Visiting Asturias /2

see part one

While Marcos Morán is a tempest, Nacho Manzano is a sunny day in spring. The two top representatives of the new Asturian cuisine show off their different styles, the result of stories and personalities that grew on parallel lines, some 80 km apart (those separating Casa Marcial in Arriondas from Casa Gerardo in Prendes), but sharing an ambition: transforming the immense gastronomic potential of their territory into something concrete. Funnily, a common line of development led them to start an adventure in London: Hispania, in 72-74 Lombard Street, for Morán; Ibérica, with three locations, for Manzano.

And while the former seems to spring a magical touch that promises absolute greatness, the latter – who’s middle-aged, at 42, and conquered his first estrella in 1999 – has already acquired a complete stylistic maturity a long time ago, his dishes being elegant, precise, with mild, almost silky tones. He loves taste contrapositions, so he often uses acid (yoghurt, lemon, vinegar), iodic (seaweeds, above all), aromatic and vegetal notes.

Nature, indeed: the same one you find on the road to Casa Marcial in the “liturgy of vertiginous bends, the communion with the environment on the other side of the window, through the endless sequence of green fields and calm cows, the intense silence and the steep horizons», in the words of Xavier Agulló. This is indeed the case as when you leave the coast, and suddenly climb up to the 1,100 metres of Mirador del Fitu and from there, embracing the horizon, you see the secluded destination in the valley, it brings you to a bucolic Heidi-like dimension.

The incredibly elegant Manzano, with his excellent collaborators, takes care of the rest, even in the cellar (the aperitif was an incredibly good cider methode champenois – in our case a Prau Monga 2006). The tasting menu continually jumps between fish and meat, sometimes mixing them, as with the Pheasant tortellini in their stock, with seaweeds and baby carrots. Or the delicious, and beautiful, Sea urchin with an acid hollandaise sauce, aromatic herbs and yoghurt, with the different elements softening the taste power of the echinoderm.

When in season, the Roasted mushrooms with parsnip cream and pine-nut vinegar are well-deserving. Then there’s galianos, the so called “gaspacho manchego” with hare and partridge meat and aioli water, a tribute to Manuel de la Osa; and again the perfect Turbot with its essence, with porcini and seaweeds. Until the final explosion, with a cake (thanks to pastry-chef Javier Álvarez Zarpon) that is unforgettable and brilliant: (70%) Chocolate salad with cider vinegar granita, onion, powdered matcha tea and guacamole, the perfect maridaje with a sweet sidra de hielo resulting from the fermentation of twenty apples (sidra Valverán 20 Manzanas). It’s a knockout.

2. the end