Cierra Viridiana: Neither spherifications nor liquid nitrogen; The genius who fused traditions and thus reinvented the kitchen is leaving

The news that we had been fearing for years caught us out of the blue: Abraham García closes

in April 2023, when the restaurant that changed everything in Madrid celebrates 45 years of life with the same chef in the kitchen.

At least we have four months left for some feast of words and fine cuisine with this chronicler's oldest friend in the world of gastronomy, and from whom he has learned the most.

And it is that the first review that we dedicate to it, when both of us, cook and journalist, were young and vigorous, was no less than in September 1981: the second or third of a career in the kitchen that has continued until today.

We have written a lot about Abraham since then, in EL MUNDO since 1989 (where he also wrote in the past), and it is a good time to remember what has impressed us over the years of

.

If he traveled a lot, it was not to do

in the kitchens of famous restaurants in Spain and the world, which he could not afford when, a boy from a poor family in the mountains of Toledo who had been a shepherd until he was 13 years old -and in the fields, with the sheep, he learned to handle the knife like a sculptor the chisel, and he drew on the skin of any watermelon- until he came to Madrid as a scullery in a (good) restaurant, where he learned the rudiments of the trade and refined them.

No. He would travel later, because of his passion -which he shared with his love of cinema, as Viridiana's own name ratifies- for horse racing: to the Aintree Grand National or the Kentucky Derby.

And she would even go to Albania when she was writing her great book on offal, Take the Bit

because she-she assured her surprised friends-

The cook with his multiple and characteristic hats.

At the age of 28, having learned all the basics and rising through the ranks of a couple of restaurants,

-the smallest we've ever seen .

ever seen, even less than that of the first La Broche by Sergi Arola- and gave free rein to his tremendous sense of harmony of flavors and textures, always starting from a traditional base, but in combinations that others would later baptize "fusion". .

And we saw that repertoire expand, in all directions.

I was in those when the person signing this, who had only been working as a gastronomic critic for

for just a couple of weeks , met Viridiana, urged on by the British press correspondents in Madrid, always drunk, and in love with the

(the shot of Calvados, apple brandy, between courses) that Abraham gave them.

This chronicler was more interested in the first

- then little known here, where there were barely a couple of Mexican restaurants - with Swedish pickled herring, which arrived through an importer in the Canary Islands.

Viridiana was for this chronicler the first important discovery in a happy series of encounters with talented and passionate cooks that later passed through Arce, La Broche, Sudestada or DiverXO, the latter in the hands

.

Between them the affection and mutual admiration have never ceased.

We have already defined this school here as a 'Madrid school', that of a fusion of traditions, far removed from that other school that swept everywhere 20 years ago, the so-called 'techno-emotional', based on deconstructing and reconstructing the structure of food, with those spherifications based on alginates or that tremendous freezing with liquid hydrogen, which was the basis of the success of

.

Abraham was never interested in that, and in fact deconstruction is an almost forgotten fad today.

The gastronomic

did not forgive him for that attitude far from what was the Spanish

, and he managed to get

and boycotted him.

Fortunately, his clientele was quite another.

Viridiana, as we have written so many times, has always gone to be surprised by the exotic touch and to have a good time with a satisfaction as great as that which our most popular dishes give us.

Kyoto, past the mountains of Toledo.

that they have later flown with their own wings, and the Madrid diner has become much more open and cosmopolitan than before thanks to Abraham: in large part, from That's where our

exotic cuisine

a variable letter

One of its classics: La Sagra lentils in mild curry with Mediterranean prawns.

A few years ago we listed some of its current dishes, which return from time to time to its always variable menu, and to which others have joined.

What a feast!

Some things from then:

;

stew soup with fregola (Sardinian semolina) and truffle fillings;

gumbo with shrimp and beans;

thin shell sushi (on the shell) and kombu seaweed;

Catalan-style broad bean quesadillas with mole poblano and Oaxacan cheese.

And some things from now:

;

small pan-fried squid from Huelva, with red curry, snow peas, roasted sweet potato and Thai rice with raisins and pistachios;

Grilled deer loin from the mountains of Toledo, with mole poblano, chestnuts and roasted quinces.

And always the offal: don't miss his explanation of his dish of cow tripe: "Stomach, hand, snout and tongue, because tripe and kisses are with the tongue or they are not".

His inimitable sense of humor.

There have been groups of devotees who have gathered with anointment to taste these things - and superior wines - for decades.

They have until April, then.

And maybe we can convince him to make us another menu like that of a mestizo Andalusia - Andalusia is Christian, Moorish and American for a reason - in which, "in order of disappearance", as the canons of the house dictate, some of these things: Ham and loin from Jabugo (Huelva) with winter melon and fried macadamia nuts;

curried vegetable pakora with raisins soaked in Jerez cream (La Pakora de Jerez);

Andalusian gazpacho with nopalitos (tender prickly pear stalks) and crusty Sardinian bread.

And so, even the desserts.

Genius and figure, Abraham García.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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