Irreductible: Dstage

At Guerrero’s Michelin 2-star Madrid restaurant, DSTAgE, all tables have a view of the open kitchen and diners are sometimes invited there for the small plates bocaditos. The informality of the approach mirrors Guerrero’s willingness to ignore all kinds of other boundaries, both culinary and philosophic. While some chefs’ cookbooks include tributes from their colleagues (Guerrero pulls in good words from Andoni Aduriz, Albert Adrià, and Joan Roca), few stop to pay tribute in turn to artists and thinkers as diverse as Robert Johnson, Paul Klee, John Locke, Albert Camus, and Paul McCartney.

Guererro is even more willing to invert expectations when it comes to the choice of ingredients or the composition of dishes: raw razor clams with celery dashi and almond milk; porcine salivary glands with curried coconut and fig leaves; nixtamalized quince, fermented cassava, coffee nectar. This is a noteworthy, riveting example of how fine Spanish cooking has left behind so many of its most recognizable roots but not lost itself. The pieces from which Guerrero assembles his ideas come from around the world but the creative environment in which they flower could only be Spanish.

Color photographs throughout. Hardcover. In English and Spanish.