Spain’s Chef Aduriz After the Fire

At F&W we were horrified to hear about the Monday-morning kitchen fire that struck Mugaritz, one of the world’s best restaurants, near San Sebastián in Spain. Luckily, our superstar contributor Anya von Bremzen has been a follower of Mugaritz’s chef-owner, Andoni Luis Aduriz, for years (she featured him in a terrific piece on Spain’s most creative chefs in 2008) and has kept us updated on the situation. According to the chef, Mugaritz will reopen in three to four months. And according to the Spanish paper 20 Minutos, Aduriz has received an overwhelming amount of support: “It’s impossible to imagine the tsunami of solidarity,” he told them. That includes the world’s foremost chef, Ferran Adrià (who told Aduriz that he’s taking the fire personally, as though it had happened to him), and Joan Roca, another of Spain’s elite cooks, who offered “money, all you want.” Aduriz also got calls from all over the world, from artists, politicians, writers, musicians and, of course, fellow chefs. And here’s another nice anecdote from the paper: Rescued from the fire was the restaurant’s staff piggy bank. “It’s all black and full of soot, but the pig is smiling,” said Aduriz.