88
Savoury crafts
supremacies, dismantling inferiority complexes with a touch of irony. His ingredients and inspirations are rigorously indigenous; his wine cellar – like his kitchen tools – is remarkable, offering some of the most prestigious châteaux wines from across the world. Sumptuous halls, immaculate tablecloths, Pavlovo-Posad shawls and Vologda laces on the walls and a panoramic terrace complete the setting. Even though, at first, it was not rewarding. No prophet is accepted in his own country, in Moscow like in Nazareth: and, in fact, most of Varvary’s clients are foreigners. Even more so since it was listed among the 50 leading restaurants in the world. A nomination that must be attributed to the originality of the restaurant and also to the rigour with which it is managed. Anatoly Komm is almost entirely selftaught and, as is often the case, he has elevated his shortcomings to obsessions. Molecular cuisine? Yes and no, since every chef who practices these manip-
ulations can fit into this definition, he points out. In fact, Russia boasts an unrecognised tradition in this subject matter, which originated in space food research, in vitamin-boosting experiments on the food for Arctic explorers and kindergarten children; all the way to the custom of spinning out “smetana”, a very popular variant of sour cream, with a pinch of methylcellulose in Soviet cafeterias, or simulating caviar with a spherical surrogate. “Most of the techniques used at elBulli were developed in the USSR 40 years ago,” underlines Komm. The freeze-drying machine is in fact the same that is used to prepare astronaut food, even though the paternity of this alternative use unquestionably belongs to the great Catalan chef. The house icon remains the reinterpretation of the “borscht”, a popular Slavic soup, in which smetana is turned into a frozen sphere and beetroot into a warm soup, which is poured directly onto the plate in front of the guests. Served alongside two foie gras escalopes, in line with the traditional juxtaposition of poor and rich ingredients. Destructuration, in classic elBulli style, mixed with a perfect example of programmed cuisine, the evolution of which has been anticipated by experimentation to maximise taste, fragrance, and organoleptic modifications. Another of the restaurant’s classics is the herring maki roll, where nori seaweed is replaced by centrifuged, jellified and sprayed beetroot paper - an oriental echo in food design; molten Borodinsky rye bread served with a spoon, or sunflower oil capsules, whose elbullian inspiration is Russianised by the reference to the estrangement theorised by the Formalists. Some fifteen dishes make up the “Gastronomic Show” menu, which Komm updates every six months and is prepared by sixteen chefs for the 30-odd places of the restaurant. But a mighty fleet advances behind the flagship, including the bistronomic Kupol, the Anatoly Komm Restaurant & Bar at the Barvikha Hotel, just outside Moscow, the Varvary brasserie, situated near the main restaurant, and the “brasserie de luxe” Restaurant No. 1 in Yekaterinburg.
KOMM’S REVISITATIONS OF traditional DISHES HAS ROCKETED RUSSIAN CUISINE TO FAME AND GLORY Above, one of the Varvary’s dining rooms. The restaurant occupies the top two floors of a sumptuous building close to the Kremlin (8A, Strastnoy Boulevard, Moscow; tel. +7.495.2292.800). Top, the preparation of borscht.
084-088_Komm_ENG_OK.indd 88
20/11/14 11:27