Pleasure and Spain

I'm sitting in Sergi Arola's kitchen in La Broche, Madrid.  He is wearing a washed out Blackhawks T-shirt and is laughing about how he only started cooking to buy gear for his band.  He doesn't mention either of his Michelin stars. 

A green-tinted chalkboard on the wall is covered in dense, neat text and diagrams, as if from a physics lecture theatre.  It's the menu.  Our table is directly in front of the main preparation area.  There are 16 chefs and 16 serving staff.  The restaurant seats 32. 

To get us salivating we are brought bread, oil and three types of salt: olive black, smokey brown and spiced vivid pink.  Each tastes more of the flavour of its colour than it does of salt.  A thick glass tablet appears with a bon-bon of foie custard cream and a spot of caramel gleaming like polished amber.  It is like a fine Belgian truffle, only savoury.  It's an introduction to the baffling sensory overload that will follow with the next 10 tiny courses.  As a spoonful of chestnut soup with bacon ice cream passes my lips, I want to laugh.  After early childhood there are few opportunities to experience a completely novel sensation.  It's a treat. 

The delicate precision of the food is almost incomprehensible.  The sardines come smoked with a crispy fried egg.  The yolk from a bantam chicken is wrapped in brittle pastry, which cracks when tapped.  The dexterity required to separate the yolk, and then to wrap and fry it is stunning.  Still, the food is not fussy.  In a way it's almost rustic.  Pork and veal sausage with white beans, Idiazábal cheese risotto: it is as if Spanish rural cooking has been concentrated, refined and reduced to its essence. 

A few hours later we're backstage after the gig and Sergi's chatting with Bob, a fellow bassist.  He rolls up his sleeve and shows off a tattoo of a Rickenbacker. " Ooh, that's just like mine," says Bob.  I try to imagine Bob rolling back his sleeve to reveal a couple of tattooed Michelin stars.  I can't.