This post is a few days in the making, I finally finished writing it yesterday. I haven’t wrote this much since college, maybe not even as much then!  I’m an art major after all. Vale.
The last day of fusion was really fun. I felt comfortable where I was and getting there pk the metro was easy to the point like  I felt like a regular commuter, going to work at 7:30 and coming home at 4.  The last day had a lot of presentations about business, the highlight before we went to lunch (which sucked beyond sucking) was by the Roca brothers, who have the El Cellar Can Roca.  These guys are fucking geniuses, and their presentation wad pretty muck about how fucking awesome there catering branch is, pretty much making the point that there catered food is better that most michelin restos around the world. And you know what, they’re right.
They presented a problem with catering: the raw oyster and the litany of problems that u brings with it during a catering situation. Their solution? Cryo vacing them, bringing them to a high tack facility that uses huge tubs if water to pressurize the oysters, basically cooking them a tiny bit with pressure, so that they are no longer technically raw, but appear raw. Did you see that article in the ny times about lobster and stuff being cooked with water pressure so that their meat slopes right out of their shell? Google it, its breaking crazy, and that’s how the Roca brothers cook oysters for catering events. Spain is cool.
Then they showed us a dish they do at their Resto based on cold, smooth and fresh. It was a salad of various cool things, like apple purees, cider geles, greens and a eucaliptus water, from juices eucaliptus, that gets evaporated into a distillation of pure water, then gets chilled down to -5c, which is below freezing, but because is a special fridge that uses pressure, the liquid remains a liquid, instead if becoming an ice cube. Then, at the table, it is poured on the salad plate, creating an upside down ice cicle, the super cold water touching the air, raising its temp to -3 or -2, which is ice cold, and as the water is poured, like a drip castle, an inverted ice cicle forms. Holy shit.

Restaurant ABaC is liked in a hotel with the same name, a ten minute drive from where I’m staying in Barcelona, which means that its pretty far away. The hotel itself seemed like it was beyond 5 stars fancy, and so did the restaurant. Gorgeous versace charges, awesome service, everything name with a chrome lid, which I still think is kinda funny. So the food:
Starting our with a palette cleanser of Apple cider foam over a licorice gel, to smoke trapped under a bell jar, with tomato water consomme and 2 little spoons with bread crumbs and gnocchi made with tomato and methyl cellulos.  Aroma was the key here, as the smoke made you think of toast which made you think that what you were eating was simply a bite of freshly made pan amb tomaquet, instead of smoky air and tomato water. Brilliant. Also, I’m sorry I didn’t take any pictures, but everything looked awesome and modern in that new Spanish way.

The Spanish love their egg yolk apps, and ABaC’s was pretty amazing. Hidden under a beyond thin toast of bread, so thin it have to be like a bread ‘tuile’ (tabla kitchen, get on this!) was an egg yolk sitting on smooth potato foam, like what reused to serve octopus with here at the Resto. Around this little stack were carefully placed cubes of pork stock, chips of Serrano ham, a lose truffle dressing, and its of pork belly. I know it all sounds over the top, bit it was so simple in the mouth, porky and eggy and a little crunchy and smooth. Perfect.
He last item that stuck out to me was the fish. I’m not a huge fan of sous vide fish, bit this piece of sole almost had a texture of being cured. It was very meaty, which for sole, doesn’t happen. Sole is usually soft and flakey, and usually bland. This dish was tasty and had a lot of character.

Sole

cooked at 55 degrees for 4 minutes.  How bout that

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Here is a quick collection of notes I have taken during meals in Spain. I will say that it is note having my phone with me to write down stuff I see and eat around town. This post has derailed from places on both Madrid and Barcelona.

Gotta get 1/2 raciones when at bars, or you will have way too much in front of you, and wot be able to order other stuff.

It seems like the fancy tapas bars are slow, and all the neighborhood joints are full, except for those places that just suck.

Portions are big for how much they are. Basically there is no need to look at prices on a menu, mostly because the quality is there, especially for the cured meat items.  9E is worth it for awesome salumi. 

The espresso flows here pretty well, and seems to be made pretty well. I have no idea when lunch starts here, but I think its at like 2 or 3 
Mojama de atun, cured tuna loin, served room temp, way less salty than I thought it would be. I had
Cecina de vaca, its like Spain’s bresaola. A bit lighter and dryer.

At the venta el buscon, they were mostly Italian, and would call their bar orders out, loudly. It was actually pretty cool, the idea of being loud, but efficient, so that by the tome you, as a waiter, got to the end of the bar, the bartender was already pouring your first beer, or Cana.  I just realized that the calling out of orders the treats the bartender like a line cook, fuck yea. That could get hardcore when he starts getting raged on. And the servers need to remember what they are ordering, too. 

There mussels, or mejionnes, al vapor, or steamed, all came on the half shell. That’s crazy. And awesome, cuz then you dont need a spoon if you got a shell to use instead!
Just got to Barcelona and hit a basque tapas place on the main drag, de Gracia, then walked for moles down to the bottom of the city to visit quimet y quimet, a montadito bar that should probably only hold 15 people, but when j arrived there were at least 30 people crammed on there, yelling out orders to the 3 family members who were moving as fast as ive ever seen cooks move, talking the whole tome, communicating what was going in. They room all pests verbaly and kept pieces of paper both in front of them so they could keep adding your tab up as you ordered more. Amazing and delirious. BTW, montadito are basically Spanish crustini, only piled high with things like canned eynacinger piquillo peppers, caviar, confit of onion, dried tomato spread, and on and on and on.

After the first night of Madrid Fusion, I saw that La Broche was hosting Carlos Cracco, a 2 starred michelin chef from Milan.  I was excited both to check out the food of some guy who’s Resto I would probably never go to in such a beautiful space as La Broche.
As you can extrapolate from the name, the restaurant is all white, with thick white walls and tablecloths that pile up at the base, like when painters use sheets to cover furniture when they are working. Basically, the only color km the room was the food. This was my first fancy dinner in Spain!
The menu was pretty amazing, I will post a pic of it, but here are few notes I took.
La broche
Bird cream or, pate in a little squeeze tube, you squirt into little toasts. They are in those silver metal tapas apparatuses.caeser salad bite in a little plastics baggie that dissolved in my mouth instantly, leaving a single perfect note of a Caesar salad. ,  A little plate for your knife and fork, chopstick at a sushi bar-style. Sesame on the beautiful shrimp was perfect.  Shrimp were sous vide in campari! for 24 hrs, no cooking. They took on an excellent semi cured texture. I have to use that later.  Pasta was under, another 20 seconds, but there was a cream with lemon grass or lemon verbina. Turned out to be mastic, Greek tree resin. Gotta find some if that!
Also,
salicornia, or sea beans, nice and semisoft and salty. That mastic  cream though… so simple. Sous vide veal, a nice fatty cut, but I learned from the great chef, Carlos cracco, it was loin, not like a breast, with a paste of annise and capers on it, seared a little, with a little turnips puree and julianned celery root. Simple and juicy and good. There could have been a bit of acid somewhere.
Dessert was actually exceptional, with a pistachio mousse on the middle of a pistachio caramel on the top and the bottom. A nice brush of pistachio on the plate and a cool box, made of pralime, hollow, filled with the same mousse. The chocolate was like a molded fudge, but a little smoother and east to spread. Perrty impressive, like flourless cake that was under cooked but had enough butter or gel that it held its form.

Just a few notes an what went down, but first I think its worth mentioning that chef Atxa is a bad ass.  Be infuses smells, or as he says, ‘the soul,’ of things like grass, sea water, shit like that, into water, oil, salt, or other mediums usable in dishes so as to impart the flavor he just caught. Then it he delivers it with steam under your plate, or marinated with it, or makes a sauce with it. Also, some really great things from Nino munez, who just rocked out like 5 dishes, on stage, like a total bad ass, in an hour. I’m going to the Urban Hotel on Friday night to have dinner, where he is guest chef. Speaking of, I guess a bunch of hotels and Restos in town host guest chefs, who run a menu for a few days. I went to la broche last night, and Carlos Cracco, a 2 star chef from Milan was rocking it. More on that in the next post. Here are some pics from the booze room at fusion2011!

Madrid fusion!
Wow, its kinda like a taste of the nation upstairs, and a reedecture downstairs. The chefs here are known, recognized, respected and seem to have a lot of money to spend on some pretty awesome equipment. Every couple of hours or so, we all seem to get a break, mostly because the chefs leave the stage and some boring food experts take the state to have a group discussion. There was a lunch, at 1:30, that kinda rocked.1 wide row down the entire 2nd floor, tons of tapas, Paella, fobada, it was cool.
Before lunch, however, there was a big announcement made; elbulli will ne closing for ever this summer, big the day after it closes, Ferran Adria announced, the elbulli Foundation will open, to the public. The foundation is a collection of information, history, and center for creativety being built right around the restaurant elbulli. It will have zero emissions, and is being constructed out of super modern, organic looking tiles, glass, and buildings that look like sea coral.
In the afternoon, Joan mari Arzak blew all of our minds with his video plates.  Literally, Phillips technology tablets, playing videos of waves breaking on a shore, or a fire burning, encapsulated in a clear plate, with stuff like edible sand and sea shell molds made our of lobster consomme. Future food! Also, a plate that lights up with pressure, list like the forest flourr on Avatar. No joke. It was all about the 5 senses today.

I hope this uploads! The food part of Madrid fusion is kinda crazy. It’s like an awesome taste of the nation, like the old school ones me and my wife kathleen used to go to. I’ll load as much as possible from it during the next few days. Send me a message if you can’t view this.

Got to watch football at 11 pm drink campari, talk to some kids from la and listen to ‘like a g6′.
Macho and tio are slang for ‘b
ro’. Just so you know.

Holy shit, Madrid has an entire neighborhood devoted to hipsters and tapas at the same time. There is a street called cavas bajas that is a strip of bars and specialty sites, all selling food and drink, that you can’t event wedge your self into.  There are 2 txakoli bars, doing it ul right. It seems that each food tapas place does something specific, like papas bravas at las bravas, a working man’s tapas place that slings beer and potatoes with skill and efficiency. Then there are the place like this, that are holes in the wall but have excellent seafood, like some pulpo that I had that was perfect.
Also, just so everyone knows, the people on Madrid dress kind of like us Portlanders, only everyone is prettier, guys rock the matured face stubble instead is the beard, but all ladies either have ‘lord of the rings” boots, or vintage lace up’s. Oh, and cool doorway.