San Sebastián has put aside its gala attire to attend film premieres to put on its chef’s jacket and become the capital of gastronomy for another year. This year in a special way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of the first culinary congresses and a pioneer in applying to cooking the criteria that governed other disciplines. San Sebastián Gastronomika celebrates its silver anniversary with the help of the great chefs who led the gastronomic revolution, with its epicenter in El Bulli, and does so with the purpose of continuing to write history with a look to the future.
Some of the most recognized faces of world cuisine have passed through the capital of San Sebastian since Monday. Ferran Adrià, Joan Roca, José Andrés, Eduard , the Colombian Leonor Espinosa or the Japanese Yoshihiro Narisawa.
Retrospective is probably the word that connects most of the presentations held until yesterday, in which the chefs tried to take stock of their careers and offer some reflections for posterity. Oriol Castro and Eduard
René Redzepi also took the opportunity to reflect on his evolution, who gave one of his last presentations the day before yesterday after the announced closure of his Noma restaurant at the end of 2024. “We are not going to close, we are building a new Noma. “Now I know that to continue being who you are, you have to change,” said the chef, who will reopen his project in the form of a research center in 2025, something similar to what Ferran Adrià did when he closed El Bulli in 2011 to reopen it further. later under a new concept of a creativity laboratory and more recently in a museum.
Josean Alija, who lit the Gastronomika stove, analyzed the influence that conferences like this one have had on his career as a chef, and other colleagues, such as Paco Morales, Artur Martínez or Elena Arzak, reflected on the importance of the diner in the gastronomic experience.
The highlights of yesterday’s event were José Andrés, Pedro Subijana and Ángel León, who the day before yesterday was recognized as a “food hero” by the United Nations. Andrés, champion of Spanish cuisine in the United States, wanted to value the people who work in the kitchen and in the dining room of a restaurant: “We are the sum of the people we have around us.” Likewise, tribute was paid to Hilario Arbelaitz and his Zuberoa restaurant, which closed in December of last year after 53 years, through the chefs who passed through the kitchens of an establishment that had become a benchmark.
Gastronomika 2023 will put an end to its 25th edition today with the reflections of Begoña Rodrigo, Leonor Espinosa or Ricard Camarena, with a look directed at the territory and the local product, without forgetting that analysis of the past that must lead to imagining which It will be the future of gastronomy.
