Yahoo Finance A night of fine dining with Michelin-star chef Manuel Berganza
Combining a luxurious stay at a resort in sunny Playa del Carmen, Mexico and an evening of fine dining by a Michelin-star chef would make for a perfect getaway in the middle of a Canadian winter.
I had the opportunity to visit Iberostar Grand Hotel Paraiso along Mexico’s Riviera Maya for four nights in the midst of the Canadian winter chill, attending one of the hotel’s series of culinary events called Chef on Tour.
While the dining adventure was certainly the highlight, the extravagance and service that is offered at the 310 suite Grand Hotel cannot go unnoticed.
The property is massive and is just one of many the Spanish company has across the Caribbean and Mexico. There are four different types of hotels where you can vacation: the Grand Collection (which is where I stayed and is an all-inclusive just for adults), Premium Gold (a 5-star experience for the whole family), Premium and Iberostar hotel.
The suites at the Grand come with either a king-size bed or two double beds, a flat-screen television, a bathroom with two sinks, a jacuzzi tub and a shower. Each room has a balcony that I like to call my little paradise since it came with a chair swing and an outdoor bamboo couch.
There’s a personal butler on every floor that is only a phone call away, including 24-hour room service that I wish I had taken more advantage of. Admittedly, I was so well served with generous portions at dinner every night, and not to mention a breakfast and lunch buffet available, that it was hard to find the need to have a pizza at 3 a.m.
The age demographic ranges at the resorts depending on the time of year, according to Iberostar’s marketing manager Mariela Gomez. At the all-inclusive, adults-only Grand complex, you’d be sure to find an older crowd.
Chef on Tour is in its second year, showcasing the finest chefs at their hotels in Mexico, The Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Cuba.
Spanish chef Manuel Berganza was the featured cook at our resort.
Berganza is the first chef in Spain to earn a first-time, two-star Michelin rating. He was just 27 when that happened.
He moved to New York four years ago to open Andanada, a modern Spanish restaurant located in the Upper West Side in Manhattan, and like any good chef, has learned to adapt to his surroundings.
Berganza said he missed the produce, meat and fish of Spain at first. He eventually stopped thinking about the ingredients he didn’t have and learned to make Spanish dishes from what was available to him in America.
He still gets food imported from Spain but is very selective about it.
“I look at which product I can bring from Spain that is still good if I were to eat it in Spain such as artichokes,” he said.
He says he likes sticking to simple ingredients but “the combination has to be special.”
And that showed in his Chef on Tour menu.
The nine-course meal, each dish paired with its own wine, started off with some “snacks” for the table in Berganza’s words: Beef slices rolled around watercress salad, lobster salad with lime aioli on a marinated cucumber, and quail nests, which were potato nests with chicken liver salad and soft boiled quail egg.
The rather heavy, protein-rich meal continued with a creamy gazpacho and heirloom tomato salad, Galician style octopus, and squid stuffed with vegetables in mole with ink and eucalyptus oil.
My favourite course of the night was a fish dish, grouper served with crumble and yolk. The fish is light, flakey and delicious.
Before dessert, Berganza served veal cheeks, with a slice of roasted beet on top and pineapple sauce on the side. During his interview before the event, the young chef noted how he loves to include sauces with most of his dishes.
“You’ll have a fork and a spoon with the dishes tonight. We love a spoon,” he exclaimed.
To cap off the dinner, we were served a chocolate ganache with olive oil mezcal ice cream.
Berganza’s passion comes from being in the kitchen with his mother and grandmother growing up in Asturias, Spain.
“Every dish I make, I look for the flavour of my mom. I cook in the kitchen like her. When I finish a sauce and I try it, I always think, ‘is this the flavour of my mom?’,” he said.
At 30, Berganza says he is still learning and developing his cuisine daily. While he sticks to his Spanish roots, he’s not “scared to pull techniques from different places.”
“We have a cook from Korea so we started making kimchi at the restaurant but customers who come for the Spanish food don’t want Korean kimchi so I took that and transformed into Spanish flavours,” he said.
That type of unique take on cuisine might be what keeps customers coming to Andanada. That, and authenticity.
“If I’m not authentic, why would a New Yorker take the time to come to my restaurant?,” Berganza questioned.
