A few years ago, sometime in the 1970s, the term “fusion cookery” was coined in the language of gastronomy, meaning a combination of ingredients and recipes from different parts of the world that when brought together, create new flavors.
As a result, from the streets of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities to the simplest of small towns, advertisements began to spring up promoting restaurants specializing in this new style. The menu possibilities seemed endless: Oriental combined with Western, Andean with Caribbean, strong flavors with milder ones, etc. Soon the trend became fashionable, and then became accepted as an unquestionable truth by society, which elevated fusion food to the level of a new gastronomic genre.
Notwithstanding this sudden fever for combining ingredients and flavors, expressed in all kinds of cooking, there are also those who say that fusion cooking is not a discovery of the 20th century at all, much less by North Americans who were responsible for the boom in the 1970s.
They base their position on a basic but logical assessment: all cooking starts out as fusion, bringing together ingredients to achieve a specific dish or recipe. And just as its proponents have dates and names, so do its critics: pasta, although typically Italian, is made with wheat flour which arrived in Europe 6,700 years BC from Persia. Now that is fusion.
Furthermore, the great conqueror Marco Polo (1254-1324) brought the favors of Oriental cooking – more specifically Chinese – to Italian tables. And in 1825, Brillat-Savarin, author of the book The Philosophy of Taste, wrote a series of meditations about Parisian taverns in which he says that a meal in “The City of Lights” includes something representative of all parts of the world.
So it seems clear that fusion on the cooking stove is nothing new. However, what is true is that the concept has only recently really taken off.
There are as many expressions of fusion food as there are chefs. Some of them strictly follow the combination of elements and recipes from the East and the West, and even dare to suggest that the ingredients “par excellence” of fusion food are prawns, ginger, soy sauce and sage.
On the other hand, there are those who do not focus so much on the ingredients as on the combination of dishes. This approach might result in a meal consisting of dishes – all of which take a leading role – such as a typical Mexican tuna mole accompanied by a German Späzli cake and, for starters, a Judeo-Spanish style Mezé Sefardi.
The third approach is more focused on investigation, where the chefs are constantly looking for ingredients, which have disappeared over time and that they rescue from oblivion and present in new ways. This last approach to fusion cookery is perhaps the one that has produced the most interesting results.
Whether we agree with those who defend the recent “discovery” of fusion cookery or whether we incline to the classical view that it is as old as the art of food preparation itself, it is worth taking a look at the restaurants that have established themselves as the world’s leading proponents of this approach.
Astrid & Gastón: born in Peru, but their success has transcended the borders of their own country, extending to Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador. They started out combining the basic elements of Peruvian cooking with Oriental cuisine, but they have cleverly incorporated the native ingredients of each new country where they have established themselves. www.astridygaston.com.
Biko: is to be found in Mexico City, specializing in combining Mexican and Basque cuisine. Just one year after it was opened it was one of only two restaurants in Latin America to be included in the British magazine Restaurant’s list of the one hundred best restaurants in the world. www.biko.com.mx.
El Bulli: without any room for doubt, one of the best restaurants on the planet, located in Girona (Spain) under the direction of Ferran Adrià. One of his main approaches to cuisine is the adaptation and deconstruction of dishes, using new combinations and incorporating products and creations from other countries, according to the chef’s own criteria. www.elbulli.com
Pierre Gagnaire: The restaurant carries the same name as its founder, who is considered to be one of the greatest exponents of the fusion concept and one of the ten most influential chefs in the world. He is based in Paris and follows the principles of culinary constructivism, which have earned him three stars from Michelin, the highest authority in the restaurant world. www.pierre-gagnaire.com.
If you want to get to know the principles of fusion cooking you have to visit these four restaurants. They are not cheap; they are not within the reach of everyone’s wallet; in some of them you cannot get a reservation for 2009. But they nevertheless represent an extremely useful map of the route taken by this gastronomic trend that, whether it is has its roots in the past or is a new creation, is certainly here to stay. |
