Four-hands menus
This is a formula that has become more widespread in recent years. Two or more chefs meet in one of their kitchens to prepare a special menu featuring some of their most representative dishes. It's known as a "four-hands" dinner. I'm not a big fan of these group meals, which tend to have rather disappointing results.
But there's no doubt it's a way to discover the work of important chefs without having to travel to their restaurants, which are almost always quite far away. While I'm not entirely convinced by the formula, I have to admit that some of these collaborative efforts achieve brilliant results.
This has been the case with two of the menus I've enjoyed in recent days, created by some of the most outstanding chefs on the Spanish culinary scene. The first was at the superb Hotel Santa Catalina in Las Palmas, home to Poemas, a restaurant advised by the Padrón brothers (who hold two Michelin stars at El Rincón de Juan Carlos in Tenerife) and where the young and talented Icíar Pérez is head chef. The Padróns were hosting one of the most in-form chefs at the moment: Benito Gómez, of Bardal.
Perfect harmony in the dishes. From the hosts, their now-classic Canarian black pudding nougat, celery confit, or eel Benedict. From Benito Gómez, fig in fig tree escabeche, razor clams with tomato, or rabbit shoulder blanquette with a skewer of its offal. Excellent dishes for a four-hands collaboration that justifies the formula.
The second was actually a six-hands affair (eight to be exact). In a place very far removed from the first, Asturias. On the occasion of the Gastrollar congress, Xune Andrade, the most promising of the Asturian chefs, welcomed Pedrito Sánchez of Bagá, the Jaén restaurant that everyone wants to visit, and Lydia del Olmo and Xosé Magalhaes, of Ceibe, in Orense, to Monte, in the village of San Feliz.
Three one-Michelin-starred restaurants, all three located in challenging areas, all three enjoying great success. The steamed hake from Celeiro with Ceibe's fishbone pil-pil, the nori seaweed meunière from Bagá, or the beef meatball with roasted apple and pig's trotter jus from Monte are just three examples of another exceptional menu. If all four-Michelin-starred restaurants were like these, I'd be a regular.
