He spends much of his life cooking without using his hands.

To cook whys, wherefores and challenges.

The chef, popularizer, philosopher and -why not- scientist and poet Andoni Luis Aduriz (San Sebastián, 1971) and his restaurant, Mugaritz (Rentería, Guipúzcoa, 1998),

have always left the script,

the margins of the plate, and they have "busted", as the man from San Sebastian says,

the traditional restaurant codes

, even serving "lame dishes with misspellings".

The chef and his

creature

(two Michelin stars, in the Top 10 in the world for almost fifteen years and today number 21 in The World's 50 Best Restaurants ranking) are immersed

in their 25th season, and together they continue the search for "accomplices "Open your mouth and your mind

.

In addition, the chef is making his debut: he has opened Muka, a

project that revolves around fire

, at the Kursaal Conference Center (San Sebastián).

Eternal seeker of questions even if he does not find answers, escapist of labels, Andoni

is one of the most influential chefs in world gastronomy

.

And that at the beginning the kitchen more than vocation was maternal "obedience".

One of the tables at Mugaritz.JOSÉ LUIS LÓPEZ DE ZUBIRÍA

"He was such a bad student that he failed even gym. For my mother, who at the age of 8 was taken out of school to clean in a cider house, that

her son did not take advantage of his studies was a scandal

," he recalls.

And he continues with the context: "She understood that I was aiming for cannon fodder and that that could not be, so why didn't she try the kitchen? She told me,

'Andoni, there is always food there and you don't go hungry to die...'

".

Not only has she not died of starvation, but she has created an ecosystem with a language that

moves -and moves- from creativity and nonconformity

.

"A system error", whose each new season generates at least expectation.

The chef with one of his characteristic t-shirts.ANTÓN BRIANSO

He has been in continuous search for more than 20 years.

In this season where you explore the reasons for taste, what is the main course? I don't know, it's 23-25 ​​bites, so all in all.

Once a month I usually eat at Mugaritz to live the experience as the diner does;

I don't play that day, I go to the public to listen to how the band sounds. And how do the

musicians play?

?I have assumed the language of the house, and I understand that people are startled, but I also tell you that it is a show.

I can't separate what we do in the kitchen from all that choreography in the room.

This year we have recovered a beautiful way of doing things, almost like a play... The room is a blanket that covers you all the time. You are looking for accomplices, not clients.

What happens when complicity does not arise? That we all suffer.

But it would be disloyal to do something conventional because we tell people that we have fallen off the edge of the plate, that we have left the margins.

Our way of committing ourselves is to continue being ourselves and assume that hypothetical clash with people who perhaps do not know where they come from.

You don't go to a concert by broadcasting, first you inform yourself...

Why does this not happen in gastronomy?

We chefs should explain our proposal and thus we would avoid frights, because, as a friend of mine from ENT says, "Andoni, you work in a temple of pleasure, where people go to have a good time".

I don't get up thinking about how many tables I'll make unhappy, but about giving the best I know and with the aim of making it a great experience.

When you see that someone not only does not enjoy, but also gets angry and has a bad time, we all have a bad time.

Aduriz has just opened a new project in San Sebastián that revolves around fire.ALEX ITURRALDE

Is it the least of cases? Well, it happens more often than we think and not just to us.

The problem with Mugaritz is that he takes it very seriously.

This is not a site of certainties, but of searches.

Want to see what we're looking for?

Then come.

But if you only do it because they have told you that we have been among the top 10 in the world for 14 years, we are probably going to have a disagreement.

For me it is very painful, I do not like to disappoint.

I am not prepared to disappoint. Hence the "open your mouth and mind", a request they have made since the beginning of time.

We ask people to open their mouths and minds, we also have to start asking them to open their ears.

I have been saying for more than 20 years, "Gentlemen, Mugaritz is a search site,

This is a challenge

,

The cut as a plate

,

Sleight of hand

... Mugaritz is in his own history, in his own bubble, evolving on himself, sharing those reflections.

We always try to explain what you can find as a kind of filter against those annoyances that we talked about before.

Because I insist, I hope that people applaud. Do they? Well, look, one year the entire dining room began to applaud with a dish that we served in a mortar.

It didn't matter what phase of the menu each table was in, we all served at the same time.

Each diner, who was on his own, began to hit [some seeds] in the mortar while he realized that the same thing was happening throughout the room, that there was the same sound, the same smell... A communion.

That everyone shared a space and a time.

I have seen many people cry in Mugaritz, and we have also achieved that,

The restaurant is in a farmhouse surrounded by century-old oak trees.ÓSCAR OLIVA

But many more things have gone well than bad...Yes, almost everything is good.

What happens is that we have a lake of happiness and every time you throw a stone into it, tremendous waves are generated;

any disagreement reverberates very strongly. Like the waves of the embryo's plate... That plate was made as part of an exercise in creativity and there it remained, in Mugaritz's drawer of taboos, plates that have been caused by internal reflection, very own, bringing to light prejudices.

In addition, it was a hymn to life, a plate of broad beans, because at the time I read that in the ancient world these had a representation linked to the embryo. What a stir it was. It was bizarre.

From the headlines

Aduriz cooks with embryos

or

Demonic restaurant cooks with embryos

, we went to the comments of people who said they had lived the experience, to the collection of signatures to remove the dish from the menu... But everything deflates like a soufflé when you say that we did not want to offend anyone;

that it has never been on the menu because it is a creative exercise;

that there is no menu and that we were closed, because the season had not yet started.

It has remained an anecdote, but do you realize how the world works... Also what certain labels weigh?

Why do you run away from them? I don't know if labels today are a compliment or a condemnation.

They ask us, are you avant-garde?

I don't know, don't label me avant-garde.

Are you art?

I do not know.

Nor does it put me in a different situation or make things easier for me.

A long time ago I learned that no one audits tradition, things that are logical and assumed.

In this fast-paced world, we are all going to bite, we are very opportunistic, there are people who raise a slogan and do not have to justify it.

That hasn't happened to Mugaritz, of course. Mugaritz has always been obliged to explain himself, even to justify himself.

This is not negative and perhaps they have done us a favor that, for example, led to a wonderful book,

Vanishing point

[Gastro Planet, an intimate story about how Mugaritz experiences cooking].

The kitchen of Mugaritz.Ó.O.

Yes, that bad student today writes books and

is a scholar who never stops delving into the relationship between gastronomy and other disciplines

... He even wrote together with the philosopher

Daniel Innerarity

Cooking, eating, living together

(Ed. Destino, 2012 ).

"The worst written parts are mine, ha ha. No, I take it very seriously. I spend a lot of my life

cooking without using my hands

, because in the end, peeling the onion, browning it, you can do it up to a kitchen robot. What is more difficult and requires a lot is cooking the ideas, the whys and wherefores, the routes, the new challenges...

Caramelizing a challenge is much more difficult than caramelizing an onion

", he adds.

And the challenge to which he has lately dedicated himself has been lying.

"I have been reflecting on it for a month, from a theological, cultural, philosophical point of view...

It is possible that something of this will exist in the menus of the next few years

. For example, this season's is born from a summer course at the University of Valladolid:

Beauty and the grotesque

. I realized that it was a border territory, where what is grotesque for one is beauty for another, and that is at the essence of what happens in Mugaritz".

And he adds: "These are the things that this house contributes, with more or less luck, although with all our hearts put into what we do.

I already know that we are not the best restaurant in the world according to the usual codes

, but we have long since thrown away the restaurant sign

.

In that sense we are also saved".

'Miradas', one of Mugaritz's proposals.JLZ

What you like is as important as what you don't like.

Are opposites needed to create? Of course, I add more.

We have a plate with misspellings (we already did it last year) and this is very nice.

It is a dish that has an awkwardness, that limps a lot, that seems imperfect.

The stiletto of orthodoxy would have removed it from the menu, but here it stays. What do you expect from this season? May it pass without too many shocks and may we achieve the ultimate goal: that people have a great time discovering.

Also, when you return home, do you think again and again about what you have put on the table? Everything is amplified at Mugaritz.

The creative comes out very creative;

the skeptic already knows that we are a sect of the first order;

people who are optimistic and funny die laughing... But with the one that comes loaded with truths there is nothing to do.

There are restaurants that are much friendlier, that are more accommodating to all audiences, that's why I wear myself out trying to explain to the little aerodynamic gentlemen that it's better that they don't come. It's at the top of all the lists, however , the third Michelin star resists.

How one day they give it to her...For many years we dreamed for her

...

, and many people have even raised their voices for us.

When Dabiz Muñoz was given the third star, he said that he was delighted, that he deserved it but not more than Mugaritz.

Joan Roca, too... We are no longer the candidates, we are the eternal ones... A long time ago I fought for Mugaritz to be maintained by his own effort, not by the rules of third parties.

I am interested in what my peers say, the cooks;

the people who come to eat;

creative people...Have you ever thought about Mugaritz being less Mugaritz? Well, when I've thought about it I've done it, what happens is that logically I don't communicate it, I also know how the rules of the game work in this world full of wicked people.

Mugaritz is a very choral project, that's why it's called Mugaritz and not Andoni Luis Aduriz,

and in it we can reflect on whether we are creatively capable of approaching people's taste or why we can't try.

But, gentlemen, know that you are not more creative because you are more upsetting.

The snack 'From the Chikugo to the Ebro'.JLZ

Thoughtful and

Socratic

even on his shirts, where he has a large "I don't know" tattooed on him, he recognizes that

not knowing is the starting point

.

"I know that I know what I know and I maintain it with enough flexibility to change it if necessary. Life is a journey and a learning opportunity, and one has to

keep everything you believe in a kind of fermentation chamber

. I have learned from my scientific friends that today's certainty is only until tomorrow it overflows with a new idea."

'The cut as a plate'.J.LZ..

And he continues: "

To the guys who work at Mugaritz I tell them not to go crazy,

the point of reference serves to go in one direction, but things happen that make it lose its meaning. Life is very complicated", says Andoni, who asks and answers on his Instagram account "What if everything were simpler? Well, it would have to be complicated!", he writes.

"Ha ha ha. That's only part of the truth. I think you have to complicate things when you play, and it's a smart exercise if you understand it right."

Because when she doesn't cook dishes or ideas,

she turns to simple

but important things: "Being with the family and watching my son grow up; thinking; reading; enjoying a walk; traveling when needed; eating; going to restaurants... I love after-meals because, although sometimes it's like a parrot,

I learn a lot by listening

, so much so that sometimes in my house they get angry because I don't speak".

Does Aduriz withdraw?

"I really live inside of me."

Enzymatic rye and sea urchin molasses.JLZ

How is he as a boss? I've changed a lot.

At the beginning of Mugaritz, he was unbearable, the result of a bit of teaching from places where he had been.

Kitchens are full of very nervous and insecure people.

It took me a while to learn that yelling is proportional to disability.

When Mugaritz caught fire, many things were burned, among them, a cold room with the marks of my knuckles, because I, in my impotence and in a fit, punched it.

That was taken by the fire. What other consequences did the fire bring? It helped me to mature a bit the idea of ​​what this project is today, very choral, where each one has to be their own leader.

Since we wear the general's jacket, in the end the voice of command is expected of us, but I don't want to use it.

When there are things that I don't like, I am emphatic when it comes to expressing them.

When there is so much tension and we go so far to the limit, you don't realize the power that your word has and that, unintentionally, you can do a lot of damage, that's why I try to measure what I say.

What is the point of a dish being above the chef who is making it, a kid who has come with all the enthusiasm in the world to train in this house? Do you have pending accounts? Of course.

I also learned a long time ago that I am spiteful if I think I have suffered an injustice;

that you have to take time to collect those debts and that, possibly, when the day comes I will not collect them.

There are people who know how to forgive;

I am in the process of learning, even at the moment of truth I will not pay off the debt.

In the end, one evolves and acts according to the context.

you can do a lot of damage, that's why I try to measure what I say.

What is the point of a dish being above the chef who is making it, a kid who has come with all the enthusiasm in the world to train in this house? Do you have pending accounts? Of course.

I also learned a long time ago that I am spiteful if I think I have suffered an injustice;

that you have to take time to collect those debts and that, possibly, when the day comes I will not collect them.

There are people who know how to forgive;

I am in the process of learning, even at the moment of truth I will not pay off the debt.

In the end, one evolves and acts according to the context.

you can do a lot of damage, that's why I try to measure what I say.

What is the point of a dish being above the chef who is making it, a kid who has come with all the enthusiasm in the world to train in this house? Do you have pending accounts? Of course.

I also learned a long time ago that I am spiteful if I think I have suffered an injustice;

that you have to take time to collect those debts and that, possibly, when the day comes I will not collect them.

There are people who know how to forgive;

I am in the process of learning, even at the moment of truth I will not pay off the debt.

In the end, one evolves and acts according to the context.

a kid who has come with all the enthusiasm in the world to train in this house? Do you have pending accounts? Of course.

I also learned a long time ago that I am spiteful if I think I have suffered an injustice;

that you have to take time to collect those debts and that, possibly, when the day comes I will not collect them.

There are people who know how to forgive;

I am in the process of learning, even at the moment of truth I will not pay off the debt.

In the end, one evolves and acts according to the context.

a kid who has come with all the enthusiasm in the world to train in this house? Do you have pending accounts? Of course.

I also learned a long time ago that I am spiteful if I think I have suffered an injustice;

that you have to take time to collect those debts and that, possibly, when the day comes I will not collect them.

There are people who know how to forgive;

I am in the process of learning, even at the moment of truth I will not pay off the debt.

In the end, one evolves and acts according to the context.

'Sleight of Hand'JLZ

And now the context asks you to

manage your own networks

.

"Those from Mugaritz, no; mine. I got them for two reasons. The first to

be able to be me without mediation

; my opinions have always come out via what third parties thought or through press releases.

The second to make people envious to all those who don't love me"

.

Mugaritz.

Aldura Gunea Aldea, 20 (Renteria, Guipúzcoa).

Tel.: 943 52 24 55. Menu price: 242 euros, drinks apart.

Closed Sunday night, Monday all day and Tuesday noon.

The 2022 season closes on October 30.


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