José Andrés
Photo: Jason Odell
Since the opening of The Bazaar by José Andrés in Beverly Hills' SLS Hotel, this hydra-headed assortment of restaurants (Bar Centro, Rojo y Blanca, Patisserie, Saam) has been the hottest ticket in a city of hot tickets. And bouncing in and out of town to make sure it all works is the cheerful Mr. Andrés, who like any celebrity chef worth his sea salt, had time to toss off a few tasty bon mots:
Merrill Shindler: The news is filled with gloom and doom. But your menu is awash with high-end items like Iberico ham and caviar. Are we still spending on luxury items?
José Andrés: They are luxuries, but they can be affordable luxuries. I love Iberico ham and caviar for the same reason – they are pure flavors. Even the most expensive caviar is just the eggs and salt. And I'm fascinated by the eggs from fish other than sturgeon, by trout eggs, which are very affordable. And we try to do something very different with them. My director of creativity went to China to research steamed buns. We serve our caviar on steamed buns, with crème fraîche. Steamed buns take nothing away from the briny, salty flavor.
MS: There are dozens of tapas dishes on the menus at The Bazaar. Is there one that makes your heart beat faster, that amazes you every time you taste it?
JA: There is one that is a tribute to my mentor Ferran Adrià – you must remember the people you learned from. It is our liquid olives. They're Willy Wonka olives, made with olive oil, rosemary, garlic – they explode in your mouth. There's a bubble, a thin membrane holding inside the liquid of the olives. For me, it's edible art.
MS: Some of your dishes have been reconfigured completely beyond recognition. For instance, some of your salads…
JA: They are what I call organized salads. The salad is usually the most disorganized thing – to eat a salad can be very complicated. So I turned it into, like, a sushi roll, you have the whole salad in one bite. It's wrapped in jicama with a salad inside. I make many organized salads; my organized Caesar salad is very popular.
MS: Nothing you make seems simple. Doesn't your kitchen go crazy trying to churn out hundreds of orders of such complex dishes?
JA: It's true, the dishes take a long time to make. They are very labor intensive. That's why I'm always late for meetings – I'm so busy cooking. I've been working around the clock for so long, I haven't had time to get to any of the farmer's markets in Los Angeles, which are so famous. And I have to fly in many of my ingredients – the Iberico ham, the Manchego cheese. Certain ingredients are non-negotiable.
MS: You recently put out a cookbook (Made in Spain: Spanish Dishes for the American Kitchen, Clarkson Potter). But it's a lot easier to just go to one of your restaurants than to spend a day trying to create one of your molecular concoctions…
JA: You can learn my cooking from my cookbook, though not everything. It's true, I want people to come to my restaurant. But if they want to try, it's in the book. Many of the recipes a good cook can do. But not all of them. My Philly cheese steak, made with Kobe beef…we can only make that in my restaurants. At home, no one could make it. No one could make my gazpacho either. You have to understand the tradition of gazpacho. Without that, it's just soup. Maybe a good soup. But not a José Andrés soup.
– Merrill Shindler