FUNDACION ALICIA: FOOD, SCIENCE AND TRANSPARENCY

摘要

The Catalans are a good-humoured bunch. So they won't take offence if I try to sum up the mood of the Alicia Foundation with an anecdote about an Italian and a Catalan. "The two are discussing cooking and food. What's the outcome? The Italian makes a TV programme on the subject; and the Catalan puts up a building."rnTwo Mediterranean cultures steeped in the inexact science of food, on which their respective economies and geographies are nourished, react with two genetically different attitudes to its vital importance. On one side the chatter, windbag-gery and small talk that pervades half the eternal Italian television time, with yet more recipes for aubergines a la parmesan. On the other, the entrepreneurship and guts, adventurism even, that have transformed Catalan gastronomy into one of the new spearhead cuisines on the global food market. In the front line is Ferran Adria, with his deconstructionist recipes, three Michelin stars and world renown. Nor is that renown in any way marred by certain eccentricities, such as having participated in an edition of Documenta Kassel - the only chef to have done so in the history of that unmitigated avant-garde art festival.