Marcos Morán is a dangerous imp who might shatter the establishment of Spanish cuisine some day. This 30-year-old chef struggles between his father’s diplomacy and his high-voltage personality. If you don’t show some signs of bravery, they won’t let you fulfil your potential, especially when you see how the press offices of luxury cooks manipulate everything, buying and fooling their colleagues and the whole world, deciding about rankings based on their own will and interests. Just bear this in mind, dear Marcos: if you don’t transfer your character of “enfant terrible” to real life, they won’t let you reach the grandeur you are destined to. Spain and worldwide cuisine need not only more licentious spirits, but also freer minds, which is far more transcendental.
Marcos is a volcano full of lava that breathes fire in his creations, which are all very risky, ingenious, more or less perfect, always bursting with substance. When genius is magnified by virtuosity, this can lead to some of the most important dishes in Spain. Such as the crayfish, coffee, crayfish, coffee, … in which the gigantic tail, impeccably roasted, is served over a jelly made with the crayfish juice together with a crayfish consommé and three versions of the animal: with coffee tones, olive oil touch and salty biscuit with coffee hints. An essential creation in which two or three elements express themselves in a very different manner. Another transcendental dish –not because of its audacity, but thanks to the grandeur of its raw material, its doneness, its immaculate flavour and its rosy skin– is the red mullet over cauliflower and beet purée and seasoning, aimed at enhancing the pink tonality, served with pickled violet onion and rosy meats and skin; a masterpiece based on pink colours and red mullet. Another madness: toast of raw sardine, slightly marinated, proposed on Sardinian bread painted with black sesame essence and accompanied with anchovy butter; a kind of simple and holy pie.
A bit under what we could call “Dishes of the year”, we find the really revolutionary turnip and apple served with reduction of milk and Lagar de Oles cider vinegar; no more, no less. The grilled oyster or the boiled cockles proposed with sea plankton emulsion and hints of lemon is another exaltation of intense and pure oceanic flavours which brim with the juice of these sea treasures. The very tasteful stew consisting of boiled octopus, grilled pork and emulsified beans seasoned with bay leaf exemplifies the chef’s bravery and the synchronisation hidden behind every proposal. The fabada (bean stew), made of entire creamy and exquisite beans, tasty and lightened stock as well as noble and impeccably done compango (blood sausage, pork belly and chorizo), is better than ever. And don’t leave the place without tasting the compango croquettes, which might be the best ever, as they have been performed regarding external fragility, consistency and palatal purity (less flour in béchamel means a more evanescent and tasty sauce). And so go the moving moments on and on, until the arrival of the insatiable traditional –but not timeless– rice pudding.
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