Hi everyone, welcome to Potluck Food Talks. Today I'm here with Esther Merino and we're
going to talk about drinks, mixology, traveling around the world, being a liquid gastronomy
professional. How are you Esther?
Hi, hello Eric. I'm very happy to be here with you.
To begin, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background? How did you begin
the food and drink world?
So basically it wasn't planned at all. I was studying law and then I precisely remember
IKEA opened in my city so I applied to have like a part-time job. In this case I end up
studying my last year of the bachelor of law, putting meatballs.
IKEA, IKEA like the furniture store?
Yeah, the home furnishing stores.
Okay, wow. I heard, I'm not sure if that's true, but I heard that it's the largest restaurant
chain of an European brand because most restaurant chains are, you know, American or from abroad.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm not sure but it could be perfectly because like it's insane.
It's super quick.
And the restaurant experience is a key part of the IKEA experience I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are the ones that really are selling furnishing because we are the
ones that make you a stock, you eat and then you buy again.
Yeah, exactly. And also for the families and people that don't want to buy, just go to
the restaurant and spend the day there. And how was the experience working there?
Was amazing. I end up working with them for years. The process, especially the process
of internal learning, the trainings, the empowerment there was amazing. Was one of the best experiences
in my life in those terms. And then I remember in the fourth year, I just had a big, big
training in another city, like they pay my travel, my flight, my hotel room and so on.
And then when I came back to my position, I saw that Vasculinary Center exists basically.
And then I was reading my options and I had the chance to ask for a sabbatical year to
study. So right after coming back from the training, I asked for this sabbatical year.
And of course, I was kind of nervous, kind of shaking as well, because like imagine you're
just coming from an amazing learning journey week. They pay for everything. They teach
you so many things. And then you're asking for living one year. And at the end, it was
even more awesome because I personally remember the director of the shop in Valladolid where
I was working. He told me, I'm not giving you one sabbatical year. I'm giving you four
sabbatical years to study the whole bachelor. Oh, wow. So it was amazing. And I want to
know more about the working in a restaurant in Ikea. I can imagine like the whole procedure
manuals. Do they look like the catalog of Ikea or the with the whole branding system
or how is it? Actually, this is an amazing question, Eric, because like normally you
will imagine like like an encyclopedia, like a big book, a thick book with a lot of information.
And of course, we had some manuals and and procedures manual. But they were very specific
in terms of like how you manage the food safety things or how do you make a salmon roll or
things like that, like the basic protocol. But then we had an amazing internet where
you have there everything. So actually, I think is one of the keys of Ikea in this case,
because it's a real tool. You know, sometimes you have a big book that basically is having
dust in a shelf is not a is not a is not a tool. Nobody uses it. Yeah, exactly. And then
with the internet, what was way more easier, way more efficient as well. And you have whatever
you want to imagine. You you had it there. So yeah, yeah. Super cool. Like having a good
learning management system. I heard that Magnus Nielsen, did he also start at Ikea? I'm not
sure. I'm not sure. But there is like a famous Nordic chef who also started at Ikea. That's
funny. Could be could be. I don't know. To be honest, I don't know. So then you went
to to BCC. Yeah, I went to BCC in 2014. And then of course, I was thinking in in the chef
side, I wanted to study avant-garde cuisine and be the most amazing chef in the world
and blah, blah, blah. But then thanks to all the teachers, like we are surrounded by amazing
people running must be center. Sometimes we don't even realize how lucky we are about
all the people we know, all the people that is sharing their knowledge. So basically I
had Pilar Garcia Granero, Coro Gonzalo Parras. I know Irene Patsy and they start sharing
with me a lot of knowledge about customer interaction, service, wines. And then inside
me started to grow this feeling of like, wow, I really like to cook, but I really love to
see how the guests enjoy a drink or or an elaboration and explain it. And also like
kind of being the representant of everyone that takes part in the experience. Like I'm
representing the chef. Sometimes I'm representing the winemaker sometimes when I'm putting a
wine. So yeah, at the end in the bachelor, I decide to to continue with the avant-garde.
So as you know, in the third year, you have to choose one specialization. Yeah, just to
make a short note on that at Basque Culinary Center and the bachelor degree after the third
year, you can choose between three specializations. It can be business and innovation. The other
one is food science and industry. And the other one, which is the one that Esther took
is avant-garde, which is basically working around avant-garde restaurants, high end restaurants.
Yeah. And basically since the beginning, I had to, I started to have very clear this
idea of like, wow, everything that I will say is not new anymore in kitchen is going
to be something new in the service part. So I can apply a lot of the avant-garde and cutting
edge techniques for interactions with the guests, for plating up in front of the guests
as a waiter. And also then something that really changed my mind was realizing like,
wow, if I cook liquid in front of the guests, I will have this eye of chef and I will have
this eye of service or waiter. So I will have bone within a profession that is bartending.
So yeah. Yeah. It's a pretty much neglected craft. The one of the service, front of the
house interacting with the guests. And I think it's 50% of the experience. Like it's like,
like in movies you have sound and image. It can't be just one. It has to be the combination
of both. Right. I had a lot of conversation about it. Basically one of the most important
ones for me was with the Rene and Annegret from Noma. Annegret is the, I mean, we all
know who is Rene, but Annegret is the restaurant manager, the front of the house leader. And
they were saying that a good service will save a burnt sandwich, but the most amazing
sandwich will not save a bad service. And it's totally true.
Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. Was it, was there a moment where, when, when you realized
that, okay, I really like doing this, being at the front of the house?
Right after the presentation of my thesis that just to, to summarize, I ended up being
with an anthropologist in Barcelona analyzing the human behavior around cocktail bars. It
was super interesting, but imagine even my family, I perfectly remember my father saying
like, okay, yes, there, low, then chef, then front of the house, then bartender. And now
you are with an anthropologist. Like, yeah, well, that anthropologist, his name is Sergio
Hill. Yeah. And he's the one who coined the term gastropology, which is a merge between
anthropology and gastronomy. And in his, he uses his restaurant as a lab to understand
precisely interaction with guests or how the ecosystem of a neighborhood works specifically.
It's super interesting. Everything he does.
Yeah. Basically it's like a, like a social laboratory where you can analyze really the
human behavior with food, but also the human behavior itself, because a bar is something
that is semi-private and semi-public. So yeah, yeah. You get a lot of amazing information
and like actual information that you could not get from anywhere else or from any other
discipline. So yeah, I learned a lot and yeah, I was, I was answering my father. Like I know
I have to specialize, but the right now I have the feeling that I need to explore more.
Right. And your thesis was, what was the topic of your thesis? Wow. To make it a short story.
It's called the floating host. Okay. Wow. And it's based on analyzing the role of a
waiter or a bartender, because sometimes we are managing things that the, from the guest
will be totally unnoticed, but it will be a hundred percent changing the experience.
Like imagine that you have, for example, the first date and then as a bartender or as a
waiter, I can feel that there is a little bit of distance between you both. And then
I change a little bit the temperature of the light or I put a candle or I change, I change
the music in a more relaxed or romantic one. So that thing will change your experience
because you will be more relaxed and we'll start talking with your date and so on. But
it's something completely unnoticed. You will not be aware about if I'm changing the music
or not or who is the one managing that. Yeah. So all these fat, all this management of intangibles
make us be a floating host that is floating. Yeah. That's super interesting. Yeah. I mentioned,
I think we did an episode on restaurant user experience and I mentioned this experiments
of Charles Pence where he would use music in supermarkets and in the wine section with
Italian music, people would walk by more Italian wine and Spanish music, more Spanish wine.
But this is something nobody notices. It's just the results, the numbers, you know, and
it's super interesting. Going back to the beginning, I have to say, for example, in
Ikea, they had studied that since the beginning, like we are not inventing something new at
all. Of course. I'm sure. I'm pretty sure that big companies like Ikea know exactly
which music to put to enhance sales. Because I personally remember one, one manual of like
the type of music we have to put it. The shop was empty or full or packed or yeah. Yeah.
It's psychology. Exactly. Then you also worked, you went to the Philippines and you worked
with Chelle Gallery. Yeah. How was that? How did you end up there? Wow. Because actually
one of my best friends, I'm from Valladolid and she's from Valladolid. Her name is called
Julia. She fell in love with a guy from the Philippines and now she's happily married
with two kids. And I really wanted to visit her because she was talking a lot about the
biodiversity of the Philippines, the different ingredients and the different parts and Iceland
and so on. And I really wanted to to know more about it. Right. And then I start looking
for places to go and I found out Chelle and of course Chelle has an amazing CV. I mean,
he's been from Nerua to El Bulli to Mugaritz. Yeah. Mugaritz. Many different restaurants
in Spain and in the world. And then he, he opened a gallery and like since the beginning,
he was like super successful in the Philippines as a chef, like trying to enhance and showcase
the biodiversity of the Philippines. So yeah, I decided to go with him. Yeah. The concept
of the restaurant is, as you say, is enhancing the territory, right? Like they work with,
if I'm not wrong, only local products, only products from the Philippines in a very avant
garde way. Exactly. And it's, I think it was back at a time he was very clever because
he was presenting something familiar in an unfamiliar way. Like for example, he was using
toasted sticky rice or like whatever, like a local produce from the Philippines, but
he was using flavors that for or ways to cook that for him were familiar, but not for, for
the Philippines. So a lot of techniques and combinations from the north of Spain, specifically
from Cantabria, but also from Basque Country and Asturias and so on. So he was mixing very
well the produce with techniques that he knew that worked well together, but were very unknown
and not common in the Philippines. In the Philippines, you say the spring rolls are
called lumpias, right? Lumpias. Yeah. That's funny because in Venezuela you say lumpias
as well. And in the rest of the world, the Spanish speaking world, you say spring rolls,
the literal translation. Yeah. And I was recently in Singapore and I saw this, I found out that
lumpia is a Philippine word and I was like, wow, this is crazy because I don't know how
that word came only to Venezuela. I want to find that out. It will be very interesting
to see from the anthropological perspective because it's totally linked. The Philippines
was, I'm going to say discovered. It was a Spanish colony, right? For a long time. Yeah,
exactly. It was a Spanish colony. We ended up there in the same way that we ended up
in Latin America. I'm not going to be very proud of that, but well, at the end we were
there and the Philippines, the Islands were super important because it was a base for
the commerce exchange. So it was one of the principal points to go to America, take some
produce, then stop in the Philippines and then continue. Okay. It was like a key logistic
point. Exactly. Okay. And then you can see, for example, in the Philippines, one of the
most traditional dishes is care care, which is like an oxtail cooked in a kind of a Spanish
style, but with a cashew nut sauce. And then it has a chote as well. And for me it's like,
wow, it's super representative. This mixture of cultures and yeah, like you have a chote
that is from Latin America. You have an elaboration that is mainly from Spain and it's cooked
in a Spanish style. And then you have the cashew nuts and another herbs that are more
typical from the Philippines. So it's a very good example of this mixture. And I'm totally
sure that lumpia will be something like that for sure. Yeah. I'm also sure about that.
I have this friend, Ivan Bram. I interviewed him. He has this restaurant in Singapore called
Nouri and what he does is he focuses on what he calls crossroads cooking or crossroads gastronomy.
And this is an exact example of that, of this foods traveling across the world and meeting
in a specific point and creating this new combinations of flavors in a kind of organic
way, not forced. And all of his developments are like this. He actually has in his research
and development side of the restaurant, only anthropologists to kind of find these, these
type of stories. That's amazing. It's also interesting to know that the San Miguel beer,
which is one of the major brands in Spain, it was created in the Philippines. So if you
go there, there's a lot of San Miguel beer, right?
A lot. And also San Miguel owns not only the beer, if not like, sorry about it, but the
CTS gin that you can found in a 7-Eleven or things like that. Also, I mean, they are huge
in the Philippines. And, and also it's very common to see, for example, Torres. And I
remember in 2016 that it was the first time I was in the Philippines. Brandy wasn't a
thing in Spain. It was like very, uh, in decadence, let's say. And, uh, and in the Philippines
was like totally the opposite. And I was like, wow, really? They are drinking more brandy
than us. Like that, that should mean something. And we have to realize like, why? So yeah.
Yeah. Like poppies colonial consequences probably. And there is a lot of words in Spanish, like
Cuchara, Bano, Toalla. That are also related to the Philippines. Yeah. Yeah. Are part of
the, uh, it's called Tagalog, the language in the Philippines. I mean, you have, it's
very difficult. I remember, for example, to say hello, how are you? It's like, uh, so
nothing related with Spanish, I think. A little bit. That's, I'm like, yeah. The, the accent,
the way you pronounce, and like some words, specifically, Kelly, I remember Cuchara, Toalla,
Bano are the same. Okay. Then you went also to Noma? Yeah. That was like after finishing
the bachelor and then working during almost two years in Vascularity Center as a freelance
counselor with Pachi Tritino, that was my partner as well. Then I decide, I basically
decide to go to Copenhagen. I asked to have three months to go to Copenhagen to analyze
something that I really wanted to analyze. That was the touch points between front of
the houses and sustainability. So analyzing the touch points between our daily activities
and how is the importance of that or the impact in sustainability. So I asked to be at a mass
for that. And then I asked to be at Noma for that as well. And then when I finished these
three months in both the restaurants doing this kind of internship, they offered me a
position and then I was at Noma like few time, but very short time because it happened the
first lockdown in Denmark. So I have to say I was very lucky because they opened Poppel.
So all of us, we went to start working with Poppel and imagine when Rene told me like,
okay, is there... Poppel is this burger place? Yeah. Okay. It's like a fancy burger place
and... I mean, it's more like a casual restaurant. It's not a burger place anymore because at
the beginning, of course, in the pandemic was only about the burgers. But right now,
for me, it's one of my favorite restaurants about the sites, about the way they cook veggies
and seasonal food is insanely good. Okay. I had it on my list. I was recently in Copenhagen.
I didn't visit the Poppel. I went to a few other restaurants. It's great. It's super
tasty, super delicious. And also like you can feel that it's like a casual Noma. Like
the way they cook the veggies, all the sites are, I mean, the burger is very good, of course,
but the way they cook the sites, the vegetables is amazing. And then yeah, Rene told me like,
okay, is that all the ingredients that we have from the Noma fermentation lab? Do you
want to use them for cocktails? And I was like, like Halle's in Wonderland, you know,
like wow. Disneyland, of course. Yeah. So you were developing cocktails for Noma during
the lockdown. This was at the beginning, I was a part of the front of the house waiter
at Noma. And then after, I think it was 17, 20 days, it happened, the lockdown, I went
to, to Poppel and together with Francesca Niro, I start building up the concept of the,
of everything that was in wine. So from non-alcoholic drinks, mocktails, juices, and of course cocktails.
And then also it was very challenging because, because of course we had to create everything
for takeaway, but I've learned so much back at a time, like so much, the way you can make
so much money, giving accessibility to the most of the population to amazing ingredients
from the Noma fermentation lab and also how to use them. I remember we had a, a very successful
drink that was called a Bloody Frankie that was based on the flavor profile of our Bloody
Mary. And it was pretty bad. So it was in a bottle and then you buy it and you drink
it at home or wherever you want. And the ingredients were, were left over fermented plum juice,
left over fermented cherry juice, saffron kombucha, like ingredients like, like that. So nothing
related at all.
Nice. That sounds amazing. Nothing related at all with, with Bloody Mary, but the combination
and the way we presented linking with the Bloody Mary made, made it very successful.
Like yeah, we were doing the opposite, the opposite as we were talking with Chele. We
present something unfamiliar in a familiar way. So through the concept of Bloody Mary,
we create this cocktail and was so delicious and super successful. Like I was, I was learning
a lot about like, wow, I'm bottling so much quantity of this stuff and we are selling
a lot and people really like it. And like, yeah, alcohol became like a common holy during
the lockdowns. Of course, of course, but we have both the alcoholic and non-alcoholic
and also the learning process of like the shelf life, the way you present the packaging.
Were you, were you also doing cans or only bottles?
Only bottles. I was, I was going, uh, my day off, I was going to Empirical to, to just
for like, like in my, in my free time, just to learn how to use the big wiki, the big
equipment.
Okay. So just to explain, Empirical is a company that was started by two ex, uh, the, the,
the work in the Nordic Food Lab and also in the R&D of, of Noma. And they started this
company, uh, creating spirits in a, in a way that no one has seen before, because they
started making a crossover of, uh, traditional distilling techniques of the West of Europe
and mixing them with, uh, fermentation techniques of, of the Japanese and other cultures. Uh,
for instance, it wants to, to, you used to make sake and combining this all to create
new crazy ways of doing liquors, which is amazing.
Yeah, yeah. They, they started creating new categories every week. Every time they presented
something, it was a new category, something that you couldn't say that was gin or whiskey
or any like traditional category, let's say. And also like missing this, say amazing techniques
and innovation. So yeah, I wanted to learn from them. Uh, they, they've been such an
inspiration for me and yeah. And then I, I, I was going in my day off just to learn, just
to help them and learn how to use a different equipment. And there we were doing cans and
I mean the cans of empirical are delicious, are super delicious.
Yeah. I've tried a few of their drinks and it's always something impressive and different
and new. Yeah. I'm a, I'm a big fan. You also mentioned Amaz. Uh, what were you doing at
Amaz? Amaz was, was the first play where I started this project about analyzing the touch
points between sustainability and front of the house. And also of course, like it was
always an inspiration, especially Matt Orlando, that the, I met him when he came to Basque
Culinary Center and I fall in love with the, with the insights and the mindset he has about
sustainability. Uh, and then I went there, I asked him to do this kind of internship,
just being with the front of the house team, but analyzing all the daily activities. And
I, again, I learned so much also not only about like the main thing that I was going
based on the analysis, if not like the most simple things that normally are unnoticed
because they are super simple and normally like you don't think about them. And yeah,
like it totally changed my way to think in terms of sustainability in Amaz because also
for me, it was the first time I found a place where front of the house was totally involved
in sustainability in the daily activities of the restaurant. And also the first time
or the best example of a chef taking in count the importance or the importance of front
of the house.
Yeah, like the, the, also the game changing thing they did, uh, I can think of very few
restaurants where the key value proposal is waste cooking and using things that are usually
discarded and turning them into something delicious. And also Matt Orlando is a chef
with an incredible background. He was head chef at Noma and Perse in different times.
So like two of the best restaurants in the world. I must recently close. I went to the,
to the venue where is a spora right now. And I know that Matt Orlando is traveling precisely
in Singapore or Philippines or somewhere.
He opened, he is based on, I had a very good relationship with him and he's in Singapore.
He opened together with Will Golfer. Air is called.
Yeah, exactly. Ivan Bram did a dinner recently with them. That's how I found out.
Yeah. And like a basically he's there building up the same concept as we, uh, you could find
at a mass, but there, and also I have to say Singapore right now is an amazing city and
an amazing example of like how you can support gastronomy and using gastronomy as a, as a
key factor for changing society and helping society to be more aware about environment,
climate change and eating delicious and healthy.
Yeah. It's a, it's an interesting story because Singapore created a strategy called 30 by
30. Uh, they want to buy 2030 produce a 30% of their, of their food or, and they have
like many, many very ambitious goals. Um, they know that they can't be like a major
player in food production worldwide because they're so little, but they can be a major
player in food technology. Yeah. Like creating patents or even seeds or completely different
things. And so the, there is a, like a government foundation called Temasek, which is heavily
investing in all kinds of developments around food. So anyone that has a food startup now
and goes there will, will get funding for sure for different things because there is
a lot of funds being granted right now.
Yeah. And like he's working. I mean, it's great. As you said, such a tiny city right
now is like, is there one of the biggest examples of this strategy?
Yeah. I know it was a super interesting, uh, traveling there. Then you ended up in Alchemist.
Uh, how did you, how, how did that happen?
Uh, basically I remember Licky and Rasmus were sometimes going to Poppe and then I remember
one time I was like super excited because I had a new drink and I saw Licky and Rasmus
coming for the takeaway. And, uh, I don't know why, because I never talked with her
before. I knew he was here, but we never talked. And then I went, I ran until, uh, the car
and I gave her, Oh, Licky, please. I would love you to try this new cocktail and give
me feedback. And then two weeks later they announced that they were looking for, uh,
for, for somebody to, to have this role about the fermentation at the Alchemist. And, uh,
I didn't notice that because they were asking, and like, um, through Instagram and through
different, uh, uh, social media announcing that. But then one time in this case, Diego
Prado told me like, you know, that Licky asked me about you because they are looking for
somebody and they think you are perfect and blah, blah, blah. And, uh, and yeah. And
then I decided to apply and see, I perfectly remember the day we did the first meeting.
He was saying me like, you were so excited and so motivated with your little bottle asking
me to try it. That I always keep that in mind. And, uh, and yeah, I mean, it was very hard
for me. I remember when I left the Poppele in this case, I was crying like a baby. I
mean, I consider no man like, but when still my family, like Alchemist is as well. Uh,
but I mean, working from Monday to Friday, from nine to five with all these equipment,
uh, having the freedom to create, being at Alchemist, learning from amazing professionals.
I mean, Alchemist has to be one of the best equipped kitchens in the world for sure. Right.
Right. That's in the top five for sure. For sure. And for example, specifically my role,
it only a six at Alchemist at least back at a time having somebody just to be on the fermentation
for drinks and in distillation, it will, I mean, right now I only still know Alchemist
like having this specific position. So you were developing drinks for the menu or, or
exactly what? At the beginning was based on doing the Misanplus and producing for, uh,
the non-alcoholic paintings, like mainly one that is called Botanica. So I was doing all
the fermentation from kombucha, water kefir and so on. And then I was very lucky because
I had a college called, uh, Marie Marie back at a time was the, uh, head bartender. And
of course they had an amazing equipment and I had 50% of my time to do R&D and 50% of
my time to do the production and the Misanplus. So I start to play a little bit. And of course
from, uh, Basculinari Center and especially working with Patti Tritino, I knew how to
use the Rota Ballon, how to distill. So I start playing around and I remember the first
day I distill a pistachio spirit and I present to Marie like, Hey Marie, look at that. It's
delicious. And she was like, wow, I'm going to use that for a cocktail in the, in the
menu. So we start like very naturally without thinking about it, working like that. I was
the stealing things or presenting new things and Marie was integrating those things in
the cocktail menu, both in the lounge and in the, in the balcony. So at the beginning
and at the end of the experience at Alchemist. So, I mean, I love it because without planning
is like me and the company, we create this position because at the beginning was only
fermentation, but at the end I was fermented drinks and craft spirit at Alchemist. So both
extremes like alcohol and non-alcohol. Yeah. And was amazing. That sounds really, really
amazing. Were you also working in the front of the house or only in the back and the R&D?
No, I was working in the back. I did service for a month, something like that because a
colleague, Nina, the head of the Summiliers, she was going to a competition. And then also
it was very important for me to be in the service this month because back at a time,
I started being in charge also of the creation of all the cocktails because Marie left. And
then it was very good for me to, to see how the guests experience the cocktails, how the
guests behave, the feedback and so on. And also very good to be on the service because
you learn the timings, the procedures. If, if perhaps, I don't know, a kombucha is better
to serve in another type of class or yeah. So I was a month, I was, I learned a lot as
well and like was very important for me to be, to be, to have this month.
How many Summiliers are in Alchemist? Wow, a lot right now. I'm not sure, but before
I left, they were seven. And then, I mean, in front of the house, they were like 29,30
for 48 people, four days a week. Wow. Incredible. But the level of, I mean, the level of study
and professionalism and concentration of like, you have really to be focused when you are
in front of the house in a Alchemist. You have to study just to, to understand like
the different steps, the different, the different impressions that you are going to explain
to the guests. So just for putting a foot or a feet in, in, in the service room at Alchemist,
you have to study a lot. I never seen that anywhere. It's because I'm normal. For example,
we had a lot of training, but it was very different. It was more about how to approach
the guests. We had trainings about the wines, trainings about, for example, the wild duck
and how are the parts and like the origin of that and so on. Or for example, another
one about how we can change our way to speak and our sound depending on a guest that is
from Asia or depending on a guest that is from the Mediterranean or from the North
of Europe. So yeah, it was more based on that, the training, but at Alchemist it was like,
we have a special language just with symbols and the hands, just to communicate with it.
With each other and you have to study that. Like hand signs. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah.
And now you're working as a drink developer, like as an R&D freelance or what are you doing
exactly? Yeah, right now I'm freelance. I'm working mostly in academia. I still go in
a lot to Baspronari Center for master classes, then doing scientific articles as well. It's
something that I really like. And then the other part is beverage development and the
third part is consultancy. So these three different parts right now are the ones that
I'm working on, but specifically I think academia for me is the one that I enjoy the most. And
then of course the beverage development, because you learn, you know, new things, you meet
people, you know, new ingredients, new techniques, and it's super inspiring. Your profile reminds
me of this cocktail place that Grand Acats opened in Chicago, Aviary, which is a cocktail
place. But the interesting thing is that, I don't know if it sells just like that, but
I know that there were no bartenders. It were chefs doing cocktails, like with high-end
or avant-garde culinary techniques and turning them into the liquid world. That's kind of
also like your profile somehow. I don't know. I'm very glad, very happy that you think that.
Thank you very much, Eddie. But yeah, I mean, Aviary changed everything. Aviary was the
first place, not only about what you are saying about like the approach of a chef mind into
giving more quality and more overall about like the performance and procedures within
a cocktail. Because sometimes a cocktail is like, yeah, half a line, shake it, but how
much time do I have to shake it? What is going to be the dilution, the alcohol by volume?
So it wasn't very precise and Aviary changed that. But when the first book of Aviary was
like a game changer, because they start approaching the recipes with a chef mindset. So actually
it was the first time you had the same units of measure in a cocktail. That for me was
amazing because I was so frustrated like why we mix bad spoons with drops, with centiliters,
with ounces, with grams, with a splash of... Yeah. And then appeared the first book of
Aviary that was a game changer. And especially the other one that is called Zero that they
released a little bit more than two years ago, that they start also a methodology of
creating mocktails because they realized like it wasn't at the same level. Like people that
pay $10 for a cocktail wasn't at the same level of quality, the guy that was paying
$10 for a mocktail. So they present this book sharing a methodology to create different
layers of complexity within the non-alcoholic cocktails and new techniques for like reaching
a good flavor, a good persistency and so on. And also was again a game changer. So yeah,
I think it couldn't be Eric, you put the best example.
It also comes to my mind, El Bulli, they also did like edible cocktails and these kinds
of things in the appetizing section. I never went to El Bulli, but I read a lot and saw
a lot of things.
No, you're totally right. El Bulli was the one that started everything, but the game
changer was Aviary because it was an actual place, an actual cocktail bar. But literally
before El Bulli, nobody was aware about like having cocktails in a degustation menu. Perhaps
if somebody asked for it, yeah, the classic cocktails, but not like El Bulli did. And
also something that amazed me is El Bulli from 1998 start to documentate all the cocktails
in the same way they did the documentation for the food.
Well, you have the 455 that is the, I think this number is for, I don't know if it's the
whiskey sour pastilla or the hot frozen gin fish. But anyways, they start to treat at
the same level of importance, cocktails and food. And also every time they were presenting
a new technique, they were applying in food and in cocktails. So for example, the hot
foam, it was in an elaboration, in a culinary elaboration, but also it was in this case
in the hot frozen gin fish where you have a cocktail with two temperatures that imagine
when they present in 2000. So you imagine the wine going in 2000, having a cocktail
with two textures and two temperatures.
Something from another planet. Absolutely. Yeah. That's crazy. How is your creative process?
If you, if you are to develop a new drink, what's your starting point? Could you share
like an example?
So always my starting point is say the anthropological perspective. As I told you before, like since
I met anthropology, uh, is something I will never get rid of. It changed my way of, uh,
see the things. And I always start analyzing the relation between, uh, humans with this
technique or the ingredient or the concept I want to develop. And then once I define
that I start to look into more the food science part in terms of the technique, the reactions,
the behavior, the technological properties that I can apply from a, from a ingredient.
And, uh, for example, one example, because I always put the same examples and today I
want to put a new one. So it's called a cocktail called Viva Mexico because as a Spanish, I
invented a way to say, I'm sorry to Latin America because, uh, what we did when we conquer,
uh, Latin America and, or discover, let's say through a cocktail. So through Viva Mexico,
I was, uh, taking the concept of the meal, but that is something that you will find in
Mexico of course, but also in Venezuela, in Columbia, in many different other, uh, parts
and then taking corn Chile, habanero and tamarind and hibiscus as the main ingredients, super
super Mexican ingredients. Yeah. So here the goal was like not to use a orange or lemon
at all. So all the acidity of the cocktail was coming from the tamarind and the hibiscus.
Then I did vacuum distilled Chile, habanero spirit, distilling habanero based on alcohol
and then distilling habanero vinegar and then doing a blend between both of them because
capsaicin is not volatile. So you will not have all the spiciness. You will be able to
feel the cucumber, the watermelon, the melon that the, this, uh, Chile has itself. That's
the one I tried at your place last time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was incredible. Yeah. Super
good. And then mix with the tamarind and the hibiscus. And then on, on the top was a corn
foam with a smoked bark to have this kind of corn smoky flavor profile also with different
texture. And yeah, it was a way to say, I'm sorry through the concept of milpa and as
a Spanish in Latin America.
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