05-03-2019
Diego Guerrero at the pass. He’s the chef at DSTAgE, two Michelin stars in Madrid. But we’ll see him in Italy too, at Identità Milano 2019, where he’ll speak from the stage of the Auditorium on Sunday 24th March at 5.15 pm (see the programme)
Diego Guerrero has a very interesting personality. He’s one of the most important representatives of the contemporary Spanish culinary scene and he will speak at the next edition of Identità Milano 2019 from the stage of the Auditorium, on Sunday 24th March at 5.15 pm (see the programme). When you chat with him, it feels like you’re speaking with a musician, or an artist, or anyone with a strong creative energy; and even when at work by the pass, he’s focused but keeps his laid-back and friendly mood, very communicative. He looks both relaxed and restless.
The lounge at DSTAgE
His dishes are the creative result of these principles. His cuisine is meant for people who can appreciate even forced flavours, aromatic estremes and, in general, a sort of fullness on the palate. One could say he’s not subtle, but then he creates some small miracles of harmony, very balanced, like Calamar a la romana, Tomate garum or Rosa de pimiento asado [see the photos below] where you can tell that constant innovation leads Guerrero to experiment and some extreme choices are only the price to pay when searching for a new frontier ("The excess of rules is inversely proportional to creativity: this is why he breaks all the rules and dares to apply new ones to fine dining ", Julia Pérez).
Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso
When you arrive at DSTAgE they welcome you with an aperitif in the lounge with the large, comfortable leather chairs. Here’s where they serve the first appetizer, Calamar a la romana, excellent, better than any expectation. No flour, no egg: the calamari "meatball" is kept together thanks to the albumin of the cephalopod itself, in a similar way to Pino Cuttaia’s Uovo di seppia. The sauce is made with the tentacles. It’s a powerful bite, with neat flavours, almost the best possible calamari
We move to the pass, and are welcomed by Antonello Lupo, born in Salerno in 1992, «I’ve been working he for 4 days». He arrived in Madrid for three years of Erasmus, «I was studying marketing, then I enrolled in a cooking school and I arrived here for three months of training». Clearly they liked him, and they hired him at DSTAgE. Lupo observes with us the live preparation of ...y un huevo!, a show-dish: they syphon a white mousse of egg white on dry ice, which becomes a sort of meringue in which they place the egg yolk, plus chips of puffed bacon. The taste is what you’d expect for breakfast, but with a very concentrated aroma and a light texture. «I like interpreting what is part of the common culinary memory»
We sit at the table. The first dish is Recuerdos de Navidad, a Christmas memory: lactic fermentation of grapes, kito yuzu, caviar, brine
Carabinero, that is to say how to make a spectacular red prawn. The dish is entirely made of this product: below, there’s the chopped meat, above, the crispy part made wiht the finely chopped carapace and the head
Pan viejo & anchoa, stale bread and anchovy. The bread is fermented with koji, the mushroom used for sake
A beautiful dish, Esponja de enoki, a sponge of roots from the enoki mushrooms with green onions, beetroot and seaweed
Another brilliant dish, the kind you remember because the innovation is based on something known, olé: Tomate garum. That is to say infinitely exquisite frozen cherry tomatoes, seaweed (ramallo de mar or codium) and powdered garum processed with liquid nitrogen. The extra oomph is given by the temperature: initially the icy notes stand out, then the food warms up in the palate releasing a series of fine aromatic notes
Tarteleta de yema curada y trufa, a tart of marinated egg and black truffle, with peas. Flavours of the earth
Maya, mole of maiz morado (purple corn) with fermented yucca, chilli peppers, coriander and "tuna" (coconut water fermented with spices)
Rosa de pimiento asado, a roasted rose made with pimiento del piquillo, a delicious and PDO Spanish chilli pepper. Pure flavours
Callos vegetales y salsa agripicante, vegetal tripe and sour and spicy sauce
Callos & bacalao. A carnivore variation on the theme of the previous dish: the skin of the cod is used to make this sort of crispy cannolo, the collagen from the tripe is used to thicken the sauce
Chawanmushi de foie escabechado y percebe, chawanmushi of foie gras with brine and percebe. Chawanmushi is a Japanese dish made with the seeds of the Ginkgo bilobatree: it’s basically a pudding made with milk and eggs, to which you can add mushrooms, prawns or something else. It is then aromatised with soya sauce, dashi and mirin. In this case Guerrero adds foie gras and finishes with percebe, a rare and pricy seafood from Galicia
Piel de pescado & toffe de atún: fish skin (in this case cod), cream of tuna, nori seaweed
Morrillo de atún a la brasa y morcilla de Beasain, grilled tuna neck with morcilla. The tuna neck is fabulous and very aromatic. It’s cooked on the embers for two hours. When serving it, it is covered with a jus made with its discarded parts, and a touch of ginger, rich of collagen, as well as a cream of morcilla from the Basque Country, the Spanish blood sausage. The result is a little too thick/strongly flavoured
Cordero, kombu, cogollo y piparra, lamb, alga kombu, lettuce hearts and piparra, a Basque chilli pepper which in this case is chargrilled. Excellent, the crispy lamb skin encloses the bite; inside, it’s an explosion of umami
The sweet part begins: Melón y remolacha fermentada, melon in osmosis with fermented beetroot juice, and persimmon flowers
Beber con la boca llena, that is to say "drink with your mouth full": fermented strawberries and crème fraiche with kombucha
Maiz, a super classic from Diego Guerrero. In a cloud of cotton candy there’s a piece of brittle made with popcorn ice cream, covered with small meringues of mango and aromatised with apple vinegar, sherry and tajine, toasted corn and chilli pepper. The result has a perfect texture. To eat it, wrap everything in the cotton candy, using it like a taco shell
An outdoor trip or a journey to the other side of the planet? One thing is for sure: the destination is delicious, by Carlo Passera
by
journalist born in 1974, for many years he has covered politics, mostly, and food in his free time. Today he does exactly the opposite and this makes him very happy. As soon as he can, he dives into travels and good food. Identità Golose's editor in chief