side, our well-being, our tastes... our world.

“Food is everything: a metaphor of how we interact with what is around us, a vector for conversation and its, above all, the way in which we introduce the world into ourselves, transforming the world into what what are we.” René Redzepi. Noma Restaurant.

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AN INFINITE PLATE

A plate is not just the paper on which the chef writes their story. It can also be an adverb, a pronoun or an adjective. It has left behind its role as a mere support, of a neutral, impartial and silent background that brought you what was on it with no further thought. It could be deep or flat, small or large. Little else. Today, it might not even be a plate. It can be a spoon or a slab of wood, a cloth bag or a piece of slate, an iron mortar or a sheet of paper, a laboratory vial or a porcelain spiral. It can even be deep. Or flat. But nothing about it is accidental. Its size, its shape, its colour, the material it’s made from, everything about it is in tune with what it holds, it is adapted to the pace set by the creation, it responds to the same idea as the food that travels thereon. It talks with the food, it qualifies it or completes it and, like the food, it helps create a certain effect, a certain sensation.

The plate is also a mirror that reflects characters, idiosyncrasies, trends. When the chef plates the food, they allocate roles, deciding which ingredient they will give the starring role and which ingredient will act as support. Which ingredient will take centre stage and which will barely appear in the background. They establish balances, symmetries, dissonances, areas of interest, empty spaces. They choose colours and quantities, they arrange and compose. They decide whether to be modest or brazen, to opt for silence or noise, for austerity or for exuberance. And, when they do so, they show off their way of working, of conceiving their work, and also where they come from and the time they belong to. Each plate carries the signature of its author, as well as the fingerprints of said author’s culture and the signs of their age

“In the kitchen, as in life, you must keep your eyes open and have the curiosity of a child. Always ready to learn. The day you lose this attitude, you should retire from cooking and perhaps even from life.” Juan Mari Arzak, Arzak Restaurant.

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INTERCONNECTED SENSES

It’s a physiological fact that all our senses are involved in the act of eating. Sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste work in unison to capture the information that the brain will process in order to determine whether the food has been satisfactory or not. However, gastronomy lived under the despotic regime of taste and sight for a long time, which overshadowed the role of the other senses in the process of eating. In recent years, creative cooking has used different ways to attract diners’ attention to the aromas, the textures, the temperatures and the sounds of the creations, as well as to emphasize the importance of smell, touch and hearing in the gastronomic experience.

We eat tastes, colours, aromas, textures, sounds and temperatures, but we also eat ideas, memories and stories. Concentrating the five senses on what’s within the confines of the plate, trying to capture all the vibes that are emitted therefrom —whether they be the most obvious or the most subtle— intensifies the enjoyment but also takes us beyond what’s on the plate, it causes us to reflect on the food itself, inspires mental associations, stimulates the memory, triggers intuitions, releases ideas, links stories together.

“As chefs, we are interested in offering experiences that feed the illusion and motivation of people. The most important thing to achieve is the transversality and interdisciplinary approach in the way of working, because it makes the journey much more interesting”, Joan Roca, El Celler de Can Roca Restaurant.

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NAKED TABLE

Covering a table with objects until the tablecloth was almost invisible used to be a sign of great sophistication. Fine dining restaurants provided customers with a set of instruments that could stand comparison with a dentist’s or a surgeon’s set: forks, spoons and knives of various shapes and sizes, tongs and needles for seafood, fish slices, numerous plates, glasses and wine glasses made from the finest materials. Tables were often baroque scenes on which objects made from precious materials were unfurled as if there were jewels. Each of these instruments allowed the diner to transfer the food to their mouth, but also allowed them to maintain a certain distance from it, safe from stains and the small cuts that bones, spikes and shells could cause on the fingers, protected from unwanted aromas that could stick to the skin.

Today, however, the distance that separates us from what we eat has been reduced. Tables in restaurants have lost weight, a lot of the utensils that used to be considered vital for the ritual of eating have been removed and, on occasions, the tables receive the diner half dressed, practically naked. Eating with your hands, getting stained, sucking and slurping have stopped being a crime against etiquette and have become recommended practices for fully enjoying some dishes. Sophistication now has more to do with a more minimalistic approach to the mise-en-scène and the stage props, which leads to us having more direct contact with the food – to a managed cultural reversion to a certain essence.

“Cooking is pleasure. Cooking is happiness. No dogmas, commandments, prohibitions, nor dictatorships of taste. Is there a rule? Only one: knowing how to choose, knowing where it will take you. And then letting yourself go. Freedom, pleasure, happiness.” Pau Arenós, La cocina de los valientes.

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THE DINING ROOM

The solid, dull wall that traditionally separates a restaurant kitchen from its dining room breaks apart. It gets translucent, sometimes even transparent, making the boundaries between these two areas a little bit blurry. Sometimes, the connection between them narrows so much that it is hard to know where one begins and where the other one ends.

The kitchen, before a secluded and secret territory, opens its doors to show all its processes and submit itself to the scrutiny of the diner. The dining room, traditionally the visible part of the restaurant, and therefore an impeccable and reverential space to the client, subject to rigid and firmly established protocols as well, also allows itself to open up a little.

As a result, restaurants are not just experimenting with food, they are also experimenting with the lighting, aromas, sounds and the distribution of the spaces where the meal take place. The new characteristics of the gastronomic experience change perceptions: some dining rooms are becoming more and more alike to the scene of a performance, in which the diner plays the leading role.

The staff also plays a role that goes far beyond reading the menu, recommending a wine and telling diners that there is no turbot left. Their movements keep in step with the spirit of the establishment. They enter the scene in different ways to spur active diners into action, not so much with hunger as with appetite.



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STORIES À LA CARTE

Chefs have become creators and storytellers. Their dishes do not just show their culinary skills, their ability to combine flavours, aromas, colours and textures, they are also a means of communicating concepts and ideas, a vehicle for linking together stories full of meaning. In addition to purely culinary ingredients, the chef makes use of narrative resources such as humour, surprise, tension, suspense and repetition. They can turn their creation into an essay on their way of understanding gastronomy, into a homage to the territory they work in, they can ask questions or put memories from their childhood on display on the table. The chef -particularly a fine dining chef- establishes connections and rhythms between dishes, which these days are, like the movements of a symphony, part of a larger unit, of a whole that gives them meaning: the tasting menu.

Stories need to be set within an appropriate structure. And the structure of a traditional menu, with its starters, main courses and desserts and “logical” distribution of flavours, restricted the chefs’ creativity, limiting their options. With a tasting menu, the chef has unprecedented freedom –and almost absolute power– as an author. They can increase or decrease the number of plates as they please: there can be three or thirty, depending on how many their discourse –or ego– requires. They can start the menu with an ice cream and end it with a salad. And, on the other side, the complicit diner lets them do so, sacrificing part of their ability to choose (if not all of it) in exchange for being taken to a place they’ve never been to before.

“Stories connect. They provide context and argument, sense and logic, sacralizing and revaluing what they cherish. I have no doubt: if there was a sixth taste, it is the taste of stories.” Andoni Luis Aduriz. Mugaritz Restaurant.



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EATING SOCIALLY

The social side of food has acquired new nuances. Of course, as we always have done, we continue to meet up to eat to tell each other our news, to discuss problems and celebrate successes, to discuss business and celebrate birthdays, to consolidate friendships and to keep them up to date. In addition to keeping us out of our grave and pleasuring our senses, food represents –as always– an excuse to meet up with other people (in impersonal and digital times), amidst interactions that are different today.

The new and exceptional character of the gastronomic experience that creative cooking provides, the need for an attentive diner to complete it, makes us (when it achieves its aim) reflect out loud on what’s happening on the plate, to exchange our impressions of it with the people we are sharing a table with. And that table, however small it might be, can seat, in this age of real-time hyper-connectivity, a potentially infinite number of participants in a conversation that we can have on our mobile phones. We eat for nourishment, we eat for pleasure, we eat for the experience, we eat for reflection and we eat to share. But we also eat to talk about it.

“Food always condenses a happening, a plot, which unfolds like any enacted drama in the spotlit present, surrounded by shadows of the past.” Betty Fussell, Eating Words.

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EDIBLE LANDSCAPES

The 21st century diner has a range of gastronomic options open to them that was unthinkable forty years ago. Nowadays saying “let’s eat out tonight” is incredibly ambiguous -it doesn’t necessarily mean a restaurant. In cities worldwide, it is not just types of food from other parts of the world that coexist, but also those formats and rituals that accompany them. You can eat standing up and with your hands in a tapas bar in Los Angeles, or bite into a hamburger from a car seat in a drive thru in Madrid. It’s possible to sit on a stool to savour a plate of sushi at the bar of a market stall in Rome or queue in front of that van parked next to the town hall where they make the best pulled pork in town that we’ll eat sat on a bench watching the world go by.

The spectrum of possible restaurants has multiplied. In addition to the numerous shades of grey that exist between fast food and fine dining, there are options that convert the establishment itself into a “different experience”, to eat immersed in high-tech environments that play with “augmented reality” or chomp on a venison leg while dressed up as Sir Lancelot at a medieval tournament. There are underwater restaurants with views of the bottom of the ocean and others that recreate the atmosphere of a 50s diner. We can have tea while playing with six or seven cats or eat blindfolded with all the lights turned off.... And if we don’t fancy leaving the house, we can pick up the phone and order a pizza, some quesadillas or some dim sum, or open our kitchen to a chef who will make dinner for us. There’s no shortage of options....

“I can’t conceive the idea of a chef separated from his own environment, both natural and cultural.” Yoshihiro Narisawa.

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LUXURY: BETWEEN THE OLD

AND THE NEW

We are far from the times when luxury at the dining table basically consisted of eating beluga caviar, pheasant with truffles or lobster under chandeliers, wielding silver cutlery and taking small, decadent sips of a Château Mouton Rothschild served in glasses made of Bohemia crystal. From the 90s onwards, luxury stopped only residing in the product and started to be found also in the experience. You did not have to pay a stratospheric price for a plate of baby eels to experience something exclusive; you had to open yourself up to talent, to knowledge, creativity, technique and the results of a chef’s study to experience something new, something that could be built of raw materials as “vulgar” as an egg, a bunch of carrots or lamb offal.

The concept of exclusivity is constantly evolving. The fact that there are more and more people interested in creative cooking and open to different gastronomic experiences has led to initiatives appearing all over the world that permit a much wider public to access these types of experiences. The new generation of chefs, and the companies that support them, apply their creativity, their ingenuity, their knowledge, their culinary expertise and their business sense to offer intimate, fun, different, and much more accessible options where the food still expresses itself in all its dimensions. A “luxury” that ever more people can afford.

“People are tired of paying too much, although there will always be a market for Picasso´s paintings that are worth 180 million dollars or dinners that cost 1000 euros. Today, many prefer to pay 50 dollars for something simple and well done, in a context of creativity, technique and good aesthetics that, instead of being overwhelming, gives you happiness.” Enrique Olvera. Pujol Restaurant.

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WHERE DOES THE EXPERIENCE END?

The experience of eating in a restaurant used to start when we entered the its door; and it ended just after paying the bill, when we left the establishment (unless, of course, an indigestion extended it in a regrettable way). There wasn’t much to do between making the reservation and the date chosen for our visit. And yet, the imagination on which a gastronomic experience is built includes endless interactions (inside and outside the restaurant), especially since the digital world has opened up the doors to a fourth dimension –intangible, expansive and seemingly unlimited– like the online world. The space-time disruption caused by the internet, as well as phenomena such as social media, has led to an extended axis of connections, where the experience can start with a simple curious act of someone navigating in cybernetic waters finding and keep on growing through the continuous references that come up around the universe of one restaurant: dishes, products, techniques, objects, decorations, chefs, waiters, faces, places… enough to make endlessly associations.

Within a frame without edges, we generate bonds when we enter an establishment’s website and take a virtual tour around pixelated spaces. When we absorb their philosophy and approach to food from a distance, when we collate positive and negative reviews on Facebook, when we jump between links and hyperlinks, or when we eat with our eyes on Instagram looking at the hundreds of pictures taken by diners who ate before us at the tables for which we yearn today.

And when does the experience end? Among the verdicts we issue on TripAdvisor, all our posts, reposts and all the tagging, the timeless succession of likes and the vast number of gigabytes of memory we fill with photos uploaded to a virtual cloud, stored on iPads or smartphones, it would be difficult to say. Imprecisely. In any event, our gestures feed third-party expectations and start the experience for those who will succeed us tomorrow at the same table, in the same dining room. And the same hashtag.

“Cooking is a thinking man’s job. One of the most valuable tools in the kitchen is the mind because cooking is not just about quality of ingredients but the quality of the ideas.” Massimo Bottura, Osteria Francescana Restaurant.

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SPYGLASS

Tasting the future

Asking is more difficult than responding, particularly when the answers are already there and when we use them simply because we can. What is more, asking is not a naive act. Any question that aspires to be interesting is by definition tricksy. It has to summon the biases which shape it, and in doing so look to the future. For that reason, we propose not viewpoints but reflections in a liquid and disorganised context.

Why do I eat how I eat? What will tomorrow’s food be? Will there be a way of differentiating between real food—whatever this is—and food which is merely edible? What appetites will it satiate and what type of hunger, lack or desire will it be capable of responding to?

How can we address entropy? Will gastronomy become a form of conversation or will it be unapproachable gibberish? What role will fine dining have in a future which is so uncertain? Will it be something token and only accessible by the few, or will it be the launching pad for a phenomenon which approaches excellence as the transfer of know-how to society?

How will we address the eruption of new players in the world of algorithms or the Internet of Things, knowing that, although these do not provide opinions, they have an immense power to shape reality? Will fake news prevail, or will food be a bastion which helps preserve the human capacity for storytelling? What will we do with the torrent of information that we generate around the table? Will it be available to everyone or, conversely, will it be the preserve of data mining experts?

What sort of media presence will cooking have? Will it be capable of avoiding the trivialization entailed in bowing to being a ‘human interest’ spectacle—which simple exploits it—or will it choose instead to evolve? Will chefs and food critics lose the authority they have acquired? Will it surpass them or will they share it? What will happen with how we assess what we eat? Will gastronomy be understood as much more than simply talking about chefs and restaurants?

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In the world of food activism: Will the social movement that is gastronomy address the rapid change we are living through from the ground up? Will food be the next identity fetish, the next religion to take refuge in, or will we witness a widespread movement which aspires to build a different world, one which uses food as its tool? In a world which demands ever more knowledge, will we continue to be what we eat, or rather will we be ‘what we know that we eat’? Will the world of cooking view ‘social’ gastronomy not as synonymous with charity or humanitarian action but as the expression of the development that gastronomy is capable of achieving when it connects with society, as a whole?

How will nations use gastronomy in their promotional strategies? How will chefs manage the immense resources that fame puts at their disposal? Will they proclaim themselves spokespeople for change built on education and clear messages such as ‘back to cooking’, ‘back to cultivating’, back to eating together’? Will they succeed in showing that ‘quick, tasty and healthy’ is possible on a daily basis? How can gastronomy help address hunger without being misrepresentative? How will the demand for gender equality be addressed in the world of gastronomy in the #MeToo era? Will we be convinced once and for all that sustainability is not just a word with many syllables but something which starts in our immediate personal, leisure and work environments?

Will gastronomy acquire definitive status as a science? How much continuity will there be in its collaboration with other scientific disciplines? Will it be a mere entente, or will different disciplines cross-pollinate to create a shared space for experimentation which is open to radical uncertainty? Given its interdisciplinary nature, will gastronomy encourage the various schools of thought around the table of knowledge to start talking to one another and stop fighting once and for all?

Will gastronomy lead to affect and not just to effect? Will the emergence of science in kitchens be an anti-climax, or will the hedonistic spirit which has always gone hand in hand with gastronomy prevail? Will we incorporate technique and technology into our daily lives or will we remain tethered to the fascination of the unknowing among us? If knowledge is just as important as taste, how will the knowledge obtained from gastronomy research be popularized?

Will gastronomy know how to advocate intangible goods, i.e. those which are difficult to put a number to and which are never considered in financial accounts? How will we envisage a more complex food chain which differs from the monetary-based perspective of the service sector (hospitality, restaurants, catering)? What perspective does gastronomy have to take on ecosystem management, food production, the food

processing industry and food marketing and distribution strategies? Will gastronomy succeed in finding common ground between contradictory viewpoints or in bring opposing ideologies to the table in favor of biodiversity, sustainable production and greater access to food and services?

What will the entrepreneurs of the future be like? Will they be individuals, like free electrons, applying their ingenuity in sectors which are screaming out for creativity and innovation? If enterprise entails experimenting with formats, how should we imagine the restaurants of the future? Will a restaurant be a place or will it be software? What will we call an enterprising chef who spends more time in front of a computer than a stove? What new forms will food take when it is dematerialized or digitalized permanently? In the face of all the unknown, how can we encourage our new role as prosumers? How can we make society understand that in these times, the most decisive way of producing is consuming? How do we build our world from the supermarket shelves?

Will eating in the future be a complete, 3D and immersive experience which uses smart design to captivate our senses as well as our thoughts and emotions? Will eating empower the diner so that they understand and enjoy the experience, or will they be bolted to the chair only to be bombarded with stimulants and have their intelligence numbed? Is smart gastronomy possible without smart diners? In this sense, isn’t knowledge of something as seemingly banal as eating the next form of extravagance?

What will come out of this melting pot?

Sasha Correa and Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz

We thank the staff of Basque Culinary Center and the students of the Master of Gastronomic Sciences 2018. The trust given by Joxe Mari Aizega and the involvement of Diego Prado, Eukene Ormazabal, José Pelaez, Juan Carlos Arboleya, Jorge Bretón, José Luis Galiana y Olatz de Solaeche made 50 Glimpses possible.www.bculinary.com www.glimpses.com

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© Basque Culinary Center

Legal deposit: DL SS-673-2018Printed by Michelena Artes Gráficas. Astigarraga

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