Mugaritz

The “Proportion-Balance” text, which appears as the central part of the pamphlet that includes the tasting menu at Mugaritz, today, perhaps more than ever, seems to be acquiring the role of a motto or maxim within the cuisine of this restaurant. Taking steps in that direction, accentuating flavors, something primordial in the rings to provide greater carnal pleasure, we are convinced that they can recuperate that glorious culinary status (they reached a 9.5 in this guide) that they lost by demonstrating a reiterative, prolonged and obsessive usage of certain vegetal ingredients (herbs, sprouts, flowers, etc.) but without the talent from before, to the point where they made the ideology an absolute, an ideology which in the absurd dogmatized the insipidity. In this sense, years before we recommended self-restraint and moderation, focussing on the message. Today, fortunately enough, those ingredients and postulants are no longer the main plot in the culinary proposals of Andoni Luis Aduriz, who has opened his work to new, more diverse horizons.
It also seems plausible that he is in search of another personality, that he has recently taken on the quest of essentiality in his cuisine, without over-simplifying too much. The articulations are more concrete, following an easier to understand line for the public. That is the goal, to humanize cuisine from an uninhibited and unique perspective.
Many of the dishes from 2009 have returned to shine with their subtleties and brushstrokes of brilliance, finding their whole expression in the proposals, like the grilled tomato salad with frozen tiger nut milk, or the silky cod cheeks blanched in their jelly and infused with acacia flower honey, or the singular, complex fossilized salsify dressed with roe and marine extracts. The carrots were magnificent, cooked in a concentrate of perfumed grains, with their astonishing flavorful identity dressed by a baby squid concentrate and arbequina olive pulp. Stellar product, erudition and demonstration of culinary technique in the wild turbot, a fish that becomes exultant beneath a seasoning of borage and a concentrate of its bones. Imagination, fantasy, sense of humor and, above all, the textural and flavorful contrasts are found in the brilliant trompe l’oeil presented at the table under the disguise of a carpaccio, accompanied by a sweet and sour sauce, shavings of Idiazabal cheese and vegetable strands. In the more indulgent dessert courses, which have always been stunning at this house, they continue to produce astonishing creations: berries soaked in a cold confit of orange leaves; spoonfuls of “sharp contrasts” with custard, leaves and sweets; powdered hazelnuts with fern roots, fern leaves, cream and vanilla ice cream… and the immortal torrija