Martín Berasategui, an ITV friend himself who recently visited us at the Hostelco Show in Barcelona, is leaving a huge culinary legacy that, for now, is at the top of the trade with his all new three stars restaurant in Barcelona. Lasarte, the restaurant, is named after the Gipuzkoan town where the genius has his headquarters, whose works range from international consultancies to publishing and television productions. A big emporium in tune with the 8 stars awarded to his restaurants, never seen in a Spanish chef before.
Having learned from the French school, Berasategui connects with the French perfectionist philosophy more than with the fireworks and extravagances of the modern chefs dominating the contemporary fashion cuisine.
He continues the great generation that forged the “new Basque cuisine,” and he has always shrewdly chosen to take steps after meditation, not blindly following immediate trends and knowing how to adapt to the times and ventures to meet and achieve his goals.
As regards cuisine, purely speaking, Martin offers, season after season, undisputed tasting menus, almost always seasoned with his best creations from the last decades, marked with the corresponding year, perhaps to corroborate that good things are not subordinated to being new or old.
This masterful compendium of his work and its quality is a sufficient argument to place the chef at the top of the world scale. Another one is he constantly reinvents his repertoire. The contrast that did not succeed over time, or which the client pointed out as conflicting, the garnish that evoked more nuances or proportions, the decoration that could or should be improved, all have been modified once and again in legendary dishes, as the Caramelized millefeuilles of smoked eel, foie-gras, chive and green apple, possibly one of the most copied dishes in modern cuisine, or any of its desserts, a field where he earned much of the fame of a man who always knew he was going to reign.