Which is the most refined cuisine in the world?
A couple of weeks ago, I was having dinner in a Mexican restaurant in Madrid with some friends. It reminded me when I was traveling to Mexico City and going to the best restaurants there. I started to look for more information about the Mexican cooking, met important chefs there, and discovered a really complex and delicate cuisine!
Further than the tacos and burritos, and all the pre-mix food you can find today hardly everywhere on the planet, the Mexican cuisine has a soul, that I discovered there.
I do not need to say that the food we have in Europe is really far away from the real taste of Mexico! Actually, I did have the same feeling when I was in Japan,.... These international cuisines were so different from what we get in our own country!!!!
Mexican cuisine is an elaborated cuisine, refined, complex, with a lot of sauces and different textures and flavors.
I remember the Aguila y Sol, today closed, the Hacienda Morales, where I enjoyed and discovered new things!
I traveled in a lot of countries around the world, trying all the local cuisine, and enjoying and experimenting,... Nevertheless, there is for me 3 cuisines in the world that I consider refined: France, Japan and Mexico.
At that dinner, in Mexico Lindo, in Madrid, eating tacos de carnitas, I said to my friends, that for me Mexican cuisine was one of the few cuisine in the world that was really refined. They all laughed at me!!!!!
Of course, the menu was simple, but honest and nice, but, it was reminding me all these fabulous experiences I lived there.
Misa, my Japanese friend, was the only one, who stayed serious and concerned,... She looked at me puzzled and asked me: "And What about the Japanese Cuisine, Steph?"
I rectified and laughed also!
Even if this dinner was not the most refined I had, the flavors were bringing me back to all these centuries of familiar cooking elaborating delicious dishes!
Again, I think about what I tasted till now, Japan and Mexico are the most delicate and refined cuisine I know, next to the French one. I always said that I was really lucky to be born in France,.... for a lot of reasons: the liberty, the nation, the food, etc...
I don´t want to sound nationalistic and arrogant, as French used to be. I also recognized all the defects of my people and culture.
But regarding the food, I think, French achieved something that few cultures did,... next to Japan and Mexico.
Once, I said that, my Spanish friends were laughing and were absolutely outraged! I always defended the Spanish cuisine, and love it. In some way, with this sentence, I was taking back the importance of the Spanish cuisine, and showing my most chauvinistic side,....
Perhaps,... or perhaps not. Spanish cuisine changed a lot during the past years thanks to an enormous group of young chefs (Ferrán Adriá is not the only Spanish chef that should be quoted!) that put Spain on the world table! And it´s a due!
Spanish cuisine has a wonderful products and ingredients, a colorful and tasteful cuisine. Nevertheless, the essence of the Spanish cuisine, is not refined,...
And I do not want to annoy anybody with this, only try to define and identify every culture.
Refined cuisine, is not exactly what I would eat everyday. I like to be surprised with complex tastes,... but really, on the daily basis, I do enjoy more a good quality and simple meal than a wonderful and complicated sauce,....
So, Alex, Ana, Manolo, Misa, I still think that France, Japan and Mexico have the most refined cuisine in the world, even if I would prefer to eat a nice Spanish dish everyday!
And you, what do you think? Which is the most refined cuisine in the world? Please feel free to share your opinion!
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