Barcelona Referendum

Santi Santamaria (RIP)

THE best restaurant in the world, according to many of those who passionately rate these things, sits on the Costa Brava at Roses, 160km north of Barcelona. There, at Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli (three Michelin stars), you will find mosaics of sea anemones, and parmesan-infused air; spherified olives, with their concentrated essence minutely encased in gelatin; a tortilla española deconstructed into tiny layers of egg-white sabayon, onion purée and potato foam, served in a sherry glass; and a dessert called “Autumn”, where sweet and spicy powders make up a forest floor that is strewn with chocolate leaves.

An hour’s drive south, at a restaurant called Can Fabes (also three Michelin stars), Santi Santamaría knew just what he thought of such tinkerings. Mr Adrià and his followers, he announced in 2007, were a gang of frauds. By footling round with centrifuges and liquid nitrogen they were reducing food to a set of mental hurdles, as though there weren’t already enough traffic lights and zebra crossings in life. These were meals they would never dream of eating themselves, full of methyl cellulose and emulsifiers that might well poison their customers. No wonder Mr Adrià was stylishly slim where Mr Santamaría, white chef’s jacket stretched to bursting point as he rose monumentally from his chair to berate his rival in public, was not.

At his restaurant, he was quick to point out, the food was pure, unadulterated, and looked like what it was. Roast kid done so perfectly, lacquered and stuffed, with a simple jus, that it had stayed on the menu for years. Bean soup with black pudding and bacon, beignets oozing warm chocolate truffle across the plate. “Autumn” at Mr Santamaría’s establishment meant the earth-smell of mushrooms fresh-picked in the woods, damp-feathered game pulled from the huntsman’s pouch, and lentil stew so rich, so redolent of the season, that as the lid of the tureen was lifted Mr Santamaría’s hands would start to rotate sedately, wafting the aroma upwards, and his eyes to close with sheer rapture.

He knew about science. He’d had his fill of it as a young man, trying to be a technical draughtsman and then a quantity surveyor, when all he had wanted to do was stay in his mother’s kitchen cooking, and then eating, macaroni with sofrito and sausages, or her special filled pancakes. The day in 1981 when he put down the set square and put on the apron, having decided to turn that ancient, tumbledown family kitchen into a restaurant, was the happiest of his life—not forgetting the day of his marriage to his teenage sweetheart Àngels, who tied on her apron beside him.

Science, he admitted, was good for some things: to keep fish stream-fresh, to clarify a consommé. But he was on the craftsman’s side. An artist was what he had really wanted to be, and he had simply transferred his painterly feelings to stroking the rich glaze on a shank of lamb, or dashing his signature in a passion-fruit coulis. The menu changed with his moods as much as the season: red peppers because they had shone at the morning market, sardines for their feel in his plump fingers, the first wild asparagus simply because it was there, and had to be celebrated with his customers. His life was loudly dedicated to taste, real taste, and lingering pleasure for all the senses, not simply some brief, show-off spectacle achieved with stabilisers and steam.

As a young chef, self-taught, he had devoured cookery books of every kind: medieval, Japanese, Italian, all the French masters. Nouvelle cuisine especially impressed him. But he kept returning to the flavours and products of his beloved Catalonia, and even to the small, rocky stretch of it outside his kitchen door. His baby lamb came from his own Montseny mountains, and was flavoured with herbs that grew there. Fish came from Blanes, the first spring peas from Llavaneres, artichokes from El Prat de Llobregat. His enthusiastic immersion as a boy in Catalan culture—speaking, reading and writing a language that was officially banished under Franco to the hearth and home, wandering in the rugged, piny Catalan landscape—reached its natural apogee in preserving, lovingly, what Catalunya tasted like. It was fitting that the last meal he made, before he died of a heart attack at his new restaurant in distant Singapore, was a pa amb tomàquet, fresh tomato pulp and olive oil pressed onto bread, the purest taste of home.

A table as a poem

By then a truce had been reached with Mr Adrià, though it was fidgety. The slimmer man dismissed Mr Santamaría’s barbs as total nonsense, and their originator as a staid old conservative. But Mr Santamaría did not greatly mind that, if it meant that he was honouring the best traditions of cooking and thereby contributing, as he saw it, to the beauty of life.

A table at Can Fabes—or any of his six other restaurants—was, in his words, “a poem”. It stirred memories of his mother spreading out the special white cloth she used for feasts. In this calm, unhurried setting Mr Santamaría, using only fire, would perform the “magic” of turning raw food into meals. The result could be shrimp “that makes you lose your senses”, or a fish and potato soup that would “put the moon on your plate”. And nothing could taste better, surely, for all those gizmos, at the best restaurant in the world.

Cat in the Med

18th Of July...

Catalonia in Europe

Catalonia votes on independence

By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News, Catalonia

This weekend, 700,000 people in Catalonia are eligible to vote in the region's first ever referendum on independence from Spain.

Organised by activists and volunteers, the vote is not officially binding but it is taking place at a tense time in relations with Madrid.

Supporters hope it is the first step towards a formal ballot for a separate state.

Deep in the nationalist heartland of Catalonia, campaigners have been drumming up support for the vote.

In the medieval town of Vic, hundreds of residents have already cast an early ballot at a tent in a corner of the main square.

Many say the autonomy Catalonia already has is not enough, and they are voting "Yes" to independence.

"More and more people think we have no room in the Spanish house, so we need a house of our own," organiser Alfons Lopez Tema says.

"[The Spanish] don't want us, they don't love us, they don't give us what we want. So the best thing is to vote and decide."

'Subversive'

Almost 170 Catalan towns and villages are holding ballots, staffed by thousands of volunteers.

Vic has traditionally favoured independence but the vote will be a first indication of whether views here are spreading.

The referendum has been the topic of daily debate on local radio.

Speaking Catalan on air was forbidden as subversive during General Franco's dictatorship.

Today, it is an official language, used in schools and government, and Catalonia itself has broad autonomy.

But three years ago, people across Catalonia voted for more. They approved a new statute - the law that sets out the relationship between Catalonia and the Spanish state - which defined this part of eastern Spain as a distinct nation.

It gave more jurisdiction to the local authorities and what many believe is a fairer share of the revenue collected.

For the moderate-minded majority of Catalans, that was enough.

The law was approved in a referendum, passed by the Catalan and Spanish parliaments and signed by the king.

“ People are disillusioned by what's happened ”
Vic Radio presenter Joan Turro

But Spain's main opposition party is contesting the statute in the Constitutional Court and many Catalans fear key provisions of the law will soon be overturned.

"People are disillusioned by what's happened. They're fed up. That's why so many are involved in organising this vote," Vic Radio presenter Joan Turro explains during a break in the schedule.

"People here in the interior of Catalonia have always wanted independence. We want this vote to show that it's not just us now."

Many people in Catalonia say they feel different from the rest of Spain, with their own distinct language, culture and history.

Sunday's referendum will test how far that feeling translates into actual support for a separate state.

Economic help

But frustrations about the relationship with Madrid are as much about money as identity.

Home to some 7m people, Catalonia is a prosperous place.

The pretty cobbled streets of medieval Vic are lined with boutiques and alluring delicatessens - industry and agriculture are both strong here.

But many complain that too much of that local wealth is drained away subsidising poorer parts of Spain and the return investment from Madrid is minimal.

A key provision of the new statute adjusted the balance but the improved system has not been implemented yet.

One pig farmer told me he believed breaking away from Spain would help the local economy.

"If you add everything up, we support the rest of Spain and they don't support us," he said, though like many people he struggled to name anything specific Catalonia has missed out on.

National identity

The Catalan government agrees that the balance of payments to Madrid was deeply unjust.

But Finance Minister Antoni Castells says that the new statute does correct that, adding more than 2 billion euros to the local budget this year.

He points out that only one in five Catalans usually express support for independence.

Still, he says, the fight over the statute has frustrated many and left "a strong feeling of disappointment".

For the minister, the thing to watch at this weekend's unofficial referendum is the turnout.

"If it's high, that suggests an increased number of people think the relationship between Catalonia and Spain should be reconsidered, that too many things are not going in a good way and that a lot of people think Spain is not respecting our self-government and our national identity," Mr Castells explains.

Catalans are certainly passionate about their identity.

Back in a smoky bar in Vic, most of the young crowd watching a Barcelona football match on TV have draped themselves in yellow and red Catalan flags.

Their songs in Catalan are a mixture of swearing at Spain and their own national anthem. There is a map of Catalonia on the wall, with the rest of Spain blanked out.

Most voters in this town will clearly say "Yes" to independence.

A Day With Ferran Adria

by Jay Rayner

One of the pleasures of my working life – it's a very long list – is that I am forced, by dint of my job, to create a lasting record of all the fun I have. In the reviews I write, I document the delicious things I get to eat. Well this time, with my trip to meet Ferran Adrià of El Bulli, I've gone one better. The whole thing's been filmed and you can watch the result above. Or at least almost the whole thing; the one part they wouldn't let us film was me having dinner. No cameras in the dining room.

Frankly, while I knew it left a gap in the film, I was delighted. I wanted the full experience and I knew I couldn't have that with a lens stuffed in my face. Still, you can at least get a sense of the effect the meal had both on me and my companion, the chef Stephen Harris, from The Sportsman pub in Kent. The last scene, as we leave and give our considered opinion of the meal, giddy as children, is possibly the most authentic portrait you will ever see of two smug middle-aged gits hugging themselves with glee.

I will confess that I had assumed I would never get to El Bulli. Don't mistake; I did want to eat there. After all the things I'd read and heard, how could someone with as developed an interest in his dinner as me not want to go there? But I am just not the sort to strive for such a thing. The bookings procedure seemed too much a lottery – there are two million requests for just seven or eight thousand seats – for a man like me, with a back bone of marshmallow, to make the effort. I chalked it up, alongside the flight on Concord and the threesome with Cameron Diaz and Dita Von Teese, as something that was NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.

And then, praise be, it fell into my lap courtesy of the publication of the new book, A Day at El Bulli. If the film doesn't completely sate your appetite for all things El Bulli while you're waiting to get hold of the book, you can read my account of my meeting with Ferran Adrià in this weekend's Observer Food Monthly.

These are indeed rich times for those of us intrigued by what's going on at the very sharpest diamond edge of gastronomy. For, alongside the Adrià book, comes the publication of Heston Blumenthal's Big Fat Duck Cookbook, a behemoth of a volume with a retail price of £100, about which more total cobblers will be written than has been written about any other book in recent history. I have been dragging my copy around the country with me for the past few days as I prepare to write a review – read wet-knickered piece of fan mail – and I can't imagine how anybody could be anything other than amazed by it.

Let's be clear: the Big Fat Duck Cookbook is only a cookbook in the sense that El Bulli is just somewhere you go to eat if you're feeling a bit peckish. El Bulli is a once in a lifetime event and so is Heston's opus. It is a document, a complete account of everything he has done or tried to do at his restaurant in Bray. It carries remarkable illustrations, fabulous photography, and is rich with detail, analysis and acute self-understanding. It also happens to be very well written.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that what people like Adrià and Blumenthal are doing is only for the total propeller heads; that its appeal is thoroughly limited. Well let's look at the numbers. Not just those two million requests for tables at El Bulli. How about the hundreds who have booked into see Ferran Adrià speak and answer questions at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on November 24? Or the fact that, at the point of writing, Blumenthal's £100 book is standing at number 68 in the Amazon.co.uk rankings, ahead of titles by Ken Follett, Jackie Collins and Ian Rankin? Or that Adrià's book, is really not that far behind at number 195?

The point, I think, is made.

Hear that noise? It's the sound of an army of propeller heads getting excited. And I'm one of them.

F.F. (to F)

The Best, Again

The Catalan restaurant El Bulli has been recognised, for third time, the best restaurant in the world.