Char-Grilled Baby Squid

The grill is not absent from the current boom in haute cuisine. In a clearly nonconformist gastronomic age, at the start of the third millennium in which innovation and perfectionism mark the difference between success and failure, the most archaic and primal of preparations—grilling over a flame—plays a part in the great beginnings of this golden age that we are enjoying, and of which we would never have dreamed.

Like an Adrià or a Berasategui, the names of Pedro Arregui and Victor Arguinzoniz are rising. They have been incorporating new delicacies to the grill. In the case of ...