Wine and Food Diary of Giles MacDonogh Epicurean FINE WINE

Bulli For Me!

Written by Giles MacDonogh

“Bulli” For Me!

Posted: 1st December 2016

The big treat this month was a dinner at the excellent Iberica restaurant in Canary Wharf. Iberica has been spreading its wings of late, opening in Glasgow and Leeds, but, as ever, letting the chefs in each location put their own spin on things. What remains a constant is the use of excellent materials and of course before anything else that means iberico ham – the greatest in the world!

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The other sine qua non is Nacho Manzano who controls the menus in the various branches of Iberica as well as running his own Michelin Two-Star, Casa Marcial in the Asturias. In November, however, he welcomed three former right-hand men from Ferran Adria’s famous – and now even more famously defunct – El Bulli to London and Manchester: Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch and Mateu Casañas, the owners of the restaurant Compartir in Salvador Dali’s Cadaqués and Disfrutar in Barcelona. Together with Manzano they prepared an eight-course menu moistened with wines, beer and cider from the Asturias.

I never made it to El Bulli, but I know it was all about bites of food, novel taste experiences and intense flavours. There was a lot of ‘foam’ and bubbles of olive oil ‘caviar’, and all sorts of test-tube wizardry that might or might not have worked as an alternative to a slap up feast. Adria’s most famous disciple here is obviously Heston ‘Bloomers’ Blumenthal.

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Giles MacDonogh

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