Surviving Madrid Fusión

10:00am

Drinking starts early at Madrid Fusión.

First up delegates slam espresso at the Cafés Baqué booth. Then, as the day rolls on, the hours are marked by the change in beverage. Coffee gives away to cañas, beer evolves to wine and finally everything dissolves into fishbowl G&Ts. It’s all free of course, the drinks – and plenty of food – dished out by businesses who’ve paid for a stand to push their products to the posse of international chefs, industry pros and press who descend annually on this internationally-significant gastronomic conference and trade show.

This year’s theme is “Cocinas Viajeras: Una aventura por el conocimiento”. It’s one of those phrases that translates unhappily – Travelling Cuisine: An Adventure Through Knowledge? – but that suggests the fusion vein at the heart of today’s high-class cooking, particularly in Spain where international tastes and ingredients (especially Asian and South American) are de rigueur.

Last year I spent the three full days at the conference, and managed to suck out the marrow. I attended a bevy of talks, saw a surfeit of show-cooking and ate my weight in free stuff. But this year, with only one day, I’m doomed to flail about.

And my sense of dislocation is aggravated by the venue, the Palacio Municipal de Congresos. Like an Escher woodcut, it’s fiercely challenging to navigate. Wandering the building reminds me of shopping at El Corte Inglés – you always seem find yourself at the escalators going up when you want to go down.

11:00am

First up, a wine tasting put on by the people from DO Ribera del Duero. While I have a professional interest in wine, it’s taxing tasting 15 at 11am with a straight face.

Initially I use the spittoon conscientiously. But after eight glasses I woozily wonder if the alcohol is seeping through the roof of my mouth. Then a dilemma – the tenth wine is a €100 bottle. Obviously I swallow.

And by the twelfth my tasting notes are on the fritz, my attention wandering. Up front, a boffin from South America keeps asking wandering, poetic questions about oak. A bullish bald American pulls rank, complaining too fiercely that the waiters aren't pouring sufficient wine for him to accurately adjudge aromas. And a sweaty journalist dashes in mid-tasting, sits beside me, sips at a glass, makes three notes in his notebook, eats all the bread sticks and leaves.

He is clearly trying to pull off the classic Madrid Fusión feint - be in two places at the same time. I feel his pain. Concurrent with the wine tasting, I’d also wanted to see chef Paco Morales' talk entitled “The Fingerprints of Al-Andalus in Haut-Cuisine”, followed by Mallorcan chef Andreu Genestra’s “Journey of a Spice Merchant” (when giving a talk, enigmatic titles are essential – I hope to catch a later presentation called “A Day on the Island of Jeju: Diving with the Haenyo Women”).

12:30pm

The tasting done, I meet up with my colleague Lauren Aloise over a glass of obscure Mallorcan white wine. She was at the talks I missed and brings me up to speed, as well filing me in on a presentation by an American chef that involved eating live jellyfish. I don’t really catch the gist.

But my ears do prick up when she mentions that several Spanish tourism bodies are serving free food on the ground floor.

1:00pm

Free food, or rather the hunt for free food, is a Madrid Fusión institution. It’s also a depressing site to behold and a demeaning act to engage in.

Coming down the escalator, I spot the seething mass. Like ants swarming around a dead bug. I swallow my pride and dive in, foraging up an excellent plate of migas, a tasty bowl of judiones and something that looks like a cigar. I also knock back a pisco sour from the Peru stand and wait patiently for a crunchy wafer filled with piquillo pepper cream from the Repsol Guide booth. The piqiullo pepper thing smells good, but the wafter snaps as I bring it to my mouth and the amuse-bouche shatters on the marble floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1:45pm

The feast continues on the trade show floor and companies are magnanimous in their offer of freebies. I try watercress that tastes of coriander, Alaskan salmon, candy-sweet jamón ibérico de bellota and a chilli dip with chef Albert Adrià’s face on the jar. And I notice the Madrid stand has lunged into culinary man's land by handing out Rodilla sandwiches. That'll show 'em!

2:30pm

As I’m digesting in the press room Ximena from the press department comes over and invites me to dinner the following night at the Ritz. I think she’s joking.

3:00pm

I finally reach the auditorium. This dark, studied space is Madrid Fusión’s holiest of holies, the event’s intellectual and creative nerve centre. It's where chefs prepare dishes, unveil techniques and launch projects – where gastro-prophesies are told.

And if one feels dirty after wading through the gastro-zoo outside, one comes here for purification.

Catalan superchef Joan Roca (from El Celler de Can Roca in Girona) talks about how he upped and moved his team to Latin America for five weeks, cooking, tasting, learning and teaching in Peru, Colombia and Mexico. And the crowd goes silly when he shows a video of his elderly parents eating his creations. It’s all very moving and inspiring, and I seem to recall him showing an equally moving and inspiring video featuring his mother last year.

There is, however, a stain on this place. Inside the auditorium people don’t fight for food. They fight for photos of food. Which is worse, and more violent. When a chef completes a dish it’s brought to the side of the stage, cueing a frenzied huddle of photographers, press and bloggers to leap in from the shadows, pushing, shoving and clawing to get a clean shot. I was one of them last year, but lacked the animal instinct and got few useable shots (see below). This year I keep my seat.

6:30pm

I begin to zone out. Sibling chefs Sergio and Javier Torres (of restaurant Dos Cielos in Barcelona) are doing some good looking food on stage. But as my attention drifts I become more fascinated by the man sitting in front of me who is filming the entire event on his iPad. His arms must be exhausted, his battery herculean. I message my wife to say I’ll be home soon.

The next night

9:00pm

I walk through Huertas to the Ritz. In the lobby, rich tourists sip cocktails and sink further into the plush sofas. The restaurant – Goya – is all Louis XV-esque chairs, deferential waiters and gentle piano. A softly-spoken Filipino woman approaches and shakes my hand. She is Verna from the Filipino Tourism Board. And dinner I learn will be an elaborate Filipino tasting menu, cooked by Margarita Forés, one of the Philippines’ top chefs.

Over three hours we move from fabulous Filipino ceviche to king prawns to the most righteous nugget of roast pork. Verna quietly explains each dish and the Dutch Master of Wine sitting beside me chooses what we drink (amid some handwringing on the Dutch Master of Wine’s part – the specially-printed menus are in Filipino, hamstringing his ability to pair).

The dinner is to celebrate that the next Madrid Fusión will not be in Madrid. It will be in Manila, this April. The connection makes sense: the country is a former Spanish colony (it’s named after Philip II), and the gastronomic overlaps are tantalising.

What’s more, like the Pompidou Centre being built in Malaga and the Guggenheim Museums that are being built everywhere, the name – Madrid Fusión Manila – deftly cements the event as an international brand independent of Madrid itself. And rather frustratingly for me and my sweaty journalist friend, it suggests that at Madrid Fusión you can, after all, be in two places at the same time.

James Blick
@theSpainGuy

Comments

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sharing the article, and more importantly, your personal experienceMindfully using our emotions as data about our inner state and knowing when it’s better to de-escalate by taking a time out are great tools. Appreciate you reading and sharing your story, since I can certainly relate and I think others can too