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Hindustan Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
From Biryani to Black Salt—A Michelin star's culinary exploration in India
Celebrated Spanish chef Oriol Castro, one of the visionaries behind Disfrutar, the Michelin-starred Barcelona restaurant currently ranked #1 on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list (2024), recently visited India for the first time. Known globally for pushing the boundaries of modern gastronomy through bold creativity and precision, Chef Castro shared his reflections on Indian cuisine, culinary philosophy, and the power of passion in an exclusive interview. It's been wonderful—my first time in India, and I am very happy. We've been eating a lot! We tried biryani, which I absolutely loved—not just for the flavours but also the technique behind it. That really stood out to me, especially because Disfrutar is a highly technical restaurant. Cooking and then eating biryani—it was an immersive experience. Oriol joined Vir Sanghvi, Chairman, Culinary Culture for a special Culinary Conversation on at The Oberoi, New Delhi and hosted the first-ever superclass in India, showcasing their marquee dishes. I really enjoyed South Indian bread—appam, and of course, butter chicken. We visited many restaurants, and each had its own uniqueness. We went to Indian Accent, Bukhara - ITC Maurya, Inja, and Dhilli—all of them were wonderful in their own way. It's important to see the authentic side of a country when you travel. At Khari Baoli's spice market, I wanted to explore the seasonal ingredients and local culture. We bought some masala blends—they prepared one specially for us, explaining the uniqueness of each spice. I am yet to figure out on how we'll use it at Disfrutar, but it was an inspiring moment. Yes—black salt. I had heard about it before, but now I understand its complexity. It's very special, and I'm excited to work with it back home. Whenever we develop a new dish, we stay focused on the essence of the ingredient. Even with all the technical work we do, we never want to lose that. It's not just about technique—it's about preserving flavour and soul. Fusion should never become confusion. At Inja, the chef explained the dishes so well that the experience was clear and enjoyable. Sometimes, context is everything—when the concept is well explained, the dish speaks louder. Not just mine. Disfrutar is a collaborative effort between myself, Eduard Xatruch and Mateu Casañas. It's not about individual credit—the project is bigger than the person. That philosophy has shaped our work from the beginning. Of course—there's always pressure. Even yesterday, before a cooking demo, we felt it. But pressure is important—it means you care, and it pushes you to give your best. Being ranked number one means people expect a lot, and we embrace that. Passion. That's the one thing you truly need. If you have passion, everything else will follow. Everywhere. You can catch inspiration from anywhere—360 degrees around you. It's always a work in progress. Everything takes time. You don't achieve things overnight. It's about taking baby steps, being consistent, and never losing your passion. Chef Oriol Castro's journey through India may have been brief, but the flavours, colours, and ideas he encountered here have clearly left their mark. With an open mind and relentless creativity, he continues to remind us that the best food doesn't just surprise the palate—it tells a story.
The Hindu
04-06-2025
- Lifestyle
- The Hindu
Disfrutar's Chef Oriol Castro Hosts First-Ever Superclass in India
In less than 24 hours of landing in Delhi, Chef Oriol Castro went on a spin around the city, experienced its markets, tasted local food and sat through half a dozen interviews. Yet, there was no trace of fatigue on his face. It could be because of his trademark energy, or because he was really excited to be in India — a place, he says, he has been waiting to come to forever. 'I am so happy to finally be here! I have always wanted to see this land of great history and immense gastronomical culture,' quips the cheerful chef, who was at The Oberoi New Delhi courtesy of global culinary exchange platform Culinary Culture and Don Julio tequila. Incidentally, Oriol was not in the city to cook a meal but to teach people how to cook some of his signature dishes from Disfrutar, the three Michelin star restaurant in Barcelona, currently regarded as the world's best restaurant. And why is he not cooking for us? We are compelled to ask. 'Our cooking needs certain ingredients, equipment, technique, and labour, all of which is only possible in our own kitchen, but we do many collaborations like this where we teach our recipes,' explains the chef whose restaurant is endorsed by the who's who and sees over a year long waitlist for reservations. Creating a legacy A protégé of the iconic El Bulli, a restaurant that reinvented Spanish cuisine and put it on the world map, Oriol along with his co-owners, Chef Eduard Xatruch and Chef Y Mateu Casañas, is known to have taken revolutionary culinary techniques (like foaming and spherification) from El Bulli to new heights at Disfrutar. While they offer a 28-course classic tasting menu — and a 30-course option called the Festival Menu — it was Bulli that had introduced the concept of elaborate tasting menus. 'In the beginning tasting menus meant serving only two-three starters. In the 90s we began changing that by adding more tapas and small plates. Slowly, we made it to 10 courses — which was an important turning point in the history of tasting menus and something that has caught on since. Some of these courses change for regular diners to ensure there is no dining fatigue.' The idea behind the large menu, he explains, is to showcase a variety of techniques, flavours and tastes. 'Creating a tasting menu, I feel, is like making music — just as the combination of many notes make a song, many little things come together to make an experience like this.' Sharing knowledge Like Bulli, that openly shared and published all its recipes, Disfrutar has been documenting all its recipes too. Their cookbooks (they publish one every three years) also come with scannable codes that take you to videos showcasing the methodology behind each recipe. When questioned on whether he feels sharing their recipes openly might be a self-sabotaging practice, Oriol shrugs. 'Life is about being generous and sharing your knowledge, so no problem at all! C'est la vie!' he grins. Taking the philosophy forward, the superclass at The Oberoi New Delhi, focussed on showcasing the complex methodology of some of the signature dishes at Disfrutar. Participants, which included India's top chefs like Avinash Martins, Varun Totlani, Kavan Kutappa, Manish Mehrotra, young culinary students and food enthusiasts, got to witness the making of recipes such as The Goose That Laid The Golden Eggs, a dish with a shimmering golden egg yolk that is in fact a spherified, intensely savoury crustacean bisque made with prawn heads; Calçotada 2023, a dish made with sweet onions called calçots that sprout across Catalonia every winter; and Pizza Truffle, a flourless cocoa pizza with truffle, among several others. Impression of Indian food It may have been his first visit to India, but the chef's knowledge of Indian food is remarkable, something he owes to the Indian restaurant in front of his home where he and his children love to regularly dine, and to Indian chefs that work with him in his kitchens. 'There are so many bright young Indian students across culinary schools in Spain. Even at Disfrutar we have many Indian chefs and we learn so much from them everyday.' Oriol, who visited a host of wet markets in Delhi, also equates Indian markets to Spanish mercados, 'with fresh greens, potatoes, tomatoes, and a large variety of seasonal vegetables and meats just like our markets.' Having grown up by the sea on freshly made home cooked food, his fondness for seasonality relates with that of India just like he correlates the complexity of our cooking techniques to that of Spanish cuisine. So where does he see India fitting in the culinary map? 'Indian food is waiting to be the next big thing. It has flavours, it has technique and it has this vast cultural history backing it,' he says, adding 'I truly feel it is the time for India to shine.'
Forbes
27-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How Disfrutar Innovated To Become The World's Best Restaurant
Disfrutar awarded World's Best Restaurant in 2024, and their fried eggs with flavored, colored ... More centers Disfrutar, the restaurant from the partner team of Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch, and Mateu Casañas, for the past year has reigned as the 'The Number One Restaurant in The World'. The award bestowed by 'The World's Best Restaurants' is chosen by 1,100 restaurant experts from around the world. That recognition was achieved that through hard work, tremendous creativity, iteration, challenging conventional notions about the entire restaurant experience, and constant questioning by every employee. The trio worked together for over 15 years at El Bulli, 5-time winner of the World's Best Restaurant Award, located near Roses on Catalonia magnificent Costa Brava. Disfrutar is a model of innovation for any business in any sector. The constant quest to be in the vanguard is a self-imposed pressure that ensures constant innovation and the search for new culinary concepts. I wrote about Disfrutar in Forbes in 2017, and it's been fascinating to follow how it rose to number 1 globally. Logos of Disfrutar and Compartir restaurants in Barcelona The trio's first restaurant, Compartir, which means to share, opened in Cadaques on the Costa Brava in 2012. The idea was to serve sharable plates of regional dishes prepared with modern techniques. Disfrutar opened in Barcelona in December 2014, extending the groundbreaking creativity and innovation of Ferran Adrià and El Bulli. Disfrutar's goal was first and foremost, to create a dining experience guests would enjoy, hence the name, which means to enjoy in Spanish. For the past 17 years, since reading the Harvard Business School Case El Bulli: A Taste of Innovation when it was written in 2008, and teaching it in MBA and Executive MBA programs ever since, I've been struck by how much businesses of all types can learn. What follows are Disfrutar's inspiring and instructive examples. The special "living table" at Disfrutar designed by Merche Alcalá. The Entire Organization Is Empowered To Innovate Beyond the exceptional food and artistic presentations Disfrutar and Compartir are known for, every detail of the experience has created opportunities to excel. Each department (cook, service, wait staff, creativity, design, media & comms, human resources, admin, consulting, student collaborators, and its design agencies) are empowered to constantly innovate. A prime example is the special 'Living Table' - a dining table conceived by the design studio Merche Alcalá with 40 compartments that open from the top, to reveal beautiful plant arrangements and dishes. Chart with all the elements that go into an exceptional meal The diagram above, titled 'What's Behind the Menu', was created with input from Disfrutar team members and loyal customers and is a visual reminder of all the elements that go into creating an entire restaurant experience. It can be adopted and adapted by innovation teams in different industries. The graphic encourages teams to think more broadly about all the ways they can both innovate and that their products are perceived by end users. For Disfrutar, the elements include technique, creativity, emotions, memories, flavors, sensations, stimulation, knowledge, fun, and much more. Disfrutar's mission to constantly develop major new food, presentation, and experience concepts, requires an organizational mindset to always be on the hunt, and to look outside the food sector and Spain for unconventional ideas. Disfrutar collaborates with students from Barcelona's Massana and EINA Schools of Design, many of whom study jewelry design, for unique presentation vessels, cutlery, and serving utensils. Aside from the land and sea throughout Catalonia which are huge sources of inspiration, Oriol, Eduard and Mateu travel to countries including Japan, Greece, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, and Singapore to discover new ingredients, cooking techniques and equipment that have been used in a kitchen before in Spain. Once a month, the chef Oscar Albiñana shares new products he's found throughout the food industry. The Korean OCOO pressure double boiler being used to transform cauliflower in color and flavor Equipment traditionally used for one purpose can be applied to create new dishes like Disfrutar's Black Cauliflower that uses an OCOO pressure double boiler using the setting for 'aged eggs' (aka thousand-year-old eggs or century eggs). After many hours, the cauliflower develops balsamic flavor notes and a soft texture, yet maintains its original shape. The team iterated varying the number of hours the cauliflower cooked until the desired taste and appearance were achieved. Fried eggs with basil, tomato and squid ink flavored centers Always Asking Questions And Challenging The Status Quo The Disfrutar team constantly asks how things can be done differently. Ingredients are subjected to different cooking processes, and familiar processes are applied to atypical ingredients. Questions are asked like: - Why must an egg yolk only be yellow and contain only yolk? - Why can't a yolk be combined with other ingredients like pesto, tomato or squid ink and be red, green, or black? - Can a different round ingredient be fried on top of an egg white, besides a yolk? - How can a piece of equipment used for one preparation, be used to transform another ingredient? - Why must butter always be smooth, yellow, and solid? Why can't it be full of aerated bubbles that when cold, melt before your eyes at room temperature? - Why must cooked leeks be soft? Why can't they be stiff batons, that are crunchy and brittle and used for dipping? Different Types of Innovation Ten years ago I was inspired by the way the El Bulli team innovated to write my book, Catalyzing Innovation, that identifies 64 different ways companies can innovate strategically, with 1,100 cross-sector, global examples. Many of what I identified in the book as 'innovation lines of thinking' are used by the Disfrutar team. Fried donut filled with caviar and sour cream Both Disfrutar and Compartir serve a remarkable warm donut filled with cold caviar and sour cream. It's both indulgent, delicious, comforting, and familiar, and every bite is savored. Metallic looking egg yolks made with edible gold, silver and copper Disfrutar makes what look like egg yolks, and colors them with edible gold, silver, dark silver, and copper to create shiny, metallic looking orbs that ooze like a runny egg yolk when cut with a fork. Spheres of corn flavored purée encapsulated and fused to look like corn on the cob Analogizing is a favorite line of thinking for the Disfrutar team, like the example above that looks like corn on the cob. One of El Bulli's most famous food concepts was spherical olives. A sodium alginate membrane encapsulated an intense green olive purée that burst in your mouth with flavor. Disfrutar evolved the technique to create 'multi-spherification'. In this dish, individual small orbs with intensely flavored corn purée inside are placed in small molds where they adhere to each other like corn kernels on a cob. Freeze dried calçot, like leeks, that are transformed from soft to brittle sticks for dipping Braised leek-like calçot, a winter time favorite in Catalonia, are turned into crispy batons through freeze-drying. They're dipped in a unique variation of Catalonia's iconic romesco sauce. The calçot are 'plated' on newspaper, which is how they're typically served in the country-side during harvest season. Flavored, colored butter-like spreads with an aerated texture In place of typical, smooth butter to spread on bread, Disfrutar creates flavored, aerated, cylindrical shaped fats ranging from pistachio oil, to cocoa butter, and Iberico Ham fat that melt before your eyes at room temperature. It plays with texture, taste, mouthfeel, aroma, appearance, and emotions associated with butter. "Spherified" pea necklace surrounding squid Constant Iteration On Concepts And Scaling Them Once a major new concept is developed, like 'spherification', it can be applied in a number of different ways (similar to the way Apple might apply their iOS operating system to different device types). The 'spherification' concept has been applied to pea-size colored spheres, miniature caviar-like pearls, ravioli size, and egg yolk sizes as previously mentioned. Key Learnings There is so much to learn from Disfrutar. In some ways, it's easier to innovate with food compared to other industries because the costs and capital investment are not as prohibitive, and experimentation can be faster and more varied. Based on studying Oriol, Eduard and Mateu's methods, my advice to companies in virtually every sector, from automotive, to fashion, hotels, consumer package goods, and financial services is to: - Look to other sectors and countries beyond the obvious, to benchmark how analagous problems are dealt with - Empower the entire organization with a mindset of constant questioning and reinvention - Push your organization to explore different innovation lines of thinking vs. the usual, like making experiences more multi-sensory, varying materials, colors, shapes, product forms, distribution methods, presentation and merchandising, and business models - Give significant thought from the beginning of product development to how the innovations can be scaled and extended
